CFlight, the UK’s first unified TV advertising metric, is rolling out in beta version to agencies this week.
Over the next few days, media agencies will be able to access CFlight in order to get combined linear TV impacts and video-on-demand impressions in a complete de-duplicated campaign report for the “base audience” All Adults.
All other demographic buying audiences are planned to be added “in one go” in Q4 2022 or Q1 2023.
CFlight is the UK TV industry’s first measurement tool for ads shown on linear and video-on-demand without duplicating audiences. It was launched as a jointly-owned product by the three major broadcasters, Sky, ITV, and Channel 4, last year after the initiative was first developed by Sky’s fellow Comcast company NBCUniversal in 2018.
Sky adapted the CFlight standards and methodology for the UK media market and began using the tool in 2019. It now combines Barb linear TV impact data with broadcaster video-on-demand impressions from ad servers for Sky Q, ITV Hub and All 4.
Broadcasters do not want to ‘keep everyone waiting’
This week’s rollout follows months of testing by agencies from the IPA’s Television Research Advisory Group and testing will be continued by TV audience specialist RSMB.
According to a source familiar with the rollout, the reasoning for launching in beta version now with an “All Adults” audience is to put this tool in the hands of those who need it as soon as possible, rather than “keep everyone waiting” for at least another year to launch all audiences at once.
The top 35 agencies will have direct access via a registration email this week and be able to look at overall coverage and reach for campaigns across linear and VOD.
Smaller agencies and buyers can ask the broadcasters involved directly to run the CFlight reports for them.
A CFlight report will be available 10 days after the last spot of a campaign has aired to account for all time-shifted impacts and attribution data.
The size and length of a TV campaign will not have a bearing on how long a Cflight report will take to process as the report can be generated overnight.
The minimum length of a campaign that can be measured in this version of Cflight is 5 days and the maximum is 63 days.
The data methodology and process, created by research consultancy RSMB, will be audited by ABC, while media software specialist TechEdge will collate and process data for online report requests.
