I&B ministry serves notice to Chrome Data for reporting concurrent views on digital

Even as the concurrent views numbers of any content showing on aggregator platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and OTT platforms including JioCinema and Hotstar are available for commercial use, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Monday served notice to Chrome Data Analytics and Media for offering similar numbers.

Last month, Chrome advertised its new product COTT offering an estimated aggregated number of concurrent views across digital platforms on July 18, 2023.

The I&B ministry received the complaint against Chrome within a couple of days and decided to issue a notice on July 31.

The notice refers to the 'Policy Guidelines for Television Rating Agencies in India' dated January 16, 2014, which prescribes that all rating agencies shall require registration from the Ministry for carrying out audience measurement.

A complaint has been received stating that CDAM is releasing rating data and widely advertising it for commercial use without being registered as a television rating agency, the I&B ministry notice read.

The ministry in its letter alleged that Chrome is in violation of the said guidelines.

The I&B ministry instructed Chrome to withhold ratings for TV channels without being registered as a television ratings agency.

The ministry added that the agency (Chrome) may submit an application fulfilling all the prerequisites of the above-said guidelines for getting registered as a rating agency along with a detailed report on the methodology being followed by the agency for sample selection, analysis, data reporting etc for the viewership for TV channels.

The numbers pertaining to concurrent views on different platforms are census based whereas Chrome is using a sample-based method to extrapolate the numbers, similar to that of BARC ratings.

For census-based tracking, any content has to have analytics tags or SDK integrated into it for measurement.

In case, a content creator or channel does not provide SDK, the content cannot be tracked by any third-party tool.

In this situation, any such service provider will have to rely on aggregated numbers provided by individual platforms.

Apparently, Chrome’s model was to measure every content and that is why it went ahead with sample-based measurement.

Such service was earlier provided by ZapR, which was acquired by Hotstar and shut later.

As stated above, the other way is to offer aggregated numbers provided by individual platforms.

Several such service providers offer video content consumption trends to content creators. The prominent players are Vidooly and AppAnnie among others, basis which all the channels have been claiming leadership in digital video consumption.

Besides these platforms, several research agencies including Indian Readership Survey, IPSOS, and Nielsen offer consumer surveys for television channels.

However, the I&B ministry did not find them offering content ratings in violation of policy guidelines until it was allegedly misled in a complaint establishing concurrent views numbers provided by Chrome as television rating numbers.

In this context, the ministry may have to include digital concurrent views measurement in its policy guidelines and ask all such service providers to either register them as TV viewership measurement service providers or stop their commercial use.

"If CDAM does not agree with the above-said directions, it may represent to the Ministry within 15 days giving a detailed explanation as to how the provisions of the TRP Policy guidelines are not being violated by the company," the notice concluded.

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