Barb Hires, Sets Out Plan for CFlight Upgrade

UK TV audience measurement and ad currency body Barb has outlined a timetable for its upgrade to unified TV advertising metric CFlight. The organisation has also hired Luca Vannini for the newly created role of Head of Campaign Audiences, leading delivery of total campaign reporting.

This month Channel 4, ITV and Sky have begun to provide traded-audiences data for ingestion into CFlight, and alongside RSMB will be testing the campaign results. Next January, Barb expects to extend the testing programme to include members of the IPA's TV Research Action Group (TRAG), which includes representatives from all the major agency groups. This testing will then be extended to all CFlight users in February, with a target date for full launch in March.

Vannini (pictured) will lead the delivery and development of Barb's total campaign reporting across linear and VOD services through CFlight (for post-campaign validation of de-duplicated reach and frequency) and the Advanced Campaign Hub (for pre-campaign planning). He will join in February, after more than seven years at PAMCo (Publishers Audience Measurement Company), where he serves as Research Director; and before this he held Southern Europe roles at Toluna; and Ipsos MORI.

Vannini will report to Barb CEO Justin Sampson, and manage the Total Campaign Reporting Group, joint industry team. Andrew McIntosh has led the development of CFlight as project management consultant since 2020, and he will continue in this ongoing consultant role in the first half of 2024. Sampson comments: 'Luca's extensive experience in joint-industry media measurement makes him a great addition to the Barb team. As he comes on board, I want to call out the critical role Andrew has played in bringing CFlight traded audiences to market. We look forward to retaining his experience as CFlight evolves into the next phase of its development'.

Web site: www.barb.co.uk .