Channel 4 CEO Priya Dogra
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a broadcaster in possession of traditional linear channels, must be in want of a strong digital ads business. But the UK’s Channel 4 has been one of the proactive broadcasters when it comes to prioritising digital growth. In 2020, the company’s CEO at the time Alex Mahon announced its five-year ‘Future4’ strategy for digital transformation, laying out a number of ambitious targets for 2025.
These included doubling total viewing on its streaming platform, delivering 30 percent of total revenues from digital advertising, and bringing in 10 percent of total revenues via non-advertising streams.
This week, with the release of Channel 4’s annual report for 2025, we see how well the company has fared.
Looking at streaming viewership figures, it appears the broadcaster has fallen short. The original Future4 announcement didn’t specify the measure by which Channel 4 would measure viewership. But the number of streaming views, the stat which the business highlights in its annual reports, has risen from 1.25 billion in 2020 to 1.9 billion last year. Strong growth, but not quite double.
(Streaming minutes weren’t disclosed in 2020 — the most recent figure we have is 45.6 billion in 2022. In 2025, the figure reached 72.8 billion).
This perhaps makes it more impressive, though, that the company is ahead of schedule on its digital ad growth. Digital ad revenues, sitting at £346 million last year, accounted for 34 percent of total revenues, up from 30 percent in 2024. Non-advertising revenues meanwhile hit ten percent — right on target.
It’s worth putting this digital advertising figure in perspective. Last year digital advertising revenues made up 37 percent of Channel 4’s total advertising revenues. While it’s hard to compare perfectly with other broadcasters, since each has different ways of reporting digital advertising, the best figures available for comparison put ITV at 31 percent, ProSiebenSat.1 and RTL both at 24 percent, and TF1 at 12 percent in 2025 (when stripping out disclosed non-TV ad revenues like radio and print).
YouTube growing in importance
There are a number of factors driving this transformation.
It’s partly started with how Channel 4 commissions and schedules its content. As the annual report mentioned, the broadcaster has been dialling up commissioning of streaming-friendly genres in recent years, while scaling back Daytime spend for linear programming, to help drive more streaming viewership.
It’s been proactive in embracing new opportunities on the commercial front. Channel 4 listed its embrace of programmatic ad sales, its media for equity arm Channel 4 Ventures, its launch of free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels, its new in-house creative agency Partner Labs, and its launch of new ad formats and targeting capabilities as factors which have helped stimulate digital ad growth, and bring new money into the business.
And its embrace of third-party platforms is helping too. Channel 4 has begun distributing more full episodes of its shows via YouTube, while also commissioning content specifically for YouTube and other digital platforms, and it has a deal with YouTube to sell its inventory directly.
Last year, full-episode views of Channel 4 shows on YouTube rose to 175 million, up 54 percent year-on-year. YouTube viewing minutes reached 5.0 billion, up from 3.4 billion in 2024, accounting for six percent of all digital viewing of Channel 4 content. And the annual report says that revenues from YouTube nearly doubled year-on-year, though the size of these revenues wasn’t disclosed.
As Channel 4 pursues its next target — 50 percent of total revenues to be delivered by digital advertising by 2030 — YouTube and other third-party platforms could prove to be a key part of the equation.
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