Mother wins £27m ONdigital and ITV Sport

ONdigital has appointed Mother to handle its &£27m advertising account. The terrestrial digital platform is to rebrand to ITV Digital this summer.

Mother is understood to have pitched against Partners BDDH, Publicis and WCRS for the business. Incumbent BMP DDB was not invited to repitch.

Mother has also won the advertising account for the launch of ONdigital’s new digital channel, ITV Sport.

The agency will work alongside Naked, the communications strategy agency, which will advise on media strategy and communications for both ONdigital and ITV Sport (MW May 24).

No one from Mother was available for comment as Marketing Week went to press.

There is speculation that ONdigital’s shareholders, Carlton Communications and Granada, are considering inviting another investor to take a stake in the loss-making platform in order to share investment costs.

The platform had a subscriber base of 1,087,000 at the end of March, and a churn rate (the rate at which subscribers drop out) of 22 per cent a year.

The break-even target for the platform has been put back from 2 million subscribers in 2002 to 1.7 million in 2003/4, by which time Carlton and Granada will have jointly put &£1.1bn into the enterprise.

Satellite platform BSkyB has more than 5 million subscribers.