Barb, the audience measurement and television ratings organisation, together with its research partner Kantar Media, has announced an initiative to expand its measurement of the YouTube content that people watch via TV sets.

Barb has reported how people use a TV set to watch content on YouTube that’s distributed by TV companies since 2021. 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.

Kantar Media will use audio-matching automatic content recognition (ACR) to identify when these channels are watched by Barb panel members on TV sets. 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 YouTube channels as part of its daily audience data from 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, commented: “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, added: “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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Tags: BARB, Kantar, measurement, youtube