MUMBAI: Audience-measurement body BARC India’s sampling methodology and panel design has been certified by one of India’s most prestigious institutions–the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata. The certification is for the original design of 22,000 homes and the expanded 33,000 panel. BARC’s viewership data services and insights products such as BIO News and BIO AdVision are aimed at helping industry make sharper data-driven decisions. It is also gearing up to launch Ekam—an independent third-party digital measurement service with the goal of providing industry with unified measurement across TV and digital.
According to the release issued by BARC, the joint-industry body has seeded its BAR-O-Meters in a scientifically selected set of panel homes to collect TV viewership data. Panel home designing is critical to ensure that viewership data is representative of the TV universe, and accurately reflects what India is watching. The representativeness of BARC India’s panel—the cornerstone of its TV viewership measurement system—was earlier certified by CESP, a global multi-media body that audits media research as well as Ernst & Young (EY).
ISI Kolkata professor Ashis SenGupta said, “The sampling methodology suggested by BARC India for Universe estimation is a reasonable one. This method is also a feasible one for implementation in practice. Overall, BARC India panel designs adopted for panel expansion as well as for TV Universe estimates ensures representativeness of ground realities given the constraints.”
BARC India CEO Partho Dasgupta added, “ISI Kolkata’s endorsement of our panel design and sampling methodology is yet another validation of our ability to measure what India watches. It is indeed a challenging task to accurately map TV viewing habits of 780 million individuals in a highly diverse and dynamic market like ours. I am proud of Team BARC India, which has lived up to industry’s expectation to deliver accurate, credible and robust viewership data, day-on-day, week after week. It is also a testament to the systems and technology backbone that we have set up, which is of global standards.”
This study by ISI Kolkata, spread over six months, certifies the panel home design used by BARC India for seeding BAR-O-Meters at both 22,000 as well as 33,000 panel home levels. It also identifies any modification required for panel expansion to 44,000 homes.
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