BARB chief calls on industry to “get its act together”
BARB’s chief executive Bjarne Thelin sees a future where server data and panel data comes together, but says this can only be achieved if the industry “gets its act together and thinks about the bigger picture”.
Speaking at MediaTel Group’s Future of Media Research event on Friday, Thelin confirmed that while BARB’s core focus will remain on in-home television viewing measurement, the industry body plans to extend its reporting to cover new viewing habits and trends.
“The ambition is to extend beyond seven days,” he said. BARB’s current measurement service will be extended to include time-shifted viewing and other on-demand content, as well as viewing beyond TV sets, such as via laptops and PCs. Solutions for measuring iPad and mobile viewing will come next, according to Thelin.
Thelin said while it is important to prioritise BARB’s existing system, it is also vital to understand upcoming trends.
Mark Greenstreet, joint managing director at aevolve, agreed to a certain extent “because in the future we will need to know” these metrics. However, he said for now it comes down to how much it costs; what it means to stakeholders; and how important it is.
Meanwhile James Whitmore, managing director of POSTAR, “empathises” with BARB’s attempt to extend its current methodology but said he “fears chaos” with the amount of data to be collected and organised. “We [JICs] can’t do everything but we need to be ready for when smaller sectors grow, for example mobile viewing and VoD,” he said.
Thelin was also asked to shed some light on the BBC’s new audience measurement initiative – Live Plus 7 – which has been designed to supplement traditional overnight figures. The system includes viewing figures for people watching programmes on a variety of platforms after the first broadcast – combining linear TV audience data from BARB, which is up to seven days, with the BBC’s own internal iStats data.
The system aims to incorporate the total audience across live, recordings, narrative, repeats, BBC iPlayer and HD.
Speaking from the audience, Sue Gray, corporate & commercial researcher at Channel 4, explained that C4 is using a similar system to measure VoD views. According to Gray, the broadcaster “plans to develop the system further” at a later date. However, at the moment, Gray said “it’s important to keep VoD viewing in perspective”.
Jeff Eales, director of systems and development at BSkyB, compared broadcast and non-linear metrics to “apples and elephants” – saying that while it is important for the industry to measure non-linear as well as linear, the panel will not be able to cope with it. However, Eales thinks the industry does need to find a way to “add up” total viewing and “agree on a number” for trading purposes – “we’ve got to do something”, he said.