From Boots and British Airways to Water Babies, we analyze the top picks from ITV and Sky to uncover six trends that prove the reach and precision power of addressable TV, with learnings from campaigns already working on air.
British Airways trials ITV's Dynamic Pause Ad format / ITV
For decades, TV’s role was clear: deliver unmatched reach, cultural impact and brand-building power. But as marketing moved into a more data-driven era, TV was often criticized for lacking precision and accountability compared to digital.
Addressable TV changes that equation. At its core, it allows advertisers to deliver different ads to different households watching the same program, using first-party data, third-party insights and broadcaster targeting tools.
It means Boots can show tailored beauty offers to Advantage Card holders, British Airways can serve real-time travel deals through ‘Pause Ads’, and Heineken can test different messages for Tesco loyalty audiences – all while those households are watching the same show.
This is TV with the accountability of digital – and the big-screen impact of broadcast. With ITV and Sky pioneering innovations from household-level targeting to new ad formats, addressable TV has matured from a niche experiment into a mainstream marketing solution.
Sifting through the top addressable TV case studies provided to us by ITV and Sky for the New TV for Drummies buyer’s guide, we’ve whittled everything down to six trends that show how addressable TV is maturing into one of the most powerful channels, with learnings from brands leading the charge.
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The defining strength of addressable TV is its ability to match the right creative with audience insight at a household level.
By linking Boots’s Advantage Card data with Sky’s millions of household records, the retailer was able to deliver tailored creative to segmented audiences across health, beauty, brand and lapsed customers. Through the results, it was able to directly attribute households that had seen the ad and then gone on to make a purchase. With response rates ranging from 43% to 66% from the brand to health creatives, it was able to prove that nearly one in four lapsed shoppers came back to spend and achieved a 9.9 return on ad spend – three to four times the category benchmark.
At ITV, Heineken used a similar approach to test effectiveness for its Cruzcampo beer launch. By combining ITV’s Retail Match and Data Match products, Heineken was able to activate its own data with Tesco loyalty data on ITVX. The outcome? A 189% sales uplift with success stories across all first-party audiences – proof that addressable targeting can shift behavior at the shelf, not just boost awareness.
What it means: Addressable TV has made the leap from blunt reach to precision targeting, marrying broadcaster data with retailer and loyalty platforms to give advertisers real competitive advantage.
One of the biggest myths about TV is that it’s only good for the top of the funnel. Addressable is changing that, with campaigns that can now track through the funnel, linking exposure to visits, sales and revenue.
Water Babies, the UK’s leading baby swim school, turned to Sky to boost sign-ups for classes near its 500 pool locations. The campaign zeroed in on households with young children within driving distance of pools. The results spoke volumes: 1,400 bookings directly attributed to Sky households and a 32:1 return on investment.
ITV’s Auto Match, powered by Carwow data, is another example. Car brands using the tool saw a 129% lift in site visits and 119% more intent actions. For an industry as competitive (and expensive) as automotive, being able to link a TV spot to ready-to-buy behavior is a game-changer.
What it means: These aren’t just awareness plays. They’re measurable, attributable business outcomes – the kind of accountability marketers once thought was reserved for digital.
Targeting is only half the story. For addressable to cut through, the creative itself needs to feel personal, relevant and timely.
British Airways put this to the test with ITV’s new Dynamic Pause Ads. Instead of a generic sale ad, viewers pausing their program were served a static billboard-style ad offer tailored to them – complete with live pricing and destination details. It’s a format that transforms the humble pause button into a personalized media moment.
And at Sky, Merlin Entertainments became the first sponsor to take over all Sky Cinema channels using its Smart Sponsorship model. The creative was tailored to family life stages: households with young children in the south saw Legoland, while thrill-seekers in the north were nudged toward Alton Towers. By combining the branding power of sponsorship with addressable targeting, Merlin created a campaign that felt personal, not generic – showing how addressable TV is reshaping not just who sees ads, but how creative lands in different households.
What it means: This is where addressable really stands apart: not just in who it reaches, but how the ad feels when it lands.
Another sign of maturity is the rise of vertical solutions designed for specific industries.
Through its partnership with Regit, the UK’s digital garage, Sky can tap into detailed driver data – from car make and model to fuel type and ownership cycles – and layer it with geographic or life-stage insights to target households at the precise moment they’re likely to act. For one online car retailer, that meant identifying owners of older vehicles near new low-emissions zones and serving them ads for electric models. The campaign ran across both linear and on-demand TV, proved twice as effective as previous targeting, and drove 17,000 incremental website visits alongside 37 additional car sales directly linked to Sky households.
Even in sectors less traditionally associated with TV, addressable is proving powerful. Persimmon Homes, one of the UK’s top three housebuilders, used ITVX targeting with Experian Mosaic Types data to home in on first-time buyers and family upsizers. The campaign combined YouGov’s BrandIndex analysis with sales uplift measurement via InfoSum and drove a 50% increase in website traffic, a 17% rise in enquiries, and an overall 6:1 return on ad spend.
What it means: Brands no longer need to piece together their own data strategies. These ecosystems don’t just provide reach, they build in the intent signals and attribution that make campaigns far more effective. For advertisers, it’s like plugging into a ready-made category engine.
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One of the most powerful shifts in addressable TV is its accessibility. Once the preserve of big-budget brands, it’s now within reach for SMEs and challenger brands.
At Sky, that accessibility is embodied by AdSmart, which was used to show SMEs how easy it is to get on TV. Using Companies House data, Sky identified business owners across the UK and served them animated ads tailored with local place names and regional accents – creating 19 regional variations from a single creative concept. The impact was immediate: website leads more than tripled, generating revenue worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Meanwhile, toilet paper disruptor Who Gives a Crap worked with ITV to support its launch into retail while tracking online DTC sales. Used ITV’s Proximity Shopper, powered by Circana data, it was able to track the outcome of the campaign in store at a brand, product and competitor level and addressable lift to measure the impact on online sales. The addressable campaign drove a 7% uplift in in-store sales and over 36,000 incremental online responses.
What it means: Addressable TV is levelling the playing field, letting startups and mid-sized brands compete for attention in the same premium, brand-safe environments as their larger rivals.
Perhaps the biggest appeal for marketers is that addressable TV offers the best of both worlds: the scale of TV and the precision of digital.
Sky can serve addressable ads into both linear and on-demand content, reaching mass audiences while layering precision on top. ITVX, meanwhile, brings the broadcaster’s national footprint together with granular targeting and retail integrations.
Mark Warner Holidays, an independent travel operator, proved the value of this hybrid approach. While the brand had been on TV before, it had never used addressable TV. Using Sky AdSmart, the brand profiled households by affluence, family status, and media consumption, through Experian Mosaics and Barb data, delivering ads that lifted searches by 40% year on year and generated 8.5x return on media spend.
What it means: The hybrid model is becoming the new norm – scale plus precision, not scale versus precision – giving even established brands an opportunity to reignite growth.
What’s clear from these campaigns is not just the scale of innovation, but the consistency of outcomes. Brands are proving, category by category, that addressable TV can deliver accountable results without sacrificing reach or brand safety.
For marketers, that means:
Addressable TV has matured into a channel that is mature, mainstream and measurable. In other words, it’s no longer an ‘either/or’ choice between broadcast and digital. For marketers willing to lean in, it’s an opportunity to have the best of both.
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Sky
Sky connects and entertains millions of people across Europe. At the heart of everything we do, is a belief that people deserve better. For decades, we’ve shaken...
ITV
ITV, as an integrated producer broadcaster, creates, owns and distributes high-quality content on multiple platforms. We operate the largest commercial family of...