Channel 4 establishes its own online viewing panel

Speaking at the Future TV Advertising Forum on Friday, Ed Couchman, commercial controller, future and digital advertising at Channel 4, said that the broadcaster has set up its own online viewing panel of over 250,000 people.

Three shows were broadcast online before being shown on linear TV, and promoted via Facebook to viewers who could then register to see the programmes. The registered viewers will now form a future viewing panel for the broadcaster for online content.

“Comscore, UKOM and BARB all have limitations and flaws,” said Couchman, justifying this, which he saw as an interim measure until there was an acceptable industry solution.

He said that it was “not yet possible to answer the question of incremental reach and frequency of VOD programming, but Channel 4 would be putting some research in the field next year”.

Experiments were also taking place with giving viewers some choice and control over advertisements online – the example given offered a choice of two pieces of ad content promoting a film – one featuring Angelina Jolie, the other Brad Pitt. 20% of viewers actually made a choice (otherwise it defaulted to one or other) and from these the CTR was an impressive 14%.