Sky’s viewing panel, which informs the broadcaster and advertising partners about peoples viewing habits, has grown to over 500,000 homes.

The Sky viewing panel is designed to work alongside existing panels such as BARB to help it, and advertisers through Sky’s intelligence unit Sky IQ, to understand what types of content people watch, when and via what platforms.

Sky has now managed to grow the panel to over half a million homes in the UK and Sky says the information provided by the panel and Sky IQ will help form the basis of a tailored ad platform that Sky is currently developing for launch next year called Sky AdSmart.

Tony Mooney, deputy managing director of Sky IQ, said, “Having a viewing panel of 500,000 homes provides us with a better understanding than ever of the viewing habits of Sky customers. We’re looking forward to sharing these insights with brands and advertisers to help them reach their target audiences more effectively, as well as better analyse the impact of their TV campaigns.”

The announcement follows a deal Sky IQ has made with Channel 4 in which the terrestrial broadcaster will receive anonymised and aggregated information about how people consume Channel 4 content across the Sky platforms.

Sky IQ was initially set up in 2010 as a joint venture with Experian but from 2011 has been owned by Sky in full. Sky claims the intelligence gleaned from the project helped it reach its 10m UK subscriber mark and now works with third-party clients such as Molson Coors, Debenhams and Ladbrokes.