Digital growth boost for RTL

Anke Schäferkordt and Guillaume de Posch

Strong digital growth has boosted RTL Group’s figures for the first half of this year, despite a mixed picture on the advertising front.

The Germany-based broadcast group saw digital revenues rise by 94% to €219 million. Overall, group revenue was €2.788 billion, up 3.8%, and EBITDA was €628 million, up 2.6%.

The group highlighted its strong digital performance.

The companies of the RTL Digital Hub – RTL Group’s recently acquired digital businesses BroadbandTV, StyleHaul and SpotXchange – continued to show strong revenue growth, comparing H1/2015 with H1/2014: BroadbandTV was up 84 per cent, StyleHaul was up 112 per cent5, SpotXchange was up 90 per cent..

Catch-up RTV services, websites and MCNs attracted 42.5 billion online views in the first half, up 171%.

RTL estimated that net TV ad markets were up in Germany, France and Spain, while the Netherlands, Belgium and Hungary remained “challenging”. All RTL units except M6 Group outperformed in their respective territories.

RTL raised its outlook for the full year 2015. It now expects total revenue to be slightly up compared to the full year 2014.

“In the first half of 2015, RTL Group significantly increased revenue, EBITA and net profit, mainly driven by another strong performance from Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland and our rapidly growing digital video businesses. Looking at our recent digital investments, BroadbandTV, StyleHaul and SpotXchange, which are now grouped together in the RTL Digital Hub, revenues have been increasing by high double digit growth rates – and we expect them to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In terms of RTL Group’s aggregated online video views, we expect our full-year figure to reach more than 80 billion this year,” said Co CEOs Anke Schäferkordt and Guillaume de Posch.

“In the digital age of total choice, the fundamentals of our business have never been more promising: Linear TV dominates the video market and is the only medium consistently reaching mass audiences day by day. In total, people watch more video content than ever before – long-form and short-form, linear and non-linear, on the TV screen and on multiple devices. The demand for high-quality video content is growing rapidly, as does online video advertising.”