The inaugural e4m Media Debate saw media and advertising veterans debate on ‘Does India need multiple TV ratings providers?’ Among the speakers against the motion was Rajiv Dubey, Senior General Manager and Head of Media for Dabur.

Dubey began his argument by noting that advertisers had different priorities when it comes to TV channels. “One rating system, two rating systems, multiple rating systems, it doesn't really matter to me. My objective is to reach out to my consumers in the cheapest possible manner. And to do that, I need information. So where is this information coming from?”

He alluded to fellow debater Chintamani Rao’s explanation of how earlier there were two systems which merged, only for two systems to emerge again, and then the second one failed.

“Then we got BARC where broadcasters had over 60% stake and agencies and ISA had 20% stake each. The idea was to have a robust system so that we can have over 50,000 meters in the country, and we could measure everybody. Have we done that very well? Probably yes and probably no. Probably yes, because we have looked at a system based on audience mapping, which was based on the NCCS system, which came into being in 2014-15. And around the same time the BARC system was built.”

He went on to recount how at that point of time NCCS was based on the ownership of durables a household has. Today, the country has progressed with over 884 million smartphones and about 1.2 billion phone penetration in the country, and the number of people who are consuming the internet through mobile phones is equal to total TV viewers. The durable ownership has become almost 83% in NCCS, in both A and B.

“So as a result, what is happening today is that if you look at urban areas, NCCS A and B constitute 83% of the people; if you look at all India, 78% people fall in NCCS A and B. So, because of which no one sees that there are anomalies in understanding the consumers in the right way. So, for an advertiser, what matters is that I should get the right information so that I can reach my consumers in the right way, which probably can be collected by getting the right audience mapping.”

Dubey added that since the system was first enacted in 2015, the world has moved on as there has been a digital revolution. “If you look at consumption of content on any screen, the consumption of content has moved away from TV. We have to look at how the content is consumed. Today if you look at the English genre, it is almost non-existent on television now, it has moved away to digital and OTT. Similarly, one has seen that there's a major shift of viewership happening from television to digital in the news ecosystem. Next to follow will be the indie movies and thereafter general entertainment. Are we able to measure it properly? No, we are not.”

Dubey added that we need one system and that system has to be strengthened in such a way that it is able to measure one human being who's consuming both TV and digital equally and that will solve the problem rather than having two different ecosystems. “With two different ecosystems, we'll have more confusion in the sense that you will have two datasets coming and largely what one has seen is that one advertiser or one agency would use one and the other person would use another which is what we had seen earlier. Secondly, who's going to fund it? When BARC was being found, one saw that there was a major issue in funding it. So, these are issues. I would say that to solve one problem, you should not create another problem. You should solve the problem by fixing the problem.”