MAM
BARC starts process for new TV viewership measurement architecture
MUMBAI: The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) on Thursday called for information on state-of-the art television audience measurement from players across the globe, in a first step towards creating India‘s own architecture for computing television viewership ratings.
The BARC has issued a global Request for Information (RFI) to seek understanding of the state-of-the art in the area of television audience measurement research in particular and audience measurement research in more general terms.
In a statement, BARC says the RFI seeks ideas, templates, experiences, that will help BARC to blueprint the new television audience measurement system. It has sought responses to a list of questions which respondents may consider addressing as a part of their response to the RFI. The responses have to be submitted to BARC by 5 February.
Punit Goenka, chairman BARC and MD & CEO, ZEE, said, “BARC is committed to building a Television Audience Measurement System that becomes ipso facto the Gold Standard in its class worldwide. Given that BARC addresses a population of over 1 billion, of which over 0.6 Billion have access to television in some form, I am confident that BARC will settle for nothing less than being the best.”
BARC said respondents would also have to make a presentation, in addition to providing their credentials, information on TV measurement markets currently in their portfolio, their organisation structure, their focus towards India and finally their experience with TV audience measurement research.
Shashi Sinha, Chairman, Technical Committee of BARC and CEO-Lodestar UM & CEO-IPG Mediabrands India said, “It is clear that legacy architecture of the (audience measurement) system, that has evolved incrementally, is now ready for seminal change. However, what is not clear is the contours of the new system, which BARC aims to define.”
At various times, more than one vendor has attempted to provide audience measurement but from 2002, TAM Media Research, India — a joint venture of Nielsen and Kantar, has been the de facto provider of the measurement currency, being widely used by all stakeholder constituencies for all commercial and marketing decision-making.
The BARC Technical Committee members comprising Shashi Sinha (representing Advertising Agencies Association of India), Paritosh Joshi, Principal, Provocateur Advisory (representing Indian Broadcasting Foundation) and Smita Bhosale, Head, CMI-Brand Building-South Asia, Hindustan Unilever Ltd (representing Indian Society of Advertisers) would evaluate the responses received.
Respondents will receive the Request for Proposal (RFP) after BARC concludes its study of the responses received.
Television audience measurement in India has been around for nearly three decades. Beginning with a simple diary based system in the early 1980s covering Doordarshan, then the state-owned monopoly broadcaster, it evolved parallel to the evolution of the Indian television market. By the mid-1990s, it was already covering satellite television and in the early part of this century, India was one of the earliest television markets to have a pure Peoplemeter based system.
The challenges for an audience measurement system in an era of digital delivery of television channels brings in its wake a massive expansion in choice of content coupled with accelerating adoption of new technologies that are shifting consumption away from the fixed time chart (FTC); and shifting it to personal digital appliances are altogether different from the era when television meant living rooms, common choices and shared family experience.
BARC said it understands that a good system rests as much on a sound understanding of the footprint of the medium: the Establishment Study; as it does on continuous tracking of viewing behaviour: the Television Meter Panel.
BARC is also aware of a number of technologies at varying stages of development that promise non-intrusive or minimally intrusive viewership measurement. BARC is also aware of developments in the area of integrated media consumption metrics, e.g. IPA‘s Touchpoints 4 exercise scheduled for next year.
“All these are of interest to the architecture of the future system in India. BARC expects respondents to incorporate their own experiences in these areas as items of emphasis in the response to this RFI,” said BARC.
The following are some of the areas BARC expects respondents to address:
1. In-house knowledge and experience in the Television and more broadly, Media Audience Measurement space
2. Global best practices in a number of areas including
a. Vendor owned and managed vs. Joint Industry Body (JIB) or Joint Industry Committee (JIC) owned