- May 7th 2026 |
- 5 minutes
Home >> Insights >> Content Hub >> Beatgrid Wins Best Media Research Tracking at Adwanted UK Media Research Awards 2026
Beatgrid Wins Best Media Research Tracking at Adwanted UK Media Research Awards 2026
How independent CTV measurement helped OVO and Goodstuff uncover what was previously unknowable about their media mix
Beatgrid has been named winner of the Best Media Research Tracking or Syndicated Project award at the Adwanted UK Media Research Awards 2026 — one of the UK industry’s most rigorous recognitions for measurement and research excellence.
The winning project was conducted in partnership with media agency Goodstuff and energy brand OVO. The question at the centre of it is one every serious media director is sitting with right now: which channels in our media mix are genuinely driving brand growth and how would we know if we’re wrong?
The measurement problem that prompted the project
OVO operates across multiple media channels. Like most large UK advertisers, the brand had performance data from each channel. What it didn’t have was a single, verified view of how those channels combined to reach real individuals, and no way to measure deduplicated reach across the full mix simultaneously.
This is the structural challenge of modern media measurement. Each channel is measured within its own methodology and universe. Aggregating those separate views into a coherent whole requires assumptions about overlap that no individual channel can verify. The result is a media plan with strong individual channel data but an incomplete picture of combined audience reach.
Independent CTV measurement is built specifically for this gap but only when it’s grounded in real people, not devices, IP addresses, or extrapolated panels.
How Beatgrid measured it
Using Beatgrid’s passive Audio Content Recognition (ACR) technology, the project captured verified, deterministic ad exposure across sound-on media channels, from the same real people, at the same time.
The methodology is not modelled. It does not rely on set-top box data, platform-reported reach, or probabilistic matching. Beatgrid’s 18,000+ UK panellists carry the measurement passively in their daily lives, which means the data reflects how media is actually consumed, not how it was planned to be consumed.
For CTV measurement in the UK, this distinction matters more than ever. As viewing continues to fragment across streaming platforms, broadcaster VOD, and linear TV, the gap between what platforms report and what independently measured data shows continues to widen. The OVO project was built to close that gap.
What the data showed
The project delivered a unified view of how OVO’s full media mix performed, which channels genuinely added incremental reach, where audiences were overlapping across channels, and where reallocation would improve overall campaign effectiveness.
The output wasn’t a dashboard. It was a set of specific findings: smarter planning decisions, better investment allocation, and a measurable gain in cross-channel effectiveness.
Paul McGee, Head of Video Planning at Goodstuff, described the impact directly: “Beatgrid’s single source platform gives advertisers a unique offering in a fragmented market. Understanding granular audience awareness and sentiment on multichannel campaigns has given our brands previously unknowable insights across the new media landscape they are operating in.”
Previously unknowable — because the insight required a view across the entire mix at once, from the same source.
Why independent measurement produces different results
Platform-reported CTV reach is calculated against each platform’s own logged-in universe. That’s how the methodology works — and within that universe, the data is accurate. But overlap with linear TV, YouTube, BVOD, and rival CTV services sits outside that universe by definition. No single platform can see it, because no single platform owns it.
The result is a measurement gap that exists at the structural level. Each channel tells you what it saw. What’s missing is a view of what the full picture looks like across all of them simultaneously.
Independent CTV measurement resolves this by sitting outside the ecosystem entirely. Beatgrid has no platform to protect and no inventory to report against. The data from 500+ campaigns across the US, UK, Australia, Canada, India, and Germany reflects the full media mix as experienced by real people — deduplicated, person-level, and not bounded by any single platform’s logged-in universe.
For UK advertisers running campaigns across linear TV, BVOD, CTV, and YouTube simultaneously, this is the only methodology that closes the gap by design.
What the award recognises
The Adwanted UK Media Research Awards are judged by independent industry practitioners. Winning Best Media Research Tracking or Syndicated Project reflects the quality of the research methodology, the rigour of the analysis, and critically, the commercial relevance of the output.
The award reflects what 500+ campaigns have shown consistently: when you measure the full media mix from a single source, the findings change. Reach assumptions shift. Duplication becomes visible. And the decisions that follow are materially better.
Congratulations to the teams at Goodstuff and OVO, and to everyone at Beatgrid who made this possible.
By Sharon Cuevas
Content Marketer
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