Strategic Priority ITV has unique scale, delivering 99% of all commercial audiences over five million. We invest over £1 billion annually in our programming, significantly more than our commercial competitors, and have an unrivalled ability to deliver mass audiences across all demographics for our advertisers. This scale and the strength of our brand underpin the success of our free-to-air and on demand platforms. Robust broadcast business remains central to our strategy While the media environment is changing rapidly, our broadcast business has performed consistently well over the last few years and has generated significant profit and cash, supported by our strong programme schedule, tight cost control and a sustained recovery in the UK advertising market. Since 2009 we have maintained our market leading position as the only commercial broadcaster consistently able to deliver mass audiences to our advertisers, and over this period we have grown our share of broadcast from 44.7% to 45.9% in 2014. During this time, traditional linear television viewing has remained resilient, despite significant changes in the availability and delivery of content. Average television viewing is the same as it was ten years ago, at 221 minutes per person per day compared to 222 minutes in 2004, and the majority of viewing is still live. The viewer experience has been improved by a greater choice of channels and greater flexibility in delivery, fuelling demand for high quality content that has the power to engage and bring audiences together. T elevision remains the most eff icient and effective way for brands to achieve mass simultaneous reach and ITV, as the biggest marketing platform in the UK, continues to be in high demand from advertisers. In 2014, ITV Family NAR grew by 6% with growth across the major categories, supporting our best outperformance of the advertising market for f ive years. In addition to the ITV main channel delivering mass audiences we also deliver targeted audiences to our advertisers through our digital channels. ITV4 had a strong year in 2014 attracting male audiences, which are hard to reach, with live sport and movies. ITV2 and ITV3 remain the largest digital channels in the UK and our ambition is to have the most watched, most loved and most talked about family of channels for every household and every advertiser in the UK. Our portfolio was further strengthened in the year by the launch of ITVBe in October, targeted at a young female audience and now the home to The Only Way Is Essex. This enabled us to reposition ITV2 for a more targeted younger audience who remain an important part of our commercial proposition as we look to grow our viewing and revenue share across all demographics. Ongoing focus on improving viewing performanc e Our family of channels provides an important platform to make ITV content famous before exploiting it internationally. We therefor e remain very focused on improving on screen performance to ensure we continue to del iver mass audiences through standout content that underpins our brand. Maximise audience and revenue share from free-to-air broadcast and VOD business ITV plc Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 December 2014 22 Strategy and Operations
