MUMBAI: With the entertainment ecosystem going through a dynamic change in India, stakeholders are upping their game and adapting themselves to the new environment by tweaking their strategy as well as launching new products and services to stay relevant.
After the recent joint venture by Indian ratings measurement bodies – Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India and TAM Media Research, the Indian advertising and planning industry is all set to get empowered yet again. Now, TAM Media Research and IMRB International have joined hands to launch the first multimedia measurement data – an integrated media planning tool called TeleWeb, which will create a mutual pull of advertising investments for both television and Internet.
TeleWeb Audience Measurement marks the fusion of TV viewership data from TAM India and web audience measurement of IMRB International.
The cross media consumption behaviour data service TeleWeb Audience Measurement will provide data and analytics on the consumption of content across TV and online platforms like Desktop, mobile websites, mobile applications and YouTube authors through multiscreens like computers, mobile handsets, and tablets.
TeleWeb measurement service starts with a sample spread across six metros and will be reported on a monthly basis.
Presently, WAM’s Internet panel based audience measurement platform tracks Internet usage behaviour amongst active Internet users in India and has a sample size of 6075 respondents across six metros (Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad), which will be fused with TAM viewership data of 10936 individuals from the same six Metro markets. WAM tracks URLs surfed from user machines and mobile handsets to provide a complete view of consumption habits of audiences across digital properties.
The WAM data from the six metros will be fused with the TAM TV Viewing data from the same markets. The fused output will be made available through a Client Software Interface – Video Xpress.
The initiative is aimed at reducing the confusion over different currencies to different media for integrated media planning and will also help advertisers pre-plan advertisement strategies.
TeleWeb Audience Measurement will allow consumers to create integrated cross media platform strategy for TV plus internet as per their consumption habits. Key stakeholders like broadcasters, web publishers, advertisers and media agencies stand to benefit from this.
This will give broadcasters a single currency to measure TV and digital as well as boost digital sales along with TV’s incremental exposure for niche genres. On the other hand, web publishers will be able to build content for specific targeted groups to increase monetisation of inventory. It will also increase exposure at lower cost and build optimum plans for advertising to develop digital presence. Media agencies, in turn, will get more avenues to advertise on, which will be measurable.
The lowest reporting level for TV and online would be a minimum of 30 minutes.
TAM Media Research CEO L.V Krishnan said, “It is not a tie up but it is a working relationship, which both companies are taking to the next level. The data, which is coming up, is for the initial stage. As consumption of internet keeps increasing, the intensity of the usage will also increase with new advertisers and broadcasters coming in.”
“Content consumption has been transitioning across media platforms, especially television and online. Hence, understanding cross media consumption patterns at one go and planning advertising investments was imperative. This is what makes TeleWeb Audience Measurement the most awaited service for the Indian media industry. The future is all about cross media planning. It is a win-win situation for both the mediums as it will create mutual pull of advertising investments,” he further added.
Elaborating the role that IMRB will be playing in this venture, IMRB International senior vice president Hemant Mehta said, “We have two panels and TAM and IMRB International will run one panel each. With content increasingly becoming platform agnostic, we believe this is an important step in measuring the total reach across platforms. Besides providing the content owners an understanding of the size and profile of their audiences across digital and TV, the TeleWeb Audience Measurement service will also help advertisers identify new, interesting and cost efficient communication opportunities. For digital publishers with video content, TeleWeb Audience Measurement would help in benchmarking themselves vis-?-vis TV channels.”
Speaking on the data measurement moving towards reach and frequency from GRPs, he said, “Digital is also going through a change, which is why we are not going through the classic loop, which is from PC to portable devices.”
Explaining the approach of this product, Mehta said, “We are talking about panel based approaches. It is exactly the mimic of what TAM has been historically doing, which is minute by minute viewership data. Whereas the WAM data is second by second data, which is also extreme data.”
