Sky Buys ITV: What the £1.6bn Deal Means for Advertisers

It's official. On 6 July 2026, ITV agreed to sell its media and entertainment business to Sky for up to £1.6bn. The deal hands Sky the ITVX streaming platform and ITV's free-to-air channels — though not ITV Studios, the production arm behind the shows themselves. Subject to regulatory approval, it's expected to complete in the second half of 2027. The headlines are all about television. But if you're a brand spending money on advertising, the more interesting story is what happens to your media plan.

One of the UK's biggest ad ecosystems, under one roof

Until now, Sky and ITV were two separate routes to the nation's screens. Sky brought subscription and addressable TV — the technology that lets advertisers target specific households rather than broadcasting to everyone. ITV brought mass-reach free-to-air channels and, through ITVX, a fast-growing streaming audience. Put them together and you have a single company controlling an enormous slice of UK video advertising: live TV, on-demand, streaming and addressable, all in one place. That's a genuinely significant shift in where and how brands can buy their way onto British screens.

What it means for advertisers

In the short term, very little changes — the deal won't complete until late 2027, and regulators will scrutinise it closely. But the direction of travel is worth planning for now.

Our take

Deals like this reward advertisers who stay flexible. The brands that win over the next couple of years won't be the ones locked into a single channel — they'll be the ones spreading smartly across paid search, paid social, streaming and TV, and shifting budget to whatever's actually driving results. That's exactly the kind of joined-up thinking a good agency exists to provide. If the shifting media landscape has you wondering whether your advertising is still working as hard as it could, talk to the team at Clicks about building a media plan that doesn't depend on any single platform.