BARB reach and viewing time data now includes smartphones

Four-screen viewing now includes smartphone data

BARB has now launched total four-screen viewing with the inclusion of smartphones.

Since January 2020, BARB has reported unduplicated reach and time spent viewing across three screens: TV sets, tablets and PCs. This total three-screen viewing has been reported on our website alongside consolidated seven-day TV set viewing.

Extending our reporting of unduplicated reach and viewing time to smartphones builds on our established census-level reporting of BVOD viewing across all four devices.

This new development in our multi-platform audience reporting is made possible by router meter technology being installed in our panel homes. These enable us to measure average audience data and time spent viewing in smartphones across the full range of demographic groups.

Using the Dovetail Fusion process, collecting smartphone data from our panel means that we can now report on people rather than devices, so reach and incremental reach are now supported as well as reporting demographic profiles of the smartphone viewing audience.

Here are some examples of the smartphone data available from the 7th July:

• Love Island on ITV2 delivers the largest smartphone audience for the week commencing July 5th. Episode 10 on the 7th delivered a four-screen total audience of 3.8m Individuals 4+, and we can see that 412,000 (10.7%) of these viewed on a smartphone. Of the 412,000 viewers on smartphones, 46.6% were aged 16-24 and 75.8% of viewers were female.
• On the same day, ITV broadcast the semi-final of the Euro 2020 tournament between England and Denmark which delivered an audience across four screens of 18.3m. Device-viewing contributed over 660,000 viewers to this total, and smartphones were the 2nd-most popular non-TV device with 213,000 viewers, 35.0% of the device total.
• Using the demographic data that are now available for smartphones, we can look more closely at the Euro 2020 matches. Of the 233,000 viewers for the England and Denmark match, 64.4% (150,000) were male, and the largest portion of the audience were A35-44 at 25.3%. For the Italy and Spain match there were 153,000 viewers, of which 79.7% (122,000) were male and the largest portion of the audience were A55+ at 28.8%.
• The top programme for 55+ age group on smartphones for the week-commencing July 5th was the earlier semi-final between Italy and Spain. For under 35s, the top programmes in the week were consistently Love Island. Similarly, the top programme on smartphones for males was the England semi-final and for females it was Love Island.

We can see that in the month of June smartphone viewing accounted for 0.31% of total four-screen viewing to programmes. Comparing this to the high level of smartphone viewing for Love Island (10.7%) as well as the demographic detail now available allows the user to draw conclusions on the audience for more effective TV planning.