Specials – Page 60

Star’s five marketing strategies that helped sports grow in 2016

“Business has only two functions: marketing and innovation,” is a lesser known observation of Milan Kundera, the Czech-born French writer who’s more famous for Unbearable Lightness of Being and more such thought-provoking novels.

Why are we cross referencing Kundera in a write-up for sports marketing campaigns? Simply because Star India and its bouquet of sports channels, marketed under brand Star Sports, are following Kundera’s words to a T— and successfully too.

In a dynamic world of sports broadcasting where events are now held and telecast almost round the year — at times various big ticket events held and aired live the same day in different part of the globe in different time zones — it is difficult to ensure the success of every league or tournament in terms of advertising revenue. Behind the numbers’ game, lot of research is done to finalise marketing strategies, which are aimed to ensure that audiences are given exactly what they want, where they want and how they want.

With some smart packaging, marketing and advertising, Star India has managed not only to acquire broadcast rights for the region for some of the big sporting events, but also get the eyeballs — and advertising revenue — to justify the millions of dollars it is sinking into Indian sports. A business newspaper reported last year that Star India has bet Rs. 200 billion (Rs. 20,000 crore) on sports. This money has been ploughed into not only getting the rights for Indian cricket, Summer Olympics and sundry other games, but also into building lesser sports like kabaddi and cash in on football’s popularity by creating an Indian football league with participation of retired international stars.

We look at five marketing strategies of Star India, helmed by Chairman and CEO Uday Shankar and his deputy Sanjay Gupta, which helped the respective sports aired on Star Sports grow in terms of viewership in India.

1. India vs. England Test Series

In an age where T20 and slam-bang form of cricket is being aggressively promoted and vastly followed, it has been a refreshing change to see Test cricket getting good viewership. India had been itching to take revenge over England, a side which had defeated the Indian cricket gladiators in three consecutive Test series prior to this.

Building up the tension with #scoretosettle, Star Sports network used the Virat Kohli factor very effectively and the response was satisfying. The five-match Test series had a reach of 159 million viewers. BARC recorded a total of 728 million impressions in the India urban market and a total of 1,217 impressions in the all-India market. The fourth Test had the highest rating with 4.9, proving the series was the biggest of the year.

Virat Kohli scored a brilliant 235 in the fourth Test and the rise of Karun Nair and Jayant Yadav had Indian viewers glued to their TV screens. There would have been additional viewers reached via Star’s digital platform Hotstar that too streamed the matches. The series was won 4-0. It was not only Team Virat that put on a sterling performance in recent times, but also Star Sports in terms of viewership.

2. ICC Cricket T20 World Cup

In a heavily marketed campaign of the year, the T20 World Cup was being played on the Indian soil for the first time in its history. Quirky, gripping and nationally-emotional TVCs were made and beamed on national television starting early 2016. With #T20WC as easy and relatable as ever, the match between India vs. Pakistan trended with #maukamauka, setting the tone for brilliant support for the Men in Blue. India defeated Pakistan comfortably, riding on Virat Kohli’s brilliant half century after the team, at one time, was tottering at 23/3 due to a fearful Mohammed Amir spell. India reached the semi-finals, only to be defeated by eventual winners West Indies.

The tournament reached 393 million people in India, one of the highest viewed tournaments in 2016. The India vs. Pakistan game got a rating of 17.3 across the Star Sports network, becoming the most watched T20 game ever since the 2007 WC final played between the arch-rivals.

While the cricket on display was high quality, credit must be given to the marketers who too did their job magnificently. Video snippets and memes capturing Mauka-man’s reactions were also pushed in real-time during the match and after it, which contributed to #IndvsPak overtaking the tournament’s official hash tag during the game.

