Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC)

Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) is a nationwide audience research joint body made up of
Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) and Advertising Agencies
Association of India (AAAI). The Indian Broadcasting Federation (IBF) has 60 per cent stake in it, while
ISA and AAAI equally hold the balance 40 per cent. India’s BARC is somewhat similar to what BARB
(Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board) is in the UK. BARC will not conduct audience measurement
directly but commission independent specialist research vendors. The primary objective of BARC is to
conduct and commission market research using appropriate research methodologies, to provide
accurate, up to date and relevant findings relating to broadcast audiences, including TV ratings.

With the viewership habits of over 183 million TV households (accounting for 780 million TV viewing
individuals) being analysed by BARC India, it is the world’s largest television audience measurement
service. Its measurement system is based on a sample of 30,000 "panel homes". It launched its TV
viewership measurement service in April 2015, with coverage of C&S TV homes in towns with a
population of 1 lakh and above. In October 2015, it started measuring All India TV homes (TV viewers
in urban and rural India)

BARC India was planned and executed as an alternative to TAM Media Research Pvt. Ltd, the audience
measurement system put in place by information and insights firm Nielsen and Kantar Media, a WPP
company. It was set up as per guidelines of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government
of India.

Nakul Chopra, President of AAAI and Senior Advisor, Publicis Communications, has been elected as
the next Chairman of BARC India. Nakul succeeds Viacom18 Group CEO Sudhanshu Vats, who
completed his one-year tenure as Chairman. Partho Dasgupta is the CEO of BARC India

BARC- TV Audience Measurement Methodology

The entire BARC India process can be broadly bucketed as follows:

Establishment Survey - A research study used to gather specific details of households and individuals
to be used together with Census data in the preparation of universe estimates for TV audience
characteristics – geographic, demographic, socio-economic status, etc. The Establishment Survey also
serves as a randomly selected pool of TV owning households for use in the ongoing selection and
recruitment of panel households

Panel Locations & Identification - Identification of a specific sample locations

Panel Selection and Training- Selection, recruitment, meter installation & training of household
members

Panel Management- Supervision of panel operations with strict adherence to established standards

Measurement and Viewing Data Capture- Watermarking and BAR-O-Meter Technology used to
identify & capture TV viewing events

Processing, Audience Estimation and Reporting- Process of error checking, editing, validating,
weighting, projecting to universe and delivering audience estimates to BARC India clients in a form
suitable for reporting, analysis and commercial use

BARC India Media Workstation (BMW)- BARC’s desktop software application used to report and
analyse audience data in the format required by individual customer segments.

Web Audience Measurement (WAM)

Web Audience Measurement (WAM) is an audience measurement and website analytics tool that

measures Internet usage in India. The system, a joint effort of IMRB International and Internet and
Mobile Association of India surveys over 6000 individuals across 8 metropolitan centers in India and
tracks a variety of metrics such as time-on-site, exposure, reach and frequency of Internet usage.

WAM uses audience measurement and is a continuous tracking panel study that provides cross

sectional data on Internet usage segmented by gender, SEC and location. This panel-based approach
uses metering technology, design for an Indian context that tracks computers.

Web Rating Points factor multiple measures of Internet usage to provide a more comprehensive
picture to web advertisers and attempts to standardize web analytics in India. The web
analytics market in India is currently fragmented, with Comscore and Vizisense being IMRB's key
competitors. Several discussions revolve around the difference between the numbers provided by all
the competitors in the digital audience measurement space. Therefore choosing the right
measurement partner is imperative for media stakeholders. This creates rifts between users of two
different audience measurement tools.
Radio Audience Measurement (RAM)

TAM Research Media released Radio Audience Measurement (RAM) tool since there was no
continuous tracking tool for radio listenership in India. Unlike the existing Indian Listenership Track
(ILT) tool that follows the day after recall methodology involving mostly top-of-the-mind recall and
not actual listenership, the RAM works with the diary method.

The diary method is reportedly the most widely used method around the world. The most common
type of radio listening diary runs for one week, and is filled in by one person. Usually there’s one page
opening for each day, with quarter-hour units down the page, and one column for each station.

RAM is necessary since in a metro where there are seven-eight players, the advertisers needs to know
what kind of market he is going to cater to. Each of them is trying to be innovative, in terms of
promotions and marketing efforts. To gauge the effects of this market, you need a study, which is
continuous in nature so that the effects can be monitored.

According to L V Krishnan. CEO. TAM Research Media RAM has the potential to assist planners and
advertisers with budget allocations and radio strategy since the information available from RAM,
fused with the Adex data, will be a very strong database. He also explained some more advantages for
the advertisers who will be using RAM. Firstly, advertisers will get to know who they are talking to
since presently with the content being the same in all stations, most of the advertisers do not know
who they are talking to.

Also there can be segmentation by localised vis-a-vis nationalised advertising, when advertisers can
understand the listenership of each city and isolate them. And lastly, the study will also help to
understand how creatively sound can be used and the impact of sound oh the brands per se.