MUMBAI: Even as signs of a delay from Broadcast Audience Measurement Council’s (BARC) side are doing the rounds, the audience measurement company has already got on board 250 channels that have ordered for watermarking embedders. Half of this has already been installed.

The watermarking technology has been taken from Netherlands based Civolution and field testing of the meters is underway for homologating them to Indian conditions. As BARC India has consistently maintained, the meters have been assembled in India at a fraction of the cost of global suppliers.

Deals with 26 vendor partners such as Intel, Hansa, Mediametrie, Civolution, Markdata, Magic9Media across 12 processes have been finalised. It also claims that this is the largest such audience measurement system globally with cutting edge technology.

Very soon, it will start testing and validating the data from the system. The government has laid down policy guidelines that prescribe a minimum of 20, 000 homes, which BARC India feels isn’t enough in the long run. It has also opted for the harder and tougher method of assembling systems from various vendors to offer a superior and cost effective output.

The measurement process undertaken by BARC India is as follows: