BARC India working on a dozen ideas, says Chairman Shashi Sinha

Conceding that BARC India remains an unfinished task, its incumbent chairman and IPG Mediabrands India CEO Shashi Sinha on Friday shared the vision the joint industry body set up for television audience measurement has, the progress made and the challenges it has to overcome.

From indigenously developed cheaper people metres to relooking at NCCS to preparedness for CTV and digital measurement, Sinha told BestMediaInfo.com how BARC is progressing, albeit slowly, towards its vision to create a robust and unified measurement currency.

“Even though BARC is a well-funded body, we get caught up in micro-issues related to ratings coupled with structural challenges. To begin with, BARC will soon be introducing Android peoplemetres. BARC CEO Nakul Chopra is ready with this indigenous device which costs around just Rs 5,000. This peoplemetre will have no manual intervention at all. It will throw data on a household level. The idea will soon be presented to the BARC Board,” Sinha said.

Sinha said that BARC is also revisiting NCCS which is a broad term in its current form.

“Combined with Android peoplemetres, the quality of viewership will improve. Also, this will deal with the issue of infiltration and landing pages at the same time,” he added.

When it comes to digital, BARC has been running the largest set of 12000 digital panels for measurement. Besides, BARC is ready for CTV measurement and it can be started as early as tomorrow,” he said.

“Initially, I didn't want this BARC job but when I started, I wanted to make a difference. I am not sure if I have done 10 or 20% of what I wanted to. So hopefully some of the ideas get implemented, whether by me or the person after me.”

On the issue of unrolled data for news and niche genres, Sinha said, “Unrolling is the right approach for our industry. I was the person who pushed for four-week rolling for niched genres. But I soon realised that there was a fundamental flaw in the way we were rolling. We brought this up with the board, but now there are two groups with different views. I am not sure if they fully grasp the issue, but one supports rolling, while the other prefers unrolling. But the ball is in the government’s court now.”

Watch the full interview:

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