ITV turns to Ben Allen to boost Daybreak's sales fortunes

By Maisie McCabe, campaignlive.co.uk, Thursday, 02 February 2012 10:50AM

ITV has appointed Ben Allen to the new role of commercial director of Daybreak, as the broadcaster looks to improve the fortunes of its early morning programming.

Allen: takes on new role of commercial director of Daybreak

Allen adds commercial responsibility for ITV's recently relaunched morning strand to his current role of trading director and will oversee all ad sales and commercial activity around the Daybreak and Lorraine shows.

Daybreak replaced GMTV as part of a bid to reinvigorate ITV's early mornings in September 2010, but its presenters Christine Bleakley and Adrian Chiles left in December last year after average audiences dipped 100,000 lower than those of GMTV.

ITV, which has since revamped Daybreak, does not break out its breakfast ad revenues but media agencies suggest that its early morning advertising was down by 5 per cent in 2011 against a market that was up by between 1 and 2 per cent.

Allen will work closely with Ashley Newman, the head of sales for Daybreak, and continue to report to Kelly Williams, the group commercial sales director of ITV.

His promotion comes more than a year after Simon Poole, the former commercial director, sales, for ITV Breakfast, left ITV alongside five other senior commercial executives in January 2011.

Williams said: "Ben has an outstanding track record in delivering ITV's trading deals over many years."

This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk