BARB appoints Matt Laycock as Audiences Director

Matt Laycock joins BARB on September 26th 2022 and will be responsible for ensuring that BARB’s audience-reporting solutions continue to meet the expectations of the UK television and advertising industry.

Specifically, Matt will be responsible for delivering BARB’s four strategic priorities:

• Enhancing data accessibility for users.
• Extending BARB’s reporting of TV and TV-like viewing across linear, BVOD, SVOD and relevant content on video-sharing platforms.
• Further developing BARB’s Advanced Campaign Hub for agencies and advertisers and overseeing BARB’s input into the development of CFlight.
• Overseeing the delivery of an effective communications programme.

Matt will work closely with Caroline Baxter, BARB’s recently appointed Research Operations Director, to ensure that users’ needs are understood and met effectively by BARB’s research contractors.

Matt joins BARB from InSites Consulting, where he has been overseeing a wide range of market research projects for global consumer businesses. Prior to this, he spent nine years at The Walt Disney Company, most recently as Research Director – UK & Ireland, with responsibility for insight analysis across multiple lines of business. Before this, he was Research Manager – Sponsorship and Online Ad Sales for Channel 4, where he delivered research and insight analysis for the advertising sales teams in these sectors.

Justin Sampson, BARB’s Chief Executive, said:

“Synthesising the needs of the industry with research agency capabilities is at the heart of what the BARB team does. Matt’s instinctive skills and extensive experience of using our data complement Caroline’s expertise in delivering research solutions. I’m delighted he’s agreed to join BARB.”

Matt Laycock added:

“Given the ongoing evolution of TV services, video content and viewing, this is an especially interesting time to be joining BARB. With an expansion to the reporting panel in 2024, and following the innovations in reporting for SVOD services and video-sharing platforms, I look forward to joining the BARB team in delivering continued innovation and high quality data for the UK TV and advertising industry.”