Thinkbox uses ISBA platform to urge BARB to “get a move on”

David Brennan, research and strategy director of Thinkbox, speaking at ISBA’s annual conference yesterday, pointed to the “serious growth” in use of TV over the internet (or Me TV as he labelled it), and described the advertising opportunities around this as a “real extension to broadcast TV”.

Brennan bemoaned the lack of audience research data to support such advertising sales, and urged BARB to pick this up – “I wish they’d get a move on”.

Speaking to MediaTel NewsLine today, Bjarne Thelin, chief executive of BARB, said that whilst figures are available via other services – the site owners and ISPs – this data was largely based on requests and was machine-specific. It remained “a priority” for BARB to find a technique that could deliver data based on people and on duration of viewing.

Thelin said that this has been looked at in detail by BARB, and a number of techniques have been tested, but to date no technique has been identified that could perform as wanted – and that would also not threaten the current BARB measurement (through participation rates, for example).

“BARB does not want to just replicate what is already available. If there is not a technique that satisfies these aims, we will need to scale back our ambition.”

BARB has done some tracking work in this area too which is available via the latest bulletin on their website – http://www.barb.co.uk/news/bulletins?_s=4.