The Mauka Mauka campaign, originally devised in 2015 by Ranchi-born Suresh Triveni for Star Sports, not only connected with cricket fans instantly, but also got featured in a Forbes’ list of five best sports marketing campaigns that went viral in 2015. Even as the campaign’s character still connects with viewers when used by Star Sports, writing about it in 2015 Forbes said, “Occasionally, a campaign hits a nerve and it catches the attention of a whole country. For India, this is that campaign.”

3. Rio Summer Olympics

It doesn’t get bigger than the Olympics, does it? In one of the most apt hash tags in Indian markets last year, Star Sports used #issebadakuchnahi in the build up to the Rio Olympics 2016. Rest as they say, is history. Female badminton player PV Sindhu reached the finals and was part of an extensive marketing programme by the Star network.

The tall and powerful Indian, who catapulted overnight as a superwoman in an overtly patriarchal country, lost to Spain’s Caroline Marin in a well-fought three-set final 21-19, 21-12 and 21-15. The match recorded 17.2 million impressions, the most viewed programme on that day across all genres in India. In total, 202 million viewers tuned in to watch the Rio Games on television and 10 million (Star’s internal figures) watched the live streaming on Star’s digital sibling, Hotstar.

The whole scenario of Indian alternative sports or non-cricket games has changed after the Rio Olympics. Fans found new heroes in gymnast Dipa Karmakar, Sindhu, wrestler and bronze medallist Sakshi Malik, Aditi Ashok and various other sports personalities. As part of the story-telling, Star Sports brought their stories to fans via videos, images and content and ensured continuous engagement with fans throughout the tournament with conversations peaking when India clinched two medals (badminton and wrestling). So thought out was the marketing engagement unleashed by Star Sports that it even dug out the noodle-haired Indo-Canadian Kamal Sidhu, one of India’s fav music veejays and TV anchors during the mid 1990s and early 2000s, as the host for pre-live Olympics programmes.

#BillionCheers, a 360-degree campaign that happened before, during and after the Olympics helped #Rio2016 become one of the top trending hash tags in India in 2016.

4. India Super League

The Indian football extravaganza was one of the hottest tournaments in 2016 in terms of viewership. The league saw the arrival of 2010 World Cup Golden Ball winner Diego Forlan join hands with Mumbai City FC, taking the side to the semi-finals for the first time in three editions. The league was won by Atletico de Kolkata, which defeated fellow first season finalists Kerala Blasters at a wildly-cheering houseful Kochi Stadium in Kerala.

Using the Diwali fervour as a peg to enhance viewership, Star Sports network used a tagline of ‘Ye Diwali Football wali’ to connect the game to the audiences and the soccer culture of the nation. While 41 million fans tuned in to television to watch the final, it was a rise of 41 per cent viewership compared to the final of ISL 2015. In Kerala, the ISL matches were viewed more than the 2016 T20 cricket WC semi-final between India and West Indies and the Euro 2016 final.

In West Bengal, the match had a higher viewership than the IPL 9 final. The league saw a total viewership of 216 million and a steep growth in rural viewership, cumulatively reaching 101 million viewers in a new high for the sport. This edition of the league also registered double view-time as compared to 2015 on the digital platform Hotstar.

5. Kabaddi World Cup

Arguably the alternative sport of 2016, kabaddi grew manifold with two editions of Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) and the men’s World Cup in the same year. The viewership of every event grew as time progressed and the game can now boast of having a dedicated audience, both on ground and on TV and digital platforms. The fourth edition of the PKL posted 10 million average BARC impressions and is the only league in the country to have registered a growth trend in four editions. The league has shown a growth of 51 per cent in the last four seasons and has been one of the key reasons for India’s good performance in the World Cup.

As India snapped up the World Cup, the men’s edition clocked a whopping 114 million impressions spread across 33 matches over 16 days. Star helped building its audience with #readytoraid and a TVC that captured well rural India, the topography the game is primarily associated with.

