BARB Adds Streaming Data

UK audience currency body BARB has announced it will add viewing figures for SVoD (Streaming Video On Demand) and video-sharing platforms into its daily reporting, with the upgrade completed next Monday.

In a White Paper released this morning, BARB (The Broadcasters Audience Research Board) said: 'From November 29th, we will complete a once-in-a-generation upgrade in our audience reporting when we extend our services to cover SVoD and video-sharing platforms. The television and advertising industry will now have access to independent, objective and transparent measurement of audiences to streaming services, even without their active participation in BARB. It is also a defining moment because our new audience-reporting capabilities have implications for our definitions of total viewing'. The statement notes that 'definitions isn't a typo' - there will in the interest of transparency be more than one definition used.

BARB announced just over a year ago that it would include development of an SVOD measure among five new contracts it was tendering, with the aim of keeping paces with changes in viewing habits, and other developments such as the roll-out of 5G mobile networks.

Today the organisation has also defined a new headline metric, Total identified viewing, which has three constituent parts:

• Total broadcaster viewing - time spent watching linear broadcast channels and broadcaster-owned VoD services (BVoD); whether live, time-delayed or via box sets on a BVoD service.
• Total SVoD/AVoD viewing - which collects time spent viewing sixteen leading VoD services, mostly-subscription-based and including Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video.
• Total video-sharing viewing - including use of platforms such as TikTok, Twitch and YouTube.

All three measures gather information on four screens by measuring what is streamed through the home WiFi network. The first (only) can also use tags on some programs to measure viewing via a mobile data network, or content downloaded and watched off-line.

Among other topics the White Paper looks at 'How the TV set remains the go-to screen for long-form, professionally-produced SVOD content'; the extent to which viewers use smartphones for watching video-sharing services; and the times and days when people watch SVOD and video-sharing services.

Web site: www.barb.co.uk .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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