UK TV measurement body Barb this morning announced a new initiative, together with research partner Kantar Media, to start measuring TV viewership across 200 top YouTube channels. While Barb (and some other measurement bodies) already report YouTube viewership on TV sets generally, the company claims it will become the first joint-industry committee in the world to incorporate viewing of specific YouTube channels.
Barb says it will select the 200 channels primarily based on the number of views they receive, working with YouTube ad planning specialist SeeViews to do so. Those chosen channels will be measured across Barb’s existing panel and included in its daily audience reporting, with the go live planned for Q3 this year. Barb says it will categorise channels by type of content creator, and that selected channels will be expected to meet industry-agreed standards for brand safety.
To measure YouTube viewing, Kantar Media’s audio-matching automatic content recognition (ACR) technology will identify when a video from one of the 200 channels is being played, while URL detection via router meters will be used to confirm that the video is playing on YouTube specifically. A proof-of-concept pilot has already successfully been run for 175 videos from 12 YouTube channels.
While basic viewership figures for YouTube videos are freely available on the platform, Barb’s data will give deeper insight into audience demographics, as well as an indication of which content is being watched on TV sets specifically. The company says it is exploring how to ensure its list of YouTube channels is complementary to the channels measured on non-TV devices by Ipsos iris and UKOM, to give advertisers and media companies a holistic view across all devices.
“Barb’s innovation programme continues to bear fruit,” said Barb CEO Justin Sampson. “In recent years we have gone beyond broadcasters and beyond linear to deliver a fundamental step-change in our industry’s understanding of how people watch programmes and ads. We’re now starting to deliver on a commitment to report more of the content people watch on YouTube. This commitment came off the back of an industry consultation which established a buy-side consensus on the need for transparent reporting of content with contextual indicators of quality.”
TV’s Changing Face
As TV viewership and audience habits have evolved, Barb has been widening the net in terms of the types of content it measures. In 2023, it announced plans to measure “fit for TV content” on video sharing platforms, and said it was exploring ways of reporting all content on video-sharing platforms which is produced in line with industry-accepted standards of brand safety.
But while there is plenty of debate around what constitutes “fit for TV content”, and which platforms should fall under Barb’s measurement, there’s a strong case for YouTube in particular. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has described YouTube as “the new television”, stating that TV sets are the most frequently used device for watching YouTube in America. Barb’s data from last year found the same to be true in the UK, with 41 percent of YouTube viewing among all people aged 4+ happening via a TV set.
Broadcasters meanwhile are working to create symbiotic relationships with YouTube (as well as other video platforms), with both Channel 4 and ITV distributing full episodes of their TV shows on the platform. Barb CEO Justin Sampson also referenced the potential for broadcasters to use YouTube viewership data to inform the commissioning process.
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