News & Views

Barb, the industry’s standard for understanding what people watch, together with its research partner Kantar Media, today announced a landmark initiative to expand its measurement of the YouTube content that people watch on TV sets. This will make Barb the first TV joint-industry measurement system in the world to incorporate viewing to YouTube channels.

Barb has reported how people use a TV set to watch content on YouTube that’s distributed by TV companies since 2021 (1). Working with SeeViews, an independent business that specialises in planning advertising campaigns on YouTube, Barb is now selecting 200 YouTube channels that will become part of its daily audience reporting.

The selection process is primarily based on volumes of viewing and will categorise channels by type of content creator. It’s intended that all selected channels will meet industry-agreed standards for brand safety.

Kantar Media will use audio-matching automatic content recognition (ACR) to identify when these channels are watched by Barb panel members on TV sets (2). This technique is harnessed with URL detection via the router meters installed in Barb panel homes to confirm YouTube as the source. Audio-matching ACR is the same method Kantar Media uses to identify programme viewing on linear channels and VOD streamers.

Barb plans to report viewing of content on the selected 200 YouTube channels as part of its daily audience data in Q3 2025.

The commissioning of this initiative follows a successful proof-of-concept pilot run by Kantar Media for Barb in November 2024. This tracked viewing of 175 videos from 12 popular YouTube channels, featuring children’s content, celebrity YouTubers and music videos. The pilot demonstrated the methodology can be used to identify how people in Barb panel homes watch content on the channels chosen for the test.

Justin Sampson, Chief Executive at Barb said:

“Barb’s innovation programme continues to bear fruit. In recent years we have gone beyond broadcasters and beyond linear to deliver a fundamental step-change in our industry’s understanding of how people watch programmes and ads.

“We’re now starting to deliver on a commitment to report more of the content people watch on YouTube. This commitment came off the back of an industry consultation which established a buy-side consensus on the need for transparent reporting of content with contextual indicators of quality.

“Our new data on the content people are watching on YouTube will meet several needs across our industry. Advertisers and media agencies are looking for more insight into the most-watched editorial environments on YouTube, while programme-makers use our data to inform the commissioning process. We also anticipate the data will be of interest to those working in industry regulation.”

Lucy Bristowe, CEO UK and Western Europe at Kantar Media, said:

“YouTube viewing on the TV set increased by 31% in the UK in 2024. 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.”

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(1) Since 2021, Barb has reported how people watch content on YouTube that’s distributed by TV companies, as well as service-level audiences for YouTube. For example, both Channel 4 and ITV have partnerships with YouTube which sees hundreds of hours of their programming available on the platform. This reporting is limited to viewing that takes place on a TV set at home through a WiFi router.

(2) Audio-matching ACR relies on access to the audio output of devices, which is only possible on TV sets.

The audience data Barb reports show that TV sets account for the largest proportion of in-home, WiFi-based YouTube viewing. In 2024, TV-set viewing accounted for 41% of all this YouTube viewing among all people aged 4+, ahead of smartphones at 31%. This was the first calendar year in which Barb data showed that TV sets were the most-used device for viewing YouTube. TV sets were also the most popular device for children aged 4-15, accounting for just over half of their in-home, WiFi-based YouTube viewing last year.

Barb is exploring how to ensure its list of YouTube channels is complementary to the YouTube channels measured on non-TV devices by Ipsos iris & UKOM.