Why measurement of media remains broken

Indian advertisers and publishers are drowning in data. So why is media measurement still so untrustworthy?

- Soumya Gupta

Last week, the Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) was hit by a scandal—Malayalam news channel Twentyfour News accused the Council's employees of colluding with a rival channel to boost its ratings by sharing confidential information. The channel also accused its unidentified rival of manipulating its YouTube viewership.

Barc has ordered a forensic audit. But this isn't the first time such a scandal has hit the industry body responsible for measuring the viewership and reach of traditional TV. In 2020, then chief executive officer Partho Dasgupta was arrested on allegations Barc had manipulated ratings to favour the Republic network of news channels. The case was ultimately closed, but Barc was forced to suspend ratings for months.

The allegations assume gravity given that thousands of crores of advertising money are channelled to media on the basis of their reach, measured by Barc.

Is TV the only medium where ratings, views and reach are tough to trust? Hardly. Media and marketing firm RK Swamy Hansa Group says brand recall on digital video platforms—including YouTube and Instagram—is “poor” at best. Most people can't recall more than 1.5 brands from all the ads they see in an average of more than 2 hours of videos they watch per day, R.K. Swamy said in a white paper in September, after surveying 3,000 respondents across languages and platforms over a month.