Netflix lets BARB conduct independent ratings survey in UK

Netflix has signed up with BARB, a British ratings organization that currently tracks the ratings of more than three hundred platforms, including those of Disney+ and the BBC. BARB will start tracking Netflix’s viewership in the United Kingdom from early November.

The partnership between the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board and Netflix will start from the second week of November, according to the viewing figures organization. BARB has been charting Netflix viewing figures since November 2021, but so far this has been without official figures from the streaming service. Therefore, according to BARB, Netflix’s registration with the organization provides a more transparent representation of the viewing figures of content on the streaming service; BARB shares its ratings surveys with customers, advertisers and Netflix itself. The British organization also announces that it will publish a monthly summary of important viewing figures.

Roughly three hundred platforms are affiliated with BARB. Originally, the service was created to measure the performance of television channels. Think of the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky, channels that also own the organization. Later on, BARB started tracking, among other things, viewing figures of on-demand services. The latest addition to the organization’s services is a viewership indicator of streaming services, which will be charted from November 2021. It looks at both overall results of services and viewing figures for individual films and series. As far as we know, Netflix and Disney+ are the first major streaming services to use the service.