BARB, Broadcasters' Audience Research Board

Founded by the major players in the UK television and advertising industry, BARB is responsible for delivering the UK’s television audience ratings. Since our formation in 1981, broadcasters, agencies and advertisers have collaborated in the governance of BARB as we fulfil three important purposes. - Our viewing figures support decisions that are made in the making and distribution of television programmes. - Our data inform the ongoing conversation about how broadcasters operate in the public interest and in accordance with prevailing legislation. - Advertisers, agencies and broadcasters use our data to support the planning and buying of advertising campaigns, and to assess the brand and sales outcomes of these campaigns. BARB’s research focuses on the following questions: Who is watching and who are they watching with? What are they watching? When are they watching? Which screen are they watching on? How did the content get to the screen? - We deliver a 360° Audience View across linear channels and broadcaster VOD services, and have emerging capabilities for reporting SVOD and video-sharing platforms. - Our Advanced Campaign Hub allows buyers and sellers of advertising to assess and optimise the total, unduplicated audience for campaigns on linear and on-demand services. - Our audience measurement service is underpinned by Big Data Integration. Audience data collected from a representative panel of UK homes is integrated each day with a census-level count of viewing to BVOD services. This technique is called Dovetail Fusion.