ITV companies given commercial break

Regulator allows Carlton and Granada to claw back losses after big brands stop their ads appearing next to reports from Iraq

The Independent Television Commission has thrown a lifeline to the troubled ITV companies Granada and Carlton by letting them run extra adverts to make up for losses caused by moving ITV's News at Nine during the Iraq conflict.

The evening news, attracting record audiences since going out an hour earlier, has been the heaviest advertising casualty of the war, as big spenders such as Procter & Gamble, makers of Daz and Fairy Liquid, stopped their brands from appearing next to reports from Iraq.

Steve Anderson, ITV's controller of news and current affairs, has revealed that dropping advertising was not an editorial decision, as taken by some rival news networks, but forced on him by lack of interest: "[Advertisers] don't want to be associated with death and destruction."

The damage to TV advertising is noticeable. "Granada is losing up to 5 per cent of its peak-time revenue, a fall directly attributed to losing this slot," said Lorna Tilbian, media analyst at Numis Securities. "Now the ITC is allowing them to drip-feed it back, they will lose very little, if any, money."

Most advertisers are otherwise continuing with their TV campaigns as normal, including both before and after ITV news. Channel 4 News, for instance, is reporting no impact on its advertising at all. "We never had much airline or holiday advertising anyway, and they are the sectors that have most pulled back," a spokesman explained.

British Airways is one advertiser known to have deferred ITV advertising, but others in the travel business have done the same. And one Sunday newspaper has pulled Channel 4 ads promoting a free CD entitled Love around the World, unsurprisingly deciding that it was currently an unfortunate title.

Yet it is a far cry from the situation in the US, where three-quarters of advertisers withdrew up to $1bn (£660m) of spending in the first few days of the fighting. Many have only recently started to reappear; and the net losses to US TV networks are estimated to be $77m. In the UK, media-buying agencies report that advertisers which deferred campaigns in advance for March – when they expected the war to start – are still planning to go ahead at the end of April.

"If the end of the war comes fairly quickly, it could give advertising a real boost as early as then," said Mark Palmer of the buying agency OMD UK.

Advertisers such as Nestlé have carried on with major campaigns such as a relaunch of the "Have a Break" slogan for KitKat bars.

"We had a big boardroom meeting about whether it could offend anybody, but decided it was safe and appropriate to go ahead," said an insider.

Much of the campaign was aimed at commercial radio, where the relative lack of news coverage greatly reduces the chance of an ad being broadcast next to a gory story from Iraq. Radio advertising has remained steady as a result.