The women’s kabbadi challenge was even better. In the marketing strategy, Star Sports highlighted that women regularly challenge gender stereotypes in the society and can cross the line in kabaddi as well – the hash tag being an apt #crosstheline. After women’s kabaddi in PKL IV, the first two matches got a viewership of 38 million, the highest any women’s sport has got in India ever. The tournament had a total viewership of 90.4 million, with an average of 6.7 million impressions as per BARC data. This number is 2.3 times higher than the second semi-final between New Zealand and West Indies, the highest rated women’s game till date. Thus, women’s kabaddi Challenge features amongst the top 10 sporting events watched on Indian television over the last one year.

January 13, 2017

Guest Column: As digital spreads wings, bolstering security is paramount

The dream of moving towards a cashless society has never been closer than it is today in India. With the recent decision of demonetization, the public is being actively urged to move online for their transactions, big or small. Aiding the public in this move has been a slew of ads, demos, tutorials and YouTube videos galore, followed by a huge migration to online shopping, boosting the digital economy of the nation. However, as a landscape changes, so does how we navigate it. And, as the market rises to meet this new demand, new and relevant questions arise — questions about the security parameters and overall security strength of e-commerce platforms.

Immediately after the demonetization announcement that caught the entire nation off-guard, there was a noticeable drop in sales on e-commerce portals. But now things are stabilizing and the stats are looking up. In the wake of demonetization, India’s mobile wallet industry is expected to soar from US$ 22.41 million in 2015-2016 to US$ 4.37 billion in 2022. This means a huge jump in the value of mobile wallet transactions from US$ 3 billion to US$ 800.35 billion during the same period, according to a July forecast by Assocham-RNCOS titled Indian M-wallet Market: Forecast 2022. Every second, three more Indians experience the internet for the first time and by 2030, more than 1 billion of them will be online.

Besides making this the most exciting time to be a part of the ecommerce sector, these advances are also expected to make businesses efficient in the long run. Digital payments are now seen as the future and are believed to be a way of life soon. However, with this clickable economy and with commerce involved, there is also a valid risk of cybercrimes.

Security in OTT e-subscriptions

In fact, let’s first look at the OTT platforms like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hotstar and others, which are witnessing an increased demand for paid content. What it means is an increased set of security features to manage subscriptions and paid-content access.

The three key areas of security for OTT content are authentication, geo-blocking and control of account sharing. Netflix as a provider uses message security layer instead of using HTTPS protocol. Being tied to SSL and TLS, HTTPS suffers from fundamental security issues unknown at the time of their design. Examples include padding attacks and the use of MAC-then-Encrypt, which is less secure than Encrypt-then-MAC.

MSL is a modern cryptographic protocol that takes into account the latest cryptography technologies and knowledge. It supports the following basic security properties:

-Integrity protection: Messages in transit are protected from tampering.

-Encryption: Message data is protected from inspection.

-Authentication: Messages can be trusted to come from a specific device and user.

-Non-replayable: Messages containing non-idempotent data can be non-replayable.

MSL has pluggable authentication and may leverage any number of device- and user-authentication types for the initial message. The initial message will provide authentication, integrity protection, and encryption if the device authentication type supports it. Future messages will make use of session keys established as a result of the initial communication.

With MSL Netflix has eliminated many of the problems they faced with HTTPS and platform integration. Its flexible and extensible design means it will be able to adapt as Netflix expands and as the cryptographic landscape changes.

Securing trust in e-commerce

This demonetization era calls for the strengthening of cyber security mechanisms. Anyone with an email address and a social media account is at threat and can be a target. The most common kinds of cyber-crimes associated with e-commerce are to do with data privacy and protection, and include bogus deals and purchases, trademark and copyright infringement, payment frauds, disputes in B2B and B2C transactions, FEMA violations, issues of web content ownership, contract violation, hacking, phishing, cyber stalking and cyber-squatting.

Nearly 45 per cent of transactions are done via mobile, giving scope for several cons. According to a joint study by Assocham and PwC released in August 2016, cyber-crimes in India have surged around 350 per cent between 2011 and 2014.

