A pint of viewers, please
Opinion
As Barb prepares to introduce viewing data for some YouTube channels, its CEO looks at how joint industry standards enable informed choice and fair competition.
Last year marked the bicentenary of the Weights and Measures Act that first established a pint as the standard unit for a glass of beer. That’s still the standard we use today to prevent drinkers being short-changed by unscrupulous landlords.
These days, we have much more choice in pubs — a pint or a half, a single or a double, a glass of wine that’s 125ml or 175ml. And while you might choose one pub over another based on the environment or the generosity of the food portions, when you ask for a pint or a G&T, you know how much you’ll get.
Those in our industry who make decisions on where to spend media advertising budgets expect similar transparency and comparability.
Put simply, it’s about informed choice.
To this end, Barb is aligned with advertisers. One of many principles we share with the World Federation of Advertisers is enabling comparability by reporting consistent audience building blocks.
The joint industry consensus that underpins Barb achieves this by specifying and compiling data independently and transparently. Our priorities are guided by the industry’s collective interest, meaning maintaining a level playing field for media companies that compete for audience attention and advertising revenue.
Yet preserving a level playing field doesn’t mean maintaining the status quo.
Innovation is vital and not just because the AV ecosystem is increasingly complex. It’s also important to ensure a credible, widely accepted alternative to the first-party data that some online platforms continue to prioritise over joint industry standards.
Barb’s alignment with buy-side objectives was reinforced during our latest consultation with advertisers and media agencies. Building on recent innovations, we asked for a view on how we prioritise the next stage of extending our industry’s standard for understanding what people watch.
Three messages came through loud and clear.
Audience-centric measurement
Viewers scarcely notice silos and boundaries that exist within our industry.
The good news is that Barb’s innovation roadmap isn’t constrained by the platforms people watch on or the business models of media companies. We’ve gone beyond linear to report audiences to broadcaster VOD services and we’ve gone beyond broadcasters to report audiences to the streamers.
As a result, the UK has a world-leading, progressive standard for reporting what people watch. And this means the evidence we provide is expanding as the likes of Disney+, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video sign up to Barb and become part of our campaign-reporting services.
Understanding content and context
One advertiser in our consultation observed that all content is unequal — better understanding of context and quality variables enables value judgements.
Another advertiser pointed to viewing on the TV set being associated with high-quality advertising opportunities; full screen, sound on, shared-viewing experiences.
So transparent reporting of content and contextual measures of quality are important and Barb has a proven track record of meeting this expectation.
That’s not to say we’re responsible for determining the value of one environment or another. It’s down to the wit and the wisdom of buyers and sellers to judge value based on our audience figures.
Comparable metrics
Standards and guardrails enable buyers of advertising to properly rationalise how different media services and platforms contribute to business outcomes.
Barb fully endorses the objective of reporting like-for-like campaign exposure across all parts of the AV ecosystem. And, ultimately, to do this in a way that links campaign exposure to business outcomes.
The Media Rating Council (MRC) cross-media standard is designed to enable open and fair measurement of all AV investment options. By focusing on metrics that exceed the MRC’s minimum viewability threshold, use of its standard also increases the chances of assessing exposure levels associated with effective outcomes.
This is why Barb supports this international standard as the strongest foundation for a fair, competitive marketplace.
What’s next?
Barb is committed to helping Isba deliver Project Origin. The Covent Garden Protocol is designed to make the most of the common ground we share.
It also mitigates the risks associated with diluting our industry’s universally accepted source of truth. In particular, there is the risk of increased friction between buyers and sellers, and higher research costs across our industry.
Equally, the ecosystem that relies on our data expects Barb to keep pushing boundaries. So we’re not done with our innovation programme and it’s not just a case of providing data that supports assessment of advertising investment.
Business leaders at media companies and the programming community rely heavily on our data as they make decisions on which shows to commission or acquire and how best to distribute them. And the regulatory community uses our audience figures to assess how media companies and advertisers fulfil their responsibilities to society.
Extending YouTube reporting
Across this ecosystem, there’s great interest in what people choose to watch on YouTube.
This is a natural response to the widely reported growth of YouTube viewing on the TV set — a behavioural trend that’s validated by Barb’s independent audience measurement. In 2024, for the first time, our viewing data showed the largest screen accounted for more in-home, WiFi-based YouTube viewing than any other device.
More recent data for April-June shows the TV set accounted for 43% of YouTube viewing among people aged 16+. And children are even more likely to head towards the biggest in-home screen, with TV sets accounting for 53% of YouTube viewing among 4-15s in the same period.
By not responding to the healthy appetite for more evidence of what people watch on YouTube, we risk a growing black hole in our industry’s standard for understanding what people watch.
Using an established automatic content recognition (ACR) technique, we are now finalising plans to report TV set viewing to 200 of the most-watched YouTube channels.
The ACR audio-matching technique is the same one we’ve been using for many years to report audiences to programmes on linear channels and other streaming services.
We look forward to delivering one of the most highly anticipated developments during my time at Barb — look out for more news soon.
Informed choice
Many years ago, Arthur C Nielsen, founder of Nielsen, said “the price of light is less than the cost of darkness”. This echoes Louis Brandeis — a leading US antitrust lawyer from the early part of the last century — who talked about sunlight being the best disinfectant.
Quietly and constantly, the Weights and Measures Act provides a guiding light as we make informed choices about what — and how much — to drink when we go to the pub.
And in the same way people can choose a variety of drinks in a variety of standard sizes, so Barb believes a key characteristic of future audience measurement is having a finite menu of campaign exposure metrics. This will enable open and fair assessment across the full range of AV investment options.
Justin Sampson is CEO of Barb