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Yesterday,
BARC took a decisive step forward. Punit Goenka in his role
as Chairman, BARC announced the issuance of a Request for
Information or RFI from entities worldwide who might be interested
in participating in the forthcoming Request for Proposal stage.
While
the television rating system in India has shown great durability
and adaptiveness, the pace of growth and change in the television
landscape has consistently outstripped it. BARC is premised
on finding and adopting best-in-class tools, technologies
and processes that will not just close the gap, but create
a constantly evolving and, thus, future ready audience measurement
infrastructure.
Here
are the challenges that the new system will be expected to
meet and overcome.
1.
Comprehensiveness: Television reaches very nearly two-thirds
of all households in India. As economic development continues
apace and more people have discretionary income, entertainment
and information start assuming increasing prominence in their
scheme of things. A cable-connected television is, and will
remain, the least expensive single-point source of meeting
this need, and new consumers waste little time in acquiring
it.
The
household is now exposed to content but also to advertising
that becomes a potent driver of new demand for a range of
previously unknown products and services. Over the last decade,
almost 10 million new households have entered the television
footprint every year and the number doesn't appear to be slowing
down yet. A comprehensive measurement system must be able
to recognise these burgeoning television households and keep
them in the sights of broadcasters, advertisers and advertising
agencies.
2.
Accuracy: There has been talk over the years of making
broadcasters more accountable for audience deliveries. A number
of deals are done on the basis of cost-per-rating-point (CPRP)
but broadcasters have, rightly, complained that fair valuation
of their inventory would have to be based on cost-per-thousand
(CPT) or, as the print media call it, the mille rate. The
current system falls some ways short of being able to facilitate
the change from CPRP to CPT. Marketeers and broadcasters are
looking forward to a system where actual audience deliveries
in a defined target audience can be accurately quantified
so that accountability for audiences can be fixed and reciprocally
paid for.
3.
Adaptiveness: We still talk of single television homes
as being the dominant model in India. Apparently, we are oblivious
of the emergence of second and third screens that are being
used by the younger demographic for consuming what was previously
available exclusively on the television in the family room.
The emergence of the smartphone and more recently of new devices
like tablets (or even more recently, the rather inelegantly
named 'phablets') has placed new content consumption devices
in the hands of millions of young consumers. Content is now
available to be consumed not just at a location but while
on the move. Just like cellular telephony transformed communication
from locational to personal, these screens and a constantly
improving wireless broadband infrastructure are transforming
television. The imminent arrival of 4G and crashing tablet
prices will place highly mobile content consumption devices
in millions of hands. The audience measurement system must
be able to capture such mobile content consumption and stay
adaptive with every future transformation of the television
environment.
4.
Auditability: Being owned and managed by BARC, a joint
industry body (or JIB in the pro parlance), stakeholders will
have audit rights over the system that can ask searching questions
about every aspect of the process, thus ensuring its integrity
and ethical standards. All the key stakeholders are represented
within BARC and this will ensure that the system remains always
true, fair and transparent.
These
are not challenges unique to India but are faced universally
by every television audience measurement system. Responses
to the RFI will unearth a great body of valuable knowledge
that the BARC can use to start building a gold standard system
in India.
It
is good to finally say this: BARC has BITE.
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