India has germinated into a fertile ground for e-commerce, but consumers are exposed to security threats too. Fraud in the e-commerce sector leads not only to financial loss, but also a loss of reputation and simultaneously, a severe loss in business. Once a loyal customer, the individual switches to a competitor for his needs in case of breach of trust. Consumer trust in such a complex and interactive environment has become the need of the hour.

Addressing the risk of fraud

At HGS Interactive, our teams are proactive in addressing the risk of fraud that ecommerce companies can face by taking a hard look at their business models and vulnerability to fraud so that their customers can buy their products with confidence.

We understand that effective fraud risk management is a continuous process of reviewing and addressing the significant risks of fraud. Network security, confidentiality and authentication are three essential components of an e-commerce website. Several companies such as PayTM use 128-bit encryption technologies for storing information, which makes it tough to crack a password. Front-end payment card validation wherein MOD 10 checks, BIN checks, authorization responses, customer profile checks, security questions, login analysis, basic site rules such as number of orders placed through one account, value of orders or back-end manual order reviews must be put into place.

Digital signatures and dynamic IP protection are exemplary methodologies and should be implemented on all ecommerce websites. A secure and reliable web hosting service is a prerequisite to guarantee optimum performance of an ecommerce website, all through the year.

HGS Interactive recently worked for Nakshatra, which is one of India’s most reputed diamond jewelery brands and is from the pioneer Gitanjali Group. We ensured we hosted their web app on a safe hosted service provider to whom we mandated extremely strong privacy and data security policies enforced actively. Whether it is for a top jewelery brand or numerous other clients across sectors, high-end and world class web and digital security is of paramount importance. Financial information is typically stored by payment gateways primarily for small and medium businesses, while larger platforms prefer to have their own security parameters and store the data themselves, as it provides more control and security over this extremely sensitive data.

Hosting providers like Amazon Web Services and DigitalOcean provide full access to their security profiles, but skill and expertise is required to manage and stay ahead of the curve and avoid being hacked. Credit data is stored in an encrypted format and never as pure text, so it is protected as long as the encryption is strong.

Encryption equals protection

I strongly believe that encryption of data equals protection. Encryption lets you scramble information using a mathematical formula, which is tough to break without a “key”. You can implement technologies like SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and SHTML (Secure-HTML), with web forms to secure your ecommerce website. Encryption can also be incorporated in your email package through a technology known as S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). It is mandatory to have these in place during transactions to prevent vulnerable attacks from networks.

Firewalls are another essential aspect in stopping attackers before they can breach your network and gain access to your critical information. Major certifications reaffirm credibility, while a full-featured secure environment is expected to boast security measures like virtual private cloud, encrypted data storage, identity and access management, and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to provide users with peace of mind.

To summarize, customers expect a safe experience when shopping on any ecommerce website. And as a responsible business, protecting their personal and financial information is not only the paramount responsibility of any business, but it is also considerably easier and far less costly than recovering from a breach. It is crucial to ensure the security of the existing infrastructure and upgrade present systems and oversee the smooth transition to the more advanced digitization of India.

Also Read

Irdeto joins Frog by Wyplay community to offer integrated security solutions

Jaitley, stakeholders discuss broadband speed & penetration, wi-fi, digitisation, open Net & cyber security

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The author, Sachin Karweer, is Business Head, HGS Interactive, a Hinduja Group company that creates new paradigms for digital consumer experience. The views expressed here are personal and Indiantelevision.com need not necessarily subscribe to them

January 12, 2017

Guest Column: As digital spreads wings, bolstering security is paramount

The dream of moving towards a cashless society has never been closer than it is today in India. With the recent decision of demonetization, the public is being actively urged to move online for their transactions, big or small. Aiding the public in this move has been a slew of ads, demos, tutorials and YouTube videos galore, followed by a huge migration to online shopping, boosting the digital economy of the nation. However, as a landscape changes, so does how we navigate it. And, as the market rises to meet this new demand, new and relevant questions arise — questions about the security parameters and overall security strength of e-commerce platforms.

