CFlight reporting extends to traded audiences Barb

Barb, the industry’s standard for understanding what people watch, today announced a major upgrade to CFlight, the world’s only joint-industry total-campaign reporting service. Through extended reporting of traded audiences, CFlight now gives advertisers and media agencies investment accountability on ad campaigns across both linear and video-on-demand (VOD) services.

As part of the upgrade, CFlight has incorporated 14 of the most used traded audiences. This gives media buyers access to comprehensive ad campaign performance across these audiences. CFlight is a free campaign-validation service for advertisers, with reports being made available through their media-buying agencies.

Barb assumed governance responsibility in January for CFlight, which relies on trusted data sources, audited to high quality standards, to provide de-duplicated reach and frequency of ad campaigns across all linear and VOD platforms.

CFlight, originally launched in Spring 2022, is complementary to Barb’s Advanced Campaign Hub, which provides pre-campaign planning analysis across linear channels and VOD 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 VOD services.

Luca Vannini, Head of Campaign Audiences at Barb, said:

“This business-critical development of CFlight is transformational for advertisers and media buyers. For the first time, they have free access to total campaign performance reporting against major trading audiences. Full investment accountability on campaigns that run across what people watch in the UK, both on both linear and VOD services, is now available from this ground-breaking industry collaboration.”

Members of the IPA’s TV Research Action Group (TRAG) have been involved with late-stage testing of this latest upgrade since February. Today’s beta launch means access has now been extended to all media agencies; the beta phase is expected to last a couple of months.

As part of Barb’s joint-industry reporting of audiences, it intends 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+, Netflix and Prime Video have become Barb licensees.

Barb will host a virtual event in April to share the latest developments across extended total campaign reporting for linear and VOD for both pre- and post-campaign.

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 de-duplicated 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.