Barb outlines timetable for launch of traded audiences in CFlight Barb

Barb has outlined a timetable for the next major upgrade to CFlight: the availability of 14 widely-used traded audiences* to enable buyers to assess campaign performance across these audiences.

This month, Channel 4, ITV and Sky have begun to provide traded-audiences data for ingestion into CFlight, and alongside RSMB, will be testing the campaign results. In January 2024, Barb expects to extend the testing programme to include members of the IPA’s TV Research Action Group (TRAG), which includes representatives from all the major agency groups. This testing will then be extended to all CFlight users in February, with a target date for full launch in March.

In September, Barb announced that it was to assume governance responsibility for CFlight, a post-campaign validation tool, from January 2024. CFlight relies on trusted data sources, audited to high quality standards, to provide the total reach and frequency of ad campaigns across all viewing platforms. Since its beta launch in March 2022, CFlight has reported de-duplicated reach and frequency for campaigns aired on both linear and BVOD services.

Barb has also appointed Luca Vannini to the new position of Head of Campaign Audiences.

Luca will be responsible for leading the delivery and development of Barb’s total campaign reporting across linear and VOD services through two services: CFlight (for post-campaign validation of de-duplicated reach and frequency) and the Advanced Campaign Hub (for pre-campaign planning).

Luca will join Barb in February 2024 and will report to Barb’s Chief Executive, Justin Sampson. He will manage the Total Campaign Reporting Group, a joint-industry team chaired by Justin with buy-side and sell-side representatives. The joint-industry group is being set up to oversee the delivery, future service development and maintaining agreed standards for CFlight and the Advanced Campaign Hub.

Luca joins Barb from PAMCo, where, as Research Director, he’s been responsible for overseeing the development and evolution of the audience measurement system for published media. Prior to this, he held positions at research companies Toluna and Ipsos Mori.

Andrew McIntosh has led the development of CFlight as project management consultant since 2020, and he will continue in this ongoing consultant role in the first half of 2024.

Justin Sampson, Barb’s Chief Executive, said:

CFlight is a ground-breaking industry collaboration that’s in the process of becoming part of Barb’s joint-industry audience measurement. Reporting campaign delivery against all the major trading audiences is a big step forward, providing advertisers and agencies with even greater accountability for their investment in advertising on linear and VOD services.

“Luca’s extensive experience in joint-industry media measurement makes him a great addition to the Barb team. As he comes on board, I want to call out the critical role Andrew has played in bringing CFlight traded audiences to market. We look forward to retaining his experience as CFlight evolves into the next phase of its development.

Luca Vannini added:

I’m delighted to be joining Barb as Head of Campaign Audiences. In an increasingly complex and difficult to navigate measurement ecosystem, Barb continues to uphold joint-industry principles of transparent and comparable audience measurement. I’m really looking forward to building on the work that the commercial broadcasters and Thinkbox have done on total campaign audience reporting and overseeing the evolution of CFlight into a joint-industry service.

CFlight is complementary to Barb’s Advanced Campaign Hub, which provides pre-campaign planning analysis across linear channels and BVOD services, including budget optimisation. Together, these audience-reporting tools enable media buyers to conduct end-to-end analysis of total campaign performance across linear channels and BVOD services.

As part of Barb’s joint-industry reporting of audiences, it’s intended to expand the number of services included in CFlight and the Advanced Campaign Hub. Any VOD or streaming service that is a full Barb licensee will be able to participate on the same terms as existing participants. In recent years, Disney+ and Netflix have become Barb licensees.

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*The 14 traded audiences are: ABC1 Adults; ABC1 Housepersons; ABC1 Men; ABC1 Women; Adults 16+; Adults 16-34; Adults 25-44; Adults 45+; Housepersons; Housepersons with Children; Men 16+; Men 16-34; Women 16+; Women 16-34.

About CFlight

CFlight is the UK’s first unified TV advertising metric that captures the vast majority of live, time-shifted and on-demand commercial impacts and impressions across all viewing platforms. CFlight enables TV and AV buyers to see the total deduplicated reach and frequency of their campaigns across all forms of TV.

CFlight’s methodology relies on the combined strength of device data and panel data. First-party data relating to ad campaigns served on VOD services is compiled alongside linear campaign performance from the Barb panel. The first-party data, provided by Sky Media, ITV Media and 4 Sales, delivers robust, device-level impressions. These are converted to audience impact data through a method that uses people-based observations sourced from the Barb panel.

Originally created by NBCU in the US, CFlight was adapted for the UK marketplace by Sky. Prior to becoming part of Barb’s audience-reporting services, broadcaster CFlight has been a joint initiative between Sky Media, ITV Media and 4 Sales in the UK. Industry body Thinkbox has facilitated CFlight’s development with the involvement of Barb and Clearcast. TV-audience specialists RSMB and TechEdge have played integral roles in terms of data architecture and processing respectively. Media auditor ABC conducted a design effectiveness audit and continues to audit data inputs.