Come April, the Indian broadcast and media industry will wake up to a new audience measurement system. And as the Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC), backed by Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), and Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA), rolls out its ratings for the industry this month, expect to see a new roll of honour as old timers are toppled from their perches and newbies take their place. For BARC is nowhere like that of the existing system owned by Television Audience Measurement (TAM), an equal joint venture of WPP’s Kantar and Nielsen. The platform agnostic system captures data about TV content consumed through any form of distribution—terrestrial, DTH, analog cable, digital cable and digital.
“Our expectation from BARC is that the ratings will be free and fair and transparent in approach, have better representation of data collected by increasing the sample size, installing robust technology for accuracy and security of the data collected, and finally have great analytical abilities through adoption of state-of-art statistical tools and technology,” says Rajat Sharma, president, News Broadcasters Association (NBA), and chairman and editor-in-chief of India TV.
The inclusion of rural households, which wasn’t the case till now, has caught everyone’s fancy. Industry experts believe that with already about 30% of the sample comprising rural households, at an all-India level it will be a game changer as the majority of India still resides in rural areas. Kamal Nandi, business head and EVP, Godrej Appliances, says the data from rural India will be crucial in the coming months. “TV viewing in the villages has changed with the times and it would be a welcome move to include them in the system as well,” he says.
Quite a few broadcasters and advertising agencies have signed up for the new system and have not renewed their contracts with TAM. A few weeks back, IBF and AAAI had sent out mails to its clients to subscribe to BARC and as the fiscal year ends, the subscriptions with TAM would end automatically. GroupM, IPG, Dentsu Aegis Network are not extending their subscription while Star TV India, Zee Network, Discovery India, Star Sports, India TV and NDTV India are amongst broadcasters who have also sent in their termination letters to TAM India.
While the industry is looking forward to the new system, it is also bracing itself for teething problems. “A shift of this proportion is bound to see a few initial glitches. However, I would limit it to just four to six weeks given that all three industry bodies have been involved in the entire process,” says Ashish Bhasin, chairman & CEO — APAC, Dentsu Aegis Network.
He’s not alone. Anita Nayyar, CEO, Havas Media Group India & South Asia, too believes that understanding how the new system works will be essential. “It takes time to adapt to anything new. One will get a clear picture once the ‘soon to be launched’ data comes out. As of now, broadcasters and marketers are happy.”
Having said that, she is a little apprehensive about the data as she believes there is no benchmark since the two (TAM and BARC) cannot be compared and hence, this would pose a problem. TAM has been around for a while and had its share of pros and cons; however, most agree that it must be doing something right to have survived for so long. Nonetheless, they hope that barring the few initial glitches BARC should be able to give qualitative and reliable data which will be superior to the existing system, given the new tools and technology.
Says Pravin Kulkarni, general manager (marketing) Parle Products, “One has gotten used to TAM and its way of working. So settling in with BARC will definitely take time. We are ready for the rating dark period and should be able to sustain with the older one.”
BARC India has been conducting several roadshows across cities to share updates with stakeholders. It recently conducted training sessions across four weeks and two cities for a hands-on experience on its user software, i.e., BMW (BARC India Media Workstation). “We have also been visiting broadcasters, agencies and advertisers on invitation for similar training initiatives. All this is being done to ensure a smooth build-up to our commercial launch,” informs Dasgupta. Agrees, MG Parameswaran, “The training has to be on what not to do with the data. Thanks to the cutting-edge technology it’s not very complicated.”