Six-months in and ITV Studios’ digital distribution label Zoo 55 is already proving its worth by allowing the distributors to go direct-to-consumer on social video platforms.
Ruth Berry
Charlie Swinbourne
Zoo 55 was officially launched at Mipcom last year, having been four years in the making within ITV Studios (ITVS), the production and distribution arm of UK commercial broadcaster ITV.
With former Warner Bros International TV Production executive Martin Trickey as MD and ITVS global partnerships lead Ruth Berry as president, it is already yielding impressive early results, as revealed in ITV’s full-year financial results for 2024.
According to ITV CEO Carolyn McCall, Zoo 55 delivered around £60m (US$80m) of high margin digital revenue in 2024, up about 30% year-on-year, and the company is expecting to double this by the end of 2027.
Berry has said she is confident she can meet McCall’s ambitious target of doubling revenue at the digital content label by the end of 2027 and was on hand at the recent Creative Cities Convention (CCC) in Bradford to illustrate how Zoo 55 is creating new direct-to-consumer opportunities for ITVS.
With a name that nods to both the year when the first video was uploaded to YouTube (2005) and the date of ITV’s launch in 1955, Zoo 55 has so far focused on exploiting unscripted titles in ITVS’ vast catalogue on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Facebook.
Zoo 55 houses the existing ITVS digital portfolio of 160-plus owned-and-operated social video channels, which had over 25 billion views in 2024, more than 100 ad-supported channels, 20 branded free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels and 18 mobile games.
“We’ve got a very strong business-to-business distribution business and have had for a long time, but audiences are moving into different spaces,” said Berry, pointing specifically to social media and FAST. “We need to be where those audiences are.”
The Nepalese version of The Voice has been a hit in the US
With most of the audience on those platforms watching unscripted content, Zoo 55 has focused on its non-scripted catalogue, though Berry added plans are afoot to bring more scripted into the fold – though scripted poses slightly more of a challenge in terms of rights, meaning Zoo 55 is having to go “deep” into the ITVS catalogue to find scripted shows it can take to social media.
“We are genuinely generating a really meaningful income stream for content that just wasn’t actively being licenced in a business-to-business world,” said Berry, who uses the example of River Monsters, the Animal Planet/ITV series that ran for nine season between 2009 and 2017.
“We’ve seen over 500% increase in viewing on YouTube so far this year. We’ve had over a million views on the YouTube channel in the last two months. I really believe we’re finding a whole new audience for a show like River Monsters by being able to put it into these social channels,” said Berry.
“We’re really excited because that’s a completely new revenue stream for producers that wasn’t there a couple of years ago. It’s creating a long tail for non-scripted programming,” the exec added.
Zoo 55 worked with Nigel Pope, creative director at Maramedia in Scotland, to repurpose its 2023 BBC documentary series Scotland: The New Wild (3×60′) into a feature-length title (1×100′) that it then published on YouTube and made available around the world.
BBC documentary series Scotland: The New Wild had a new life on YouTube
Its subsequently reached an “entirely new audience” and delivered a “meaningful amount of money” back to Maramedia, according to Berry.
“80% of the viewing of the longer form version on YouTube was on connected televisions and about half of that viewing was in North America,” said Berry, who is clearly fascinated by the amount of data going direct-to-consumer is giving her and the Zoo 55 team access to.
“You start to learn different dynamics from the data and that becomes an interesting conversation then with the producer, who’s getting a totally different view on the content that they’ve produced and new revenue streams,” Berry said.
“We look at where the viral trends are and what people are watching, then start to curate and clip the content and put it into those viral trends. With this, we get more viewers and monetise more effectively off the ad sales business that YouTube runs for us around the world,” explained Berry.
“There are things that really surprise you. We have a very successful business with The Voice on YouTube, and one of the most viewed episodes of The Voice in North America is the Nepalese version of The Voice. You don’t often know why.
“We’re learning and that’s the great thing about it. We get a lot more first-hand data, which is quite new for us. And then thinking about how we use that data to then drive more engagement and more viewers. It’s a really exciting space and it’s a whole new world for the archive. We’re finding new audiences and new commercial models,” said Berry.
The exec, who has spent over a decade at ITVS, is getting used to speaking to young people who are big fans of shows such as Love Island and The Graham Norton Show, yet may have never watched a single longform episode on linear television and are instead watching on social media.
“If the audiences are there, how do we find them and engage with them? Those Love Island fans still want to buy the Love Island water bottle. They still want to play the Love Island game,” said Berry.
As one of the industry’s largest IP owners, Berry believes there are huge opportunities for Zoo 55, as long as it continues to “think differently about the industry” while the labels within ITVS continue to “create amazing ideas and content.” Only then can it continue to reach the audiences who have abandoned traditional TV.
Ruth Berry was speaking to host Rebecca Cooney at the Creative Cities Convention in Bradford, held earlier this month.