Immediately after the demonetization announcement that caught the entire nation off-guard, there was a noticeable drop in sales on e-commerce portals. But now things are stabilizing and the stats are looking up. In the wake of demonetization, India’s mobile wallet industry is expected to soar from US$ 22.41 million in 2015-2016 to US$ 4.37 billion in 2022. This means a huge jump in the value of mobile wallet transactions from US$ 3 billion to US$ 800.35 billion during the same period, according to a July forecast by Assocham-RNCOS titled Indian M-wallet Market: Forecast 2022. Every second, three more Indians experience the internet for the first time and by 2030, more than 1 billion of them will be online.

Besides making this the most exciting time to be a part of the ecommerce sector, these advances are also expected to make businesses efficient in the long run. Digital payments are now seen as the future and are believed to be a way of life soon. However, with this clickable economy and with commerce involved, there is also a valid risk of cybercrimes.

Security in OTT e-subscriptions

In fact, let’s first look at the OTT platforms like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hotstar and others, which are witnessing an increased demand for paid content. What it means is an increased set of security features to manage subscriptions and paid-content access.

The three key areas of security for OTT content are authentication, geo-blocking and control of account sharing. Netflix as a provider uses message security layer instead of using HTTPS protocol. Being tied to SSL and TLS, HTTPS suffers from fundamental security issues unknown at the time of their design. Examples include padding attacks and the use of MAC-then-Encrypt, which is less secure than Encrypt-then-MAC.

MSL is a modern cryptographic protocol that takes into account the latest cryptography technologies and knowledge. It supports the following basic security properties:

-Integrity protection: Messages in transit are protected from tampering.

-Encryption: Message data is protected from inspection.

-Authentication: Messages can be trusted to come from a specific device and user.

-Non-replayable: Messages containing non-idempotent data can be non-replayable.

MSL has pluggable authentication and may leverage any number of device- and user-authentication types for the initial message. The initial message will provide authentication, integrity protection, and encryption if the device authentication type supports it. Future messages will make use of session keys established as a result of the initial communication.

With MSL Netflix has eliminated many of the problems they faced with HTTPS and platform integration. Its flexible and extensible design means it will be able to adapt as Netflix expands and as the cryptographic landscape changes.

Securing trust in e-commerce

This demonetization era calls for the strengthening of cyber security mechanisms. Anyone with an email address and a social media account is at threat and can be a target. The most common kinds of cyber-crimes associated with e-commerce are to do with data privacy and protection, and include bogus deals and purchases, trademark and copyright infringement, payment frauds, disputes in B2B and B2C transactions, FEMA violations, issues of web content ownership, contract violation, hacking, phishing, cyber stalking and cyber-squatting.

Nearly 45 per cent of transactions are done via mobile, giving scope for several cons. According to a joint study by Assocham and PwC released in August 2016, cyber-crimes in India have surged around 350 per cent between 2011 and 2014.

India has germinated into a fertile ground for e-commerce, but consumers are exposed to security threats too. Fraud in the e-commerce sector leads not only to financial loss, but also a loss of reputation and simultaneously, a severe loss in business. Once a loyal customer, the individual switches to a competitor for his needs in case of breach of trust. Consumer trust in such a complex and interactive environment has become the need of the hour.

Addressing the risk of fraud

At HGS Interactive, our teams are proactive in addressing the risk of fraud that ecommerce companies can face by taking a hard look at their business models and vulnerability to fraud so that their customers can buy their products with confidence.

We understand that effective fraud risk management is a continuous process of reviewing and addressing the significant risks of fraud. Network security, confidentiality and authentication are three essential components of an e-commerce website. Several companies such as PayTM use 128-bit encryption technologies for storing information, which makes it tough to crack a password. Front-end payment card validation wherein MOD 10 checks, BIN checks, authorization responses, customer profile checks, security questions, login analysis, basic site rules such as number of orders placed through one account, value of orders or back-end manual order reviews must be put into place.

