With the changing landscape of television viewing and a significant drifting of consumers towards Connected TV, the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) is planning to introduce new meters to measure data coming from premium homes that have remained untouched so far.
Speaking to exchange4media, BARC Chairman Shashi Sinha said the body will bring new meters to measure CTV homes. The implementation will take about six to seven months, Sinha said.
“Currently, BARC ratings are individual, which means the television has a meter installed and the consumer has to press a button on the remote.
“To measure CTV homes, we will make meters where button pressing is not required. We are loosely calling them premium homes. Whether they will be NCCS-A1 or not, we are yet to see,” Sinha said.
“Principally, we are saying that it is the market, which has been left virgin, and we want to measure that too. We have taken approvals. It will take 6-7 months and the premium homes will be properly defined as well,” he said.
As per various surveys and studies, CTV connections are projected to witness double the growth by 2026 when it is expected to have 40 million subscriptions compared to the current 19 million. CTV subscriptions have grown over three-fold since 2020, when it was just 5 million.
BARC had earlier announced increasing of meters amidst demand for more transparency and accuracy in the rating process. They already have close to 55,000 home panels.
How does the current measurement system work?
BARC India attributes viewing to the minute. If a TV set is on for 30 seconds or more in a clock minute, it is attributed as being on for the entire clock minute.
The BAR-O-meter captures TV usage, TV station identification, and individual viewing through the use of two digital devices: one installed by the broadcaster (embedder) at the station head end/transmission site(s) and the other – referred to as the BAR-O-Meter – that is installed on each TV set in the panel households.
BAR-O-meters fetch data directly from TV channels by watermarking the audio. Currently there are more than 600 channels watermarked by BARC.
In the BAR-O-Meter measurement system, TV On and Off status is determined by the presence or absence of a watermarked channel. Since viewership of non-watermarked channels is not captured by the BAR-O-Meter, any viewing of non-watermarked channels is considered as TV Off.
The meters have embedded audio tracks in all the channels that it monitors. For instance, if you tune into Star Plus, it starts emanating a silent (to human ear) audio which the BAR-O-meter listens to. For measurement, the BAR-O-meter does not require the channel number, but on
