BARC ties up with French JIB Mediametrie for TV measurement technology

(From left): Partho Dasgupta, CEO, BARC; Benoit Cassaigne, SVP, Mediametrie; Punit Goenka, chairman, BARC; Shashi Sinha, technical committee, BARC; Gwilherm Nicolas, director, Mediametrie

The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) has tied up with Medimetrie, a French joint industry body engaged in audience measurement, to provide technological knowhow and licenses to BARC to use its TV metering system. The French entity will provide its watermarking technology to BARC and help it procure the metering hardware, informed a BARC statement. The company has been operating TV, internet and radio currency ratings systems for 25 years, and is currently operating in France, Morocco and the Netherlands.

The contract between BARC and Mediametrie has been signed for a period of six years (pre-launch and five years of maintenance).

BARC will deliver television ratings data from 1 October 2014, with a sample size of 20,000 households.

Puneet Goenka, MD and CEO, Zee Entertainment Enterprises, and  chairman, BARC, said, “BARC’s management and technical committee has evaluated various technology partners and recommended Mediametrie of France as the potential partner for BARC. The board unanimously accepted the recommendation. Like BARC, Mediametrie is a joint industry body that has been measuring audience research in various mediums such as internet, radio, cinema, apart from TV. They are pioneers in using watermarking for audience measurement and doing so since 2007. They do all the research in-house and have invested greatly in R&D. Being an industry body, they lay a lot of importance on transparency and security.”

Benoit Cassaigne, SVP, Mediametrie, said, “We are very happy and proud of BARC’s confidence in our solutions and expertise. We are thrilled to bring our know-how and share it with BARC, a company very similar to us in its DNA. We are sharing a lot already in term of philosophy and vision and I am sure we will go far together”

Shashi Sinha, CEO, IPG Mediabrands India, and chairman, technical committee, BARC, said, “This is a landmark day for us and we hope that the legacy we leave behind will be great. Watermarking technology is revolutionary and is three generations ahead of what is exiting in this country right now. The reasons are that it is very accurate as it is embedded on the signal that the broadcaster puts out. It ensures measure of simulcasts and also viewing of delayed telecasts. France has been using it for the last seven years, US has shifted to watermarking two years back ; so the world is gradually moving in that direction. The biggest advantage of this technology is that it is cheap and also it is open sourced and PC-based. We couldn’t have found a better partner than Mediametrie. On our research trips to Paris we spoke with broadcasters, advertisers, and agencies and there was not a single complaint against Medimentrie unlike what we are used to here.”

Sinha informed that pilots were on at multiple stages. He said that the new system would be commercially viable, and that BARC would offer ratings from a sample of 20,000 households at almost the existing cost of TV audience measurement (provided by TAM, covering a sample of 9,600 households).