Delay for BARB's Project Dovetail

UK audience research body BARB has announced that its cross-screen measurement initiative Project Dovetail will be delivered in September, having missed last month's planned deadline.

BARB (the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board) provides official viewing figures for UK television audiences, and is funded by the BBC, ITV, Channels 4 and 5, the IPA, Sky and UKTV. Data is collected by Ipsos MORI, Kantar Media and RSMB, via a panel of 5,100 homes representing 26.6m UK households.

The organisation's hybrid / cross-platform measurement initiative Project Dovetail aims to deliver total reach of programme and commercial audiences across multiple screens. Working with Kantar, BARB collects data from software meters installed on tablets and PCs in its nationally representative panel of UK homes, and combines the resulting data with census-level streaming data from viewing apps that have been enabled to deliver duration-based information to Kantar Media. Its next stage is expected to be delivered in September, when BARB will build on the beta reporting that has been in place since 2015. From this September, clients will have access to the number of people who are watching programmes across four screens: TV sets, PCs, tablets and smartphones.

BARB has also started reporting TV set audiences for non-linear programming and pioneered the reporting of dynamically inserted advertising. Project Dovetail's next priority is to deliver an equivalent measure for viewing online TV commercials, to enable the industry to assess the total reach and frequency of ad campaigns across multiple screens.

Web site: www.barb.co.uk .