[Scarlett.]

The continued success of entertainment juggernaughts like X Factor and I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! combined with an explosion in demand for online video have helped ITV.com top off 2008 with record breaking numbers.

The stellar figures announced today by ITV Director of Online, Ben McOwen Wilson, show that visitors to the site have increased by 270% since the re-launch in August 2007, with 9.4 million unique users and 134 million page impressions in November.

Additionally, ITV can today announce that ITV.com has smashed the target set in September 2007 as part of the Turnaround Plan. According to October’s Comscore stats, ITV.com stands proudly at seventh in a league table of entertainment sites. The target it set itself was to be a top ten entertainment site, and it was in 17th place when the target was announced.

In November 2008 *video views on ITV.com increased to 15.7 million, up 598% year on year and a million on the previous month. The explosion of video consumption across the site has seen 69m videos viewed since re-launch in August 2007.

Page impressions for the X Factor section are up by 267% compared to last year, with over 15 million X Factor short form video clips viewed, averaging 156K views per day. I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! has seen a 211% increase in video views compared to last year.

ITV Player, the video-on-demand section of the site which allows users to view a selection of the best ITV shows for 30 days, has also seen a rapid rise in users, with the average number of plays per month increasing by 251% since the start of the year.

There have been over 22 million plays this year, averaging 66,000 a day (108,000 in November) and a rapid rise in users, with the average number of plays per month increasing by 882% since Nov 2007.

The top three catch up shows this year are: Coronation Street, The X Factor and Emmerdale in that order.

Viewing of catch up content has been evenly spread across the genres, with key titles from Soaps, Drama, Entertainment and Comedy all featuring in the most popular videos being watched. Whilst the nation’s favourite soap Coronation Street leads the list of all time most viewed with 4.6 million views, the top 10 includes Headcases, Secret Diary Of A Call Girl and Benidorm.

Below are the top ten shows for full length catch-up 2008 so far:


Top Catch Up 2008

Coronation Street
The X Factor
Emmerdale
Britain's Got Talent
Gossip Girl
Secret Diary of a Call Girl
The Jeremy Kyle Show
Benidorm
Headcases
Pushing Daisies

Ben McOwen Wilson, ITV Director of Online, said: “It really has been an amazing year for ITV.com and we are extremely proud to be announcing these figures today. They are further proof that we have a winning formula; the combination of ITV’s massive programme brands and a website that allows enjoyment of premier content online will be rewarded by the attention of millions of users. We will continue to listen to what users want from our flagship website as we look forward to making the site bigger and better for 2009.”

[rayheartbliss]

nicE !

[Locke.]

X Factor final on saturday too, that will probably get at least 12 million viewers