The audience measurement organisation Barb will assume governance responsibility in the United Kingdom for CFlight, the advertising measurement system initiative between Sky, ITV and Channel 4. CFlight provides a unified television advertising metric that captures the vast majority of live, time-shifted and on-demand commercial impacts and impressions across all viewing platforms. From the start of 2024, Barb will take responsibility for the overall project management of CFlight.
A joint initiative between Sky Media, ITV Media and 4 Sales, CFlight is a post-campaign validation tool that provides the total reach and frequency of ad campaigns across all viewing platforms.
CFlight was created by NBCU, a Comcast company, in the United States. Sky, which is owned by Comcast, redeveloped it for its own purposes in the United Kingdom and instigated the collaboration with the sales houses of ITV and Channel 4.
Since its beta launch in March 2022, CFlight has reported de-duplicated reach and frequency for campaigns aired on both linear and broadcaster video-on-demand services.
As part of a programme of continuous development, CFlight now allows users to review the frequency distribution of campaigns. Later this year, buyers will be able to assess campaign performance across a total of 14 target audiences which are widely used in trading.
CFlight is complementary to the Barb Advanced Campaign Hub, which provides pre-campaign planning analysis across linear channels and broadcaster video-on-demand services, including budget optimisation. These audience-reporting tools enable media buyers to conduct end-to-end analysis of total campaign performance across linear channels and online video services.
Any online video service that is a full licensee of Barb, which now includes Netflix and Disney+, will be able to participate on the same terms as existing participants.
“The evolution of CFlight into a joint-industry service, overseen by both buyers and sellers of advertising, is an important moment,” wrote Justin Sampson, the chief executive of Barb. “Complemented by the Advanced Campaign Hub, Barb’s total campaign audience reporting will not only cover all major BVOD services but can also be extended to include pure-play streaming services that are committed to being measured and reported by Barb.”
Barb, formerly known as the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board, changed its name to Barb Audiences earlier this year, reflecting its aim to continue to extend audience measurement beyond broadcasters to include other online video services.