Barb, the UK’s major TV measurement body, this morning announced it has appointed media data solutions business RSMB to create a single unified user interface which will bring together its pre-campaign planning tool Advanced Campaign Hub and its post-campaign reporting solution CFlight. Barb says the redesign will make life easier for TV buyers using both tools, while also speeding up the process of rolling out new capabilities.
The new system has the working name ‘Total Campaign Reporting Suite’, and is planned to launch in January next year. The existing Advanced Campaign Hub and CFlight interfaces will continue operating as normal until then.
Total Campaign Reporting Suite will be a web-based interface combining the two existing products. Users will be able to run standalone and customised reports with advanced data-visualisation capabilities, according to Barb, while buyers’ own reporting tools will be able to automatically request reports via an API.
Alongside the unified system, Barb says it is working on further upgrades for CFlight. Barb wants to extend CFlight’s coverage of video on-demand services — and it would make sense to focus on covering any services which are currently covered by Advanced Campaign Hub but not CFlight, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video (though Barb hasn’t explicitly said this). The measurement body also plans to enhance reporting by enabling users to analyse performance by sales house, and to assess VOD-only campaigns.
Complementary offerings
Advanced Campaign Hub, launched in 2020, combines Barb’s panel data with first-party data provided by participating streaming services. It enables planners to forecast the deduplicated reach and frequency of campaigns run across linear TV and on-demand services. CFlight meanwhile provides post-campaign reports, covering reach and frequency across linear and on-demand, as well as measurement across specific target audiences and demographics.
The two offerings had quite different routes to market. Advanced Campaign Hub was developed within Barb itself, while CFlight was initially introduced in the UK by Sky Media, taking inspiration from a separate (but identically named) initiative in the US developed by Sky’s sister company NBCUniversal. ITV Media and 4 Sales both helped develop the UK version of the product, which launched in 2022, and Barb took over the running of CFlight at the start of last year.
So while the two products complement each other, they’ve naturally existed separately due to their separate developments. But with the two products now sitting under one roof, clients have been calling for unification, according to Barb’s head of campaign audiences Luca Vannini.
RSMB, the company appointed to build the new interface, created the methodologies which underpin both Advanced Campaign Hub and CFlight. Vannini says that bringing methodology and development both within RSMB’s remit will streamline data-processing procedures and deliver efficiencies. Implementation and testing lead times for new features will be halved, according to Vannini, while time to market for future developments will be accelerated.
“We are excited to be developing a solution that will streamline data access and reporting whilst also empowering planners and buyers with advanced insights into the incremental value of VOD,” said Ross Wightman, commercial director at RSMB. “This will be a modern and game-changing tool that will set new standards for cross-platform campaign planning and analysis.”
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