Lead Data Analyst – Global Viewing & Audience Insights

The Role

A Note on Profile Match: To be successful in this role, you’ll need deep experience in international TV viewership trends and media audience insights. While we love working with technical data teams, please note that this is a commercial viewer insights role and is not a fit for Data Scientists or Data Engineers.

The role
As part of the Global Data and Insights team at ITV Studios, one of our core currencies is Global TV audience viewing data. Your mission is to turn complex global TV ratings into powerful, commercially driven narratives that maximise revenue across Global Distribution Sales (scripted, unscripted, and formats), Branded Partnerships (Studio 55), and Content & Production.
First and foremost, you are an expert in UK and international TV ratings and audience measurement. Key international markets you’ll be familiar with include the US, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Benelux, Nordics and Australia. As the Lead Data Analyst, you will lead the insights strategy for the Global Viewing team. You understand how to blend traditional TV ratings (like BARB and Nielsen) with market intelligence (Ampere, K7, NoTa) and streaming data to understand why content travels, contextualise performance, and fuel high-value global TV sales pitches.
The ideal candidate will seamlessly bridge the gap between people management, strategic storytelling, and technical proficiency, inspiring a team of analysts while effectively communicating complex findings to stakeholders at all levels.
In this role, you will act as the crucial commercial and analytical bridge setting the requirements for our Studio’s technology team to build data products which centralise and join a variety of 3rd party data sources together to make analysis and self-serve tooling easier . You will translate complex media measurement logic into clear tech requirements, ensuring the testing and data quality are robust so our data estate supports automated, self-serve insights that seamlessly integrate streaming metrics alongside linear results.

You will act as the primary strategic partner for three critical internal business arms:

• Global Sales: Crafting compelling, data-driven "sales stories" to maximise distribution revenue.
• Global Content: Delivering objective performance tracking to inform crucial commissioning and renewal decisions.
• Production Labels: Providing trends and viewing analysis to support creative development across our 60+ labels.

Main Responsibilities

• Commercial Sales Storytelling: Work hand-in-hand with the propositions manager to translate raw viewing metrics and digital viewing trends into persuasive sales angles. You will find the data nuggets that prove a show’s value to international buyers—whether that's retention metrics, streaming performance, or demographic advertising strengths.
• Creative & Renewal Benchmarking: Use historical TV ratings and streaming data to provide realistic success benchmarks for new commissions, explaining exactly why a show succeeded or failed in specific territories.
• Label Partnership: Act as the trusted data partner to our production labels, giving them the objective tracking they need to refine their shows, combined with "sales-style" highlights to celebrate wins.
• Team Leadership: Manage and mentor a small, agile team of analysts, keeping them focused on advanced, automated analysis over manual, repetitive reporting.
• Audience Measurement Strategy (In Conjunction with Tech): set the high-level requirement for data joins which speed up and automate analysis which is commercially and strategically valuable
• Data Extraction & API Querying: Utilise SQL to actively query and extract performance data directly from BARB APIs and other international viewing databases. While engineers build the pipeline architecture, you will dive into the data to solve fast-turnaround commercial questions and prototype new data models or reporting automations.
• Data Pipelines & Automation Requirements: Partner with external engineering teams to design and automate data workflows across the wider digital ecosystem. You will help define the rules that seamlessly connect our internal content catalogue with external ratings and streaming data,

Skills You'll Need (Minimum Criteria)

• Expert TV Ratings & Streaming Knowledge: Deep, hands-on expertise with BARB and international viewing panel datasets (e.g., Nielsen, AGF, Mediametrie, Oztam). You must intimately understand how digital streaming data complements linear metrics (ratings, share), SVOD/BVOD/AVOD tracking, and the complexities of harmonising them.
• Wider Digital Ecosystem Awareness: A comprehensive understanding of the evolving digital video landscape and modern cross-media audience measurement frameworks.
• Master Storyteller & Commercial Partner: Proven experience working directly alongside Commercial or Sales teams. You don't just report numbers; you know how to weave data into creative "sales stories," validate pitch angles, and directly support high-value buyer negotiations.
• Strategic Media Analytics Leadership: Extensive background working specifically within a media data analytics or audience research function.
• Advanced SQL for Data Retrieval: Strong proficiency in SQL is mandatory. You must be comfortable using SQL to extract, manipulate, and blend data directly from APIs (such as the BARB API) and cloud warehouses. Python an added bonus
• Technical Cross-Functional Collaboration: Proven experience working in conjunction with Data and technology teams. You have a track record of translating business and audience data needs into technical requirements for pipelines, data warehousing, or BI solutions.
• Pragmatic Problem Solving: A proactive approach to audience data limitations, with the ability to develop clever proxy metrics when official panel data is missing or restricted.
• Data Visualisation: Solid experience working with BI platforms (Looker, Tableau, or PowerBI) to turn raw numbers into clean, narrative-driven visual tools for non-technical stakeholders.