Delivering value with audience data

Challenge

As both a global media brand serving audiences worldwide and a public broadcaster in the UK, the BBC needs to ensure it continues to deliver value to its audiences. 

New technologies are transforming how media is consumed, and it’s crucial for the BBC to understand the changes in audience behaviour and viewer experience. It needs a comprehensive view of the whole spectrum of consumption across the UK in order to effectively engage its audiences, to see how it’s reaching and serving the licence-fee payer, and to make informed decisions. 

Approach

Kantar Media has been working with the BBC and Barb, the UK TV audience measurement body, for several years to understand viewing across platforms and how its programming is reaching audiences in new ways. Our cross-platform audience measurement technologies used by Barb deliver a comprehensive picture of audience viewing habits and consumption behaviours across linear TV and streaming platforms, enabling the BBC to explore the profound changes in audience value. 

Insight

Cross-platform viewing data provides insight and visibility on the entire audience journey. This enables an understanding of the content, why people are watching what they watch and when, how people are viewing and how that viewing is changing.   

This new data has allowed the BBC to explore some of the profound changes in audience value, and inform its commissioning, sales and scheduling strategies accordingly, because it: 

• Gains a comprehensive picture of video consumption in the UK market.   
• Views the complete lifecycle of its own content and series on both linear data (BBC Two) and on-demand data (iPlayer) for a full understanding of programme performance.    
• Observes the audience building over time and understands how the programme performs over the episodes and thus can adjust programme strategy.  
• Analyses its audience in greater depth – including the full breadth of iPlayer viewing and the complete catalogue. 

Uses the data in predictive analytics to inform content investment planning.  

Impact

The new data set enables the BBC to analyse the entire marketplace and understand what’s driving growth. It can explore the relationship between episode, series and brand in new ways. Its ability to analyse trends, identify new audience behaviours and conduct predictive analytics means the BBC can consider the future value of its series, and steer its content investment planning accordingly.