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BARB: Netflix’s Squid Game among UK’s most-watched shows in October

BARB: Netflix’s Squid Game among UK’s most-watched shows in October

Netflix was the only streaming service to feature in the top 10 most-watched programmes on a TV set, BARB revealed today as it includes subscription video-on-demand alongside linear audiences for the first time.

Episode 7 of hit South Korean shock thriller Squid Game ranked in 10th place with 5.77m viewers last month in BARB’s list of the most-watched programmes on TV sets across all linear and streaming services.

Last week BARB revealed that Netflix reaches one-third of people aged over four in the UK each week.

However, only five shows or movies from the streaming platforms featured in the top 100.

Netflix titles The Guilty (a movie starring Jake Gyllenhall), You (series 3, episode 1) and Maid (series 1, episode 1) featured in the Top 100, as did Disney+’s Marvel superhero movie Black Widow. Not a single Amazon Prime programme made the Top 100.

At a conference this morning, the audience measurement company revealed linear programmes dominated the top 10 with BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, Channel 4’s The Great British Bake Off and ITV’s The Larkins taking the top three spots with 10.44m, 8.89m and 6.58m viewers for the month respectively.

BBC1 had four other programmes in the top 10 while ITV had an additional two with viewers ranging from 5.85m to 6.21m.

‘Once-in-a-generation upgrade’ to audience measurement

BARB can now measure viewing of subscription video-on-demand services (SVOD) like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+, and video-sharing platforms like YouTube, Twitch and TikTok.

This was described as “another major step forward” for TV measurement by Justin Sampson, BARB’s chief executive, especially after the measurement platform introduced broadcaster streaming services six years ago.

“This means the advertising and TV industry has for the first time independent, transparent and objective measurement of these [SVOD and video-sharing] services to give a comprehensive look at what people watch,” Sampson added at its conference today.

BARB and Kantar’s SVOD programme measurement system works from focal meters attached to Wi-Fi routers measuring streaming on all devices and audio matching with tags in participating BVOD platforms on TV which enable a “more comprehensive” dataset and these will be expanding to 7000 households to get a better view of smaller SVOD and AVOD players according to Jim Jarrett, research manager at BARB.

New definition of ‘total identified viewing’

SVOD and video-sharing viewing data are now part of daily reporting, changing how BARB’s overnights will be reported.

From January 2022, BARB’s website will have monthly breakdowns of “total identified viewing ” divided into subsets of total broadcaster viewing, total SVOD/AVOD viewing and total video-sharing viewing which will give agencies and broadcasters a much clearer picture of what was previously defined by BARB as “unidentified viewing”.

Jon Manning, client investment director at Publicis Groupe agency Starcom, claimed this section of unidentified viewing was as high as 27% of viewing time for adults and 60% for younger audiences so is crucial for media planning and building out audience profiles even if people are watching ad-free streaming services.

Rosemary Newell, director of content at ITV and Neil Mortensen, director of audiences at ITV, both said this update provides “critical” detail into what they previously called “the blob” or “the yellow bit” of unidentified audiences which will affect their programming, commissioning, recommissioning and commercial decisions like what content to sell to SVOD platforms.

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