At the second annual general meeting since Granada and Carlton merged to form ITV plc, the broadcaster hailed its new digital channels, ITV2 and ITV3, a success saying they had grown by 1.9 share points to reach 27.8% of all viewing on digital terrestrial television.
Overall, ITV said that group advertising combined will increase by 3% in the six months to June, this includes GMTV and ITV News as well as its main three stations, ITV1, ITV2 and ITV3.
According to the latest Starcom media market report, ITV lost 4% of its audience in 2004 due to a slip in ratings.
"Despite 'I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!' performing well for ITV, it was too little too late for the network's overall performance of the year, which fell 4% due to its summer schedule failing to attract audiences, " the report said.
In the latest set of financial results in March, ITV1's audience share was only up 1.9% compared with ITV's digital channels achieving a 76% increased audience share.
ITV said it was planning to increase advertising revenue by looking beyond traditional spot advertising with more promotions and sponsorship initiatives.
ITV said it was on track to launch its male-orientated ITV4 later this year and is preparing to launch more channels after acquiring multiplex operator SDN last month.
ITV chairman Sir Peter Burt said: "The acquisition of SDN, the operator of one of the multiplexes on digital terrestrial television, gives us the opportunity for future capacity on the digital platform where our highly successful family of channels performs best."
Elsewhere, the new-look ITV Day schedule launched last month has already seen significant improvement, up 1.3 share points to 46.4% compared with the same period last year.
Charles Allen, chief executive at ITV, said: "Our success in growing our audiences is the result of planning and scheduling our new channels and leveraging the resources of unparalleled production business and programme library."
The network said it had delivered £120m of annual cost savings ahead of schedule and increased operating Ebita by 49%.
There was good news for ITV1, being the most popular channel in peaktime with 370 of the top commercial programmes.
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