MUMBAI: Presenting counter comments to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) consultation paper on BARC TV viewership measurement, the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has said that advertisers can pay 0.25 per cent of their media spends for TV viewership measurement every year. It will not only help them in making judicious investments but will also largely contribute to the process of increasing panel size for audience measurement.

The association noted this in response to the question asking about methodologies and technologies to rapidly increase the panel size for television audience measurement and the related commercial challenges. It wrote, “Use of multiple technologies such as peoplemeter, RPD, channel video players, softwares measuring the consumption of OTT and data modelling should help increase the overall sample size without commensurate increase in the costs. Advertisers can pay 0.25 per cent of their media spend for measurement every year to make the currency more robust which in-turn helps them to make judicious investments.”

IAMAI also stated that it feels Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) and The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) members, who hold 20 per cent share each in BARC, are not much involved in the currency.

It mentioned in its counter comments, “At present, IBF owns 60 per cent of BARC and 20 per cent each is owned by AAAI and ISA. As a result, IBF has a greater say in the functioning of BARC. However, globally, higher percentage of revenue is contributed by media owners.”

“In past TRAI consulting papers, most contributions also came from the media owners. It seems ISA and AAAI members are not that involved with overall currency. Consultation with these constituents may help ensure equal contribution in functioning of BARC by all the three industry bodies, irrespective of the share of revenue contributed. Presently it is felt that with 60 per cent share IBF controls day-to-day functioning of BARC and future course of action,” the comment further read.

IAMAI also vouched for introducing a competitive currency of viewership management; one based on peoplemeter and the other based on RPD.

It noted, “We can do this for different types of data, whether from the set-top box in the home or mobile services that enable subscriber viewing on tablets or phones. This will add Digital Viewership Measurement, which is currently missing.”

“The 2nd study of RPD can be done with Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), who represents most of the digital media and publishers, in partnership with relevant stakeholders,” its comment mentioned.

Most of the broadcasters, in their responses to the paper, had denied the need of introducing competition in the viewership measurement domain, citing reasons like it would lead to chaos and duplication of data and skewing of results to the convenience of a few stakeholders.

TRAI had released the said consultation paper in December last year to seek suggestions on how the existing TV viewership management system can be made more robust. It asked several important questions to various stakeholders, including if the current measuring system is apposite, should the sample size of the population be increased, and related commercial viabilities of the responses.

The stakeholders were asked to file the comments by 2 January and counter comments by 16 January. However, the dates were further extended to 2 February and 16 February, respectively.