Choosing the future of TV audience measurement – Barb

Opinion

Should we continue to choose a shared currency of truth? Or do we allow confidence to erode and truth to become negotiable? Barb’s CEO responds to Google’s cease-and-desist.

It was John Major, UK Prime Minister from 1990-97, who popularised a phrase that sums up a foundation stone of political theory: to govern is to choose.

This has been on my mind as I think about the future of audience measurement and the choices our industry faces.

Recent events have again demonstrated that the future of audience measurement will be shaped less by what can be done and more by what our industry chooses to measure. And by who is prepared to submit to shared rules, even when the outcomes are uncomfortable.

Google hands cease-and-desist letter over YouTube measurement

Measurement has never simply been a mirror held up to viewing behaviour. It is part of the infrastructure that shapes markets, directs investment and, ultimately, influences what content gets made and who it serves. It enables legislators and regulators to hold businesses accountable for their responsibilities to UK society.

Our industry has four choices that will determine whether audience measurement continues to serve the whole ecosystem — or fragments into something narrower, noisier and noxiously partisan. 

Informed choice, or the paradox of choice?

The paradox of choice applies just as much to data as it does to content.

At first glance, more data appears to offer more freedom. More dashboards, more metrics, more audience segments, more real-time signals.

But abundance doesn’t automatically lead to clarity; increased sophistication must lead to better decisions, not just more defensible ones.

When everything can be measured, prioritisation becomes harder. When every metric is valid within its own logic, confidence erodes.

Informed choice requires shared standards, agreed definitions and a willingness to say that not every signal deserves attention. Collectively, we need more of this discipline, not less.

Optimising collective investment, or living with multiple truths?

A shared understanding of data — in our case, audience measurement — makes markets work.

It enables buyers and sellers to transact with confidence. It underpins investment in content, distribution and innovation.

We are increasingly told that multiple truths are inevitable. Yet truths should be independently reconcilable and comparable to be trusted across the system. Without this, investment planning becomes more difficult, and risk increases. 

The question, then, is whether we design measurement systems to optimise collective investment, or do we accept a world in which some of the largest players fund private measurement systems and reserve the right to choose their own story, on their own terms, and police how others are allowed to understand it?

Joint-industry measurement brings alignment, and it is this alignment which allows markets to function efficiently and fairly.

Multiple truths may be convenient to some in the market, but unreconcilable truths break markets.

Protecting the status quo, or committing to a progressive agenda?

There is a persistent myth that robust, independent measurement exists to preserve the past — that it props up legacy models and resists change.

My experience over the last 14 years at Barb has been the opposite. Progressive measurement has been achieved by creating the conditions in which change can be absorbed without destroying trust.

That means expanding what is measured, investing in cross-platform capability and recognising new forms of viewing. All the while, we have held all players to the same standards.

The real risk to progressive measurement is the emergence and dominance of opaque systems. This is because trust, once lost, takes far longer to rebuild than systems do to evolve.

When methodologies are proprietary, when definitions shift without scrutiny, and when success is self-declared, confidence is the victim.

A progressive agenda is one that embraces change while insisting on comparability, auditability and shared understanding. That is harder work. But it is also how progress becomes sustainable across a whole ecosystem.

And yet, there is a clear tension within the digital video market.

Some platforms argue they are now central to television viewing and should be treated accordingly. Yet that claim carries an implied social and commercial responsibility: participation in the same independent, transparent measurement frameworks that underpin trust elsewhere in the market.

It is difficult to argue for equivalence in commercial and social impact while resisting equivalence in scrutiny.

Collective endeavour, or enlightened self-interest?

At the heart of audience measurement is a question of incentives.

Do we believe the ecosystem works best when participants pool resources, share governance and accept compromise? Or do we believe that self-measurement, self-definition and self-certification are adequate?

There is nothing inherently wrong with self-interest. Markets depend on it.

But history suggests that when self-interest is left unchecked, the result is imbalance — of power, of information, and of outcomes.

Collective measurement systems exist precisely to manage those imbalances. They create friction. They force debate and consensus. And in doing so, they protect the credibility of the numbers on which everyone depends.

The future will test our appetite for collective endeavour. As platforms grow more powerful and proprietary data is prioritised over genuinely independent data, the temptation to bypass collective systems or impose unilateral terms inevitably grows.

And it’s not just about what platforms choose to do: what is the rest of the industry prepared to accept?

Do we still value the collective discipline of shared rules and responsibilities over the convenience, to some, of unilateral control?

Audience measurement as governance

In addition to the four choices above, it’s worth asking: who governs the digital media economy?

As Anu Bradford argues in Digital Empires, the global digital economy is increasingly shaped by competing models of power and regulation.

Audience measurement isn’t a niche concern in this landscape. It doesn’t just observe markets — it helps to govern them. It decides what counts, what can be traded, and what success looks like.

When measurement becomes self-referential — designed, controlled and validated by the same organisations whose performance it is meant to assess — the issue is not bad faith. It is governance.

Even the most sophisticated systems struggle to command trust when independence is optional rather than foundational.

Choosing the future

Deliberately, Barb has always sat in a different place. Broadcasters, streamers, media agencies, advertisers and regulators all have a voice. Methods are debated, audited and evolved in the open. No single player gets to decide what good looks like.

Power is distributed. Challenge is embedded. Truth is a collective endeavour rather than a proprietary asset.

That is not an accident of history. It is a choice about governance. It is a choice about values, about who decides, who is accountable, and whose interests are ultimately served.

As viewing becomes increasingly distributed across platforms, devices, and business models, that choice becomes more important, not less.

So the real question for the years ahead is not whether we can measure more, faster or differently.

The question is whether we continue to choose a shared currency of truth; one that commands trust, reduces investment risk, and reflects audiences as they really are. Or do we allow confidence to erode and truth to become negotiable?

The good news is the choice is still in our industry’s hands. The harder truth is that it requires all participants — especially the most powerful — to accept limits on unilateral control in return for collective trust.

History suggests that markets which make that trade-off thrive.

Justin Sampson is the CEO of Barb