Barb Audiences, the British equivalent of Nielsen Media Group, says it will work with Kantar Media to begin measuring viewership of YouTube content on television sets.
The partnership will see Barb and Kantar evaluate viewership of more than 200 YouTube channels, with those reports integrated into Barb’s daily audience reporting.
Barb said the move marked the first time a joint-industry measurement product evaluated viewership to YouTube, though other measurement firms have incorporated YouTube audiences into their own products for a few years now.
Among other techniques, Barb said it will use audio-matching automated content recognition (ACR) to identify when audiences participating in Barb panels are streaming content from YouTube on their TV sets — which is why the company is starting first with measurement of viewership across 200 premium YouTube content channels. The audience data will be incorporated into Barb’s daily viewership reports starting in the third quarter (Q3), the companies said.
YouTube routinely takes the top spot on various charts that weigh how popular the service is with streamers around the world. Nielsen regularly places YouTube ahead of all others in its The Gauge report, a monthly evaluation of total time spent with TV in American households, broken down by platform and service.
YouTube executives have recently started touting the service’s appeal with audiences who prefer to stream content on the biggest TVs in their homes. Earlier this month, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said viewership on smart TVs has eclipsed mobile and desktop computers in the United States.
One big reason why: YouTube allows anyone to create and distribute content on its platform, and many of its top creators are producing polished, lengthy video series that are nearly as polished as what Hollywood puts out.
“Today’s creators have moved from filming grainy videos of themselves on desktop computers to building studios and producing popular talk shows and feature-length films,” Mohan said earlier this month.
YouTube is heavily reliant on advertising — the service crossed the $10 billion mark in terms of ad revenue during its most-recent financial quarter — and brands and marketers have a desire for better measurement to ensure their campaigns are targeting the right audiences and are effective on the platform.
“Our new data on the content people are watching on YouTube will meet several needs across our industry,” Barb CEO Justin Sampson said in a statement. “Advertisers and media agencies are looking for more insight into the most-watched editorial environments on YouTube, while program-makers use our data to inform the commissioning process. We also anticipate the data will be of interest to those working in industry regulation.”
That is critically important at a time when viewership to YouTube in other countries — including the United Kingdom — is starting to match audience trends in the U.S.
“YouTube viewing on the TV set increased by 31 percent in the U.K. in 2024,” Lucy Bristowe, the CEO of Kantar’s U.K. and Western European businesses, said in a statement. “This new initiative, underpinned by our advanced audio-matching technology, will help the industry to understand the growth of YouTube within the context of an increasingly fragmented viewing landscape. We are delighted to have reached this important milestone with Barb as part of our shared mission to understand what people watch.”
