BARC India plans to provide strategic consultancy services

TV audience measurement service, Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) has called Request for Proposals (RFPs) from professional consultancy service providers who would provide strategic consultancy to BARC India subscribers.

MIB guidelines prohibit BARC India from involving itself in any activities like consultancy or any such advisory roles, that would lead to a potential conflict of interest with its main objective of TV ratings. However, according to the agency, many subscribers have apparently expressed their need for this service and hence reputed data iInsight consultants may provide this. This is also said to be in line with global best practices where the ratings are being done by joint industry companies.

With this, BARC India says it is seeking to build a small pool of approved consultancy companies, which will allow subscribers to choose their supplier and also help mitigate against potential conflicts of interest when dealing with potentially competing clients.

While BARC India data will continue to be delivered directly to subscribers via the BARC India Media Workstation (BMW) analysis system, consultancy companies will be able to analyse this data using their own systems to generate consultancy outputs. However, these systems cannot be made available to subscribers as an alternative to BMW system, says an official statement.

"BARC India being a joint industry company of broadcasters, media agencies and advertisers needs to remain independent and objective, and hence cannot provide consultancy service to subscribers. However, after building a strong television audience measurement system in the country, we have now decided to grant licenses to select consultancy companies to provide analysis to our subscribers who are in need of professional consultancy service to effectively utilize and strategise with BARC India data," said Partho Dasgupta, CEO of BARC India.