Barb fast-tracks strategic objectives with new Chief Operating Officer appointment

Barb, the industry’s standard for understanding what people watch, today announced it has promoted Caroline Baxter to Chief Operating Officer.

Working alongside Justin Sampson, Chief Executive, she will be responsible for ensuring progress on Barb’s strategic priorities to extend Barb’s reporting of total campaign performance, extend measurement of total viewing across all streaming services and future-proof Barb’s data access.

Baxter’s priorities for this year include delivering significant developments across new metering technology for Barb’s reporting panel, due to expand across 7,000 UK homes or approximately 16,000 people. This is the largest-ever increase in reporting sample since Barb’s launch in 1981 and is part of Barb’s multi-year contracts, which run until the end of 2029. These are key to delivering strategic developments via Barb’s principal research agency partners Kantar, Ipsos and RSMB.

Since joining in 2022, Baxter has been responsible for synthesising what suppliers can deliver with evolving data requirements from subscribers. In her expanded role, she will take on more organisational leadership duties, alongside her existing management of the in-house research and data science team.

Since 2022, Baxter has been Research Operations Director at Barb, and prior to that she worked at Kantar for many years, where her final role was Media Program Director UK & EMEA.

Justin Sampson, Chief Executive at Barb said: “Our most recent customer-satisfaction survey shows confidence in Barb’s ability to deal with the future has reached a new high watermark. This bears testimony to the great progress we’ve made in delivering an audience-centric measurement strategy. Since joining, Caroline has brought a tangible energy and focus to how the Barb team brings service developments to market. The Barb board didn’t hesitate in its support of her promotion.”

Caroline Baxter said: “Our goal is to deliver a comprehensive and trusted measurement of viewing, regardless of delivery platform, for our subscribers. I’m proud to step into this new role, building on my work over the last two years, to lead delivery of the next generation of TV viewing measurement.”

Source: Barb

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