Digital signatures and dynamic IP protection are exemplary methodologies and should be implemented on all ecommerce websites. A secure and reliable web hosting service is a prerequisite to guarantee optimum performance of an ecommerce website, all through the year.

HGS Interactive recently worked for Nakshatra, which is one of India’s most reputed diamond jewelery brands and is from the pioneer Gitanjali Group. We ensured we hosted their web app on a safe hosted service provider to whom we mandated extremely strong privacy and data security policies enforced actively. Whether it is for a top jewelery brand or numerous other clients across sectors, high-end and world class web and digital security is of paramount importance. Financial information is typically stored by payment gateways primarily for small and medium businesses, while larger platforms prefer to have their own security parameters and store the data themselves, as it provides more control and security over this extremely sensitive data.

Hosting providers like Amazon Web Services and DigitalOcean provide full access to their security profiles, but skill and expertise is required to manage and stay ahead of the curve and avoid being hacked. Credit data is stored in an encrypted format and never as pure text, so it is protected as long as the encryption is strong.

Encryption equals protection

I strongly believe that encryption of data equals protection. Encryption lets you scramble information using a mathematical formula, which is tough to break without a “key”. You can implement technologies like SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and SHTML (Secure-HTML), with web forms to secure your ecommerce website. Encryption can also be incorporated in your email package through a technology known as S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). It is mandatory to have these in place during transactions to prevent vulnerable attacks from networks.

Firewalls are another essential aspect in stopping attackers before they can breach your network and gain access to your critical information. Major certifications reaffirm credibility, while a full-featured secure environment is expected to boast security measures like virtual private cloud, encrypted data storage, identity and access management, and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to provide users with peace of mind.

To summarize, customers expect a safe experience when shopping on any ecommerce website. And as a responsible business, protecting their personal and financial information is not only the paramount responsibility of any business, but it is also considerably easier and far less costly than recovering from a breach. It is crucial to ensure the security of the existing infrastructure and upgrade present systems and oversee the smooth transition to the more advanced digitization of India.

Also Read

Irdeto joins Frog by Wyplay community to offer integrated security solutions

Jaitley, stakeholders discuss broadband speed & penetration, wi-fi, digitisation, open Net & cyber security

The author, Sachin Karweer, is Business Head, HGS Interactive, a Hinduja Group company that creates new paradigms for digital consumer experience. The views expressed here are personal and Indiantelevision.com need not necessarily subscribe to them

January 12, 2017

BARC India gets thumbs up for 2016…but challenges remain

In the early part of the 2000 decade, Indians – still trying to settle down under a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government at New Delhi with AB Vajpayee as the PM – always expected something unusual. And, journalists on the media beat were no exceptions. But it even took such scribes by surprise when many of them received an unmarked envelope. Inside was a list of all homes in which the then TV audience measurement company had installed peoplemeters to collect data on viewing patterns. The hint was clear: peoplemeter homes can be breached and, hence, viewership data could be manipulated.

A small caveat and reference to the context needs to be added here: around that time, Star TV India having sunk in millions of dollars over the past decade was riding a wave of stupendous rise in terms of revenue, reach and viewership — all on the back of the success of the Amitabh Bachchan-hosted game-show Kaun Banega Crorepati. Other TV channels not only felt the heat, but had been seeing their bottomlines turn scarlet. And nothing they did on the programming front helped them change that colour. Panicking, they settled on attacking the credibility of the edifice that provided agencies and advertiserswith data to negotiate prices on advertising on the channels. A CEO of one of the top four GECs then called indiantelevision.com and told us that he could provide us the peoplemeter household details, if we were interested.

The peoplemeter list incident was reported by media in few places and soon everything was forgotten. It was life as usual in an industry that believed then more in status quo rather than push for fresh changes and transparency.

