BARB taps Kantar to launch four-screen audience measurement

UK audience research bureau BARB has commissioned audience measurement specialist Kantar to rollout its new Focal Meter router meter across all broadband homes on the UK’s television audience measurement panel.

The Kantar Focal Meter ill measure viewing across four screens (TVs, smartphones, tablets and PCs) to IP-delivered video content from all broadcasters and complement the existing People Meter which measures linear and time-shifted content viewed on TV sets.

Data collected from the Focal Meter will enable BARB to begin collecting  viewing on smartphones by individual panellists for the first time and thus allow demographic profiling of this platform. According to BARB, it will also provide  insight into the 20% of TV Set viewing that is currently unidentified by enabling identification of aggregate level viewing to SVOD and other on-line video services, enable the delineation of broadcaster on-demand and online box set viewing and distinguish this from time-shifted DVR  viewing, and significantly  increase the total number of devices measured and reported on the panel

Kantar’s Focal Meter collects data by intercepting web traffic from all devices connected to the home router, preserving respondent privacy by only reporting data from a specified list of BVOD and other online video sites.

Kantar has already rolled out the Focal Meter in Finland and Norway and is in the processing of rolling it out in Canada, Italy and Russia in this year and next.

Richard Poustie, UK managing director of audience intelligence, media division, Kantar said: “We are very excited and proud to have been commissioned by BARB to extend the scope of our measurement service on the world’s leading Television Audience Measurement panel. Amongst many other capabilities Focal Meter will significantly enhance the measurement of four-screen viewing and audience profiling by device type and introduce smartphone viewing for the first time.”