Shweta Mulki
Interviews

"Availability of BARC rural data is welcome new arsenal": Sam Balsara

BARC India recently announced the completion of its joint venture with TAM Media Research, with the latter making an exit from the television ratings business effective February 29. The JV, which has been christened the Meterology Data Ltd (MDL), will start operations in the next few weeks. This now renders BARC as the sole television ratings measurement agency in the country.

We caught up with Sam Balsara, founder, chairman and managing director of Madison World and Madison Communications for a quick chat on this. Edited excerpts:

Edited Excerpts

What are your first thoughts on BARC and TAM formally completing their merger?

Ever since BARC was initiated, this was in the air and over six months ago an in-principle agreement was reached. Recently, this agreement has been consummated. It's good that the industry will get the benefit of resources of TAM, and ADEX data from TAM will continue.

With BARC data as the only currency, how does that change the dynamics among planners and advertisers? Is it a reason to rejoice or would one still tread with caution? Is this the big resolution that the Indian TV industry was looking for?

At the best of times, media research is contentious, and the media owner who is not shown in good light always complains and feels that the sampling either is inadequate or misrepresentative, or suspects it to have been subjected to foul play. BARC is supported by all big media owners who have substantially funded BARC, and also installed equipment for watermarking. This will go a long way in ensuring that commitment to BARC continues.

The reservations that the industry had with TAM (be it the stakeholders, the technology, or conflict of interest vis-a-vis its ownership) -- how does that come into play post this JV?

The systems, processes, methodology, software, etc., will continue to be that used by BARC, and my understanding is that the metres that belonged to TAM will now be put to good use.

Reportedly, some advertisers and planners were still looking at TAM data until a couple of weeks ago, while some found it a bit difficult to adapt to BARC software. Do you see that issue being taken care of now?

Yes, BARC has had some hiccups. But, this is not unusual for a new system. The main issue now is that there are large variations between going-in plans and actual output. But, agencies are working feverishly with BARC executives to see what is causing the variance and addressing it.

Rural measurement has been the big feather-in-the-cap for BARC. What kind of an impact do you think it has had, and the changes it will bring about going forward?

The availability of BARC rural data is welcome new arsenal in the marketer's bank of armoury for market warfare. However, the data needs to be used with caution, especially when it comes to the selection of TV channels in a TV plan since the majority of brands that are advertised on TV are either not available or have extremely poor distribution in rural markets.

On the other hand, the availability of this data opens up a new avenue of growth for data-conscious marketers who now have a good estimate of viewership in rural markets, which was hitherto only the subject of conjecture and most advertisers used Doordarshan as the ideal TV channel choice for reaching smaller and rural markets.

Now that we have a good fix of how many TV viewers are there in rural markets and who watches what and when, it would be good

a. For marketers to:

Launch new products/variants specifically for rural markets, and use those channels with high rural market viewership

b. For advertisers to:

Take concrete steps to extend their distribution in those markets with high rural viewership, so as to make their advertising work harder.

However, for those brands which are essentially urban and have distribution only in top cities and towns, they need to continue to use the urban viewership data in deciding on their choice of channels, and not get carried away by the huge absolute numbers thrown up by BARC data.

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