Cut to 2016. When in the third week of November the barely two-year-old Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), India’s current TV audience measurement company, in an unprecedented move conveyed to its subscribers that it was suspending for a four-week period the measurement process of three television channels there were ripples in the industry.

The shockwaves, medium size on the Richter scale, if one can use that terminology, however, didn’t go unnoticed or unreported. Shock was more because of the fact that such moves by an industry body are few and far between in India and rarer in the television and entertainment industry, which has been the target of various allegations, starting from slush funding of movies, under-reporting of incomes by film and TV stars, the rampant casting couch and manipulation of data, amongst others.

Why are we getting anecdotal — and being anecdotal and its criticism is a buzzword these days — for a year-ender piece on BARC? Simply because it’s one of the highlights of 2016 — a push, albeit minor, for more transparency, credibility of an organisation and the work it does.

Though some critics would say BARC may have jumped the gun in show-causing the three news channels, it goes on to impress on the stakeholders of BARC, and the TV industry in general, that the status quo is likely to be shaken up and which could be good for the whole industry. That the three news channels pulled up by BARC got interim relief from the courts is another story.

That an organisation like BARC India, a joint venture amongst the Indian Broadcasting Foundation, The Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) and The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), is holding its ground and trying to be real global in terms of best practices, technology used and data is laudable. However, we think its three stakeholders, probably, would do well to come out openly and more strongly in support of such BARC actions.

Apart from such actions aimed at transparency, the year 2016 could be termed a usual one for the barely two-year-old BARC when its rural data opened up various opportunities for all stakeholders, its on-ground education initiatives bringing in more organisations within its fold for data (it’s not commonplace for government organisations to subscribe to private sector-generated data) and its weekly data itself generating excitement within the industry.

But looking forward isn’t it time that BARC and its direct stakeholders start thinking of digital measurement?

It may be argued that consumption of digital media by Indians is just a blip on the viewership radar vs. traditional TV, which still remains to be fully exploited in terms of numbers and reach, but independent digital data is always more credible than those handed out by individual companies.

In Jan 2016, BARC India ushered in the terminology Impressions’000. A year down the line, Impressions’000 has become synonymous with TV viewership data. While the terminology was introduced keeping in view the long term perspective of digital measurement, it is now time to ask if 2017 should be the year when industry adopts Impressions’000 not only as the sole metric for public reporting of data, but also as the single, universal measure for judging channel/programme performance. There is sufficient justification for all sections of industry to reference Impressions’000 to understand trends or make comparisons.

Why we making such suggestions? Firstly, the TV viewership ecosystem is growing. In fact when BARC India unveiled All-India (urban +rural) measurement, the TV universe had doubled. Along with this, there has been a year-on-year growth in the number of TV channels — not just at an absolute level, but also at the genre level like Hindi GECs, English GECs, and English Movies. A quick visit to Ministry of Information and Broadcasting website will reveal the increase in number of licensed TV channels and those standing in the queue. However, while such additions of new TV channels to the existing universe are welcome from the point of view of consumer choice, these, inevitably, lead to viewership fragmentation too.

With an increase in the denominator of TV universe and fragmentation of viewers, it can be argued that growth in viewership is not captured when the same is represented in percentage terms or Ratings%. In fact, referring to Ratings% may give the mistaken notion of a decline, where if one looks at an absolute number of viewers (as represented by Impressions’000), one sees a healthy growth in viewership. This is also validated by the fact that India has witnessed in 2016 launch of many new channels (as well as addition of HD feeds) even in genres where many claim a “decline” was witnessed when seen from the perspective of Ratings% .

Looking forward, the industry could move to using Impressions rather than Ratings% as the standard of TV viewership. But, as they say, while observers may have views, it’s the professionals – who are actually carrying out their businesses using BARC data – who know the best.

Considering BARC is an audience measurement organistaion, what ratings/impressions should it get for 2016? We feel its thumbs up….but many challenges remain.

January 11, 2017