Barb appoints research operations director

Baxter (pictured) will join Barb on 8th August and will be charged with keeping Barb’s research contractors in line with industry expectations on audience measurement through delivery of contractual commitments and service development.

Prior to joining Barb, Baxter was at Kantar, where she oversaw major industry research projects including recruitment for a representative panel of homes built as part of Kantar’s Barb contract, starting in 2010.

Baxter will work closely with an audience director, a role for which Barb is currently recruiting. The audiences director will take on responsibility for Barb’s services development.

The creation of these two leadership-team roles follows the resignation of Barb’s research director, Simon Bolus.

In his time at Barb, Bolus helped the organisation move from solely covering seven-day television ratings to reporting pre-broadcast, live and post-broadcast viewing up to 28 days, viewing on TV sets, tablets, PCs and smartphones, and subscription viewing on demand and video-sharing services.

Justin Sampson, chief executive at Barb, said: “Simon has been the guardian of ensuring we do things properly as we evolve our gold-standard reporting of audiences.

“Given everything we have achieved during his time with us, he leaves with our deep gratitude and best wishes for what he decides to do next.

“We’re delighted to welcome Caroline to Barb. Her strengths and expertise will be invaluable as we continue to deliver audience measurement services that are underpinned by two of the UK’s largest ongoing research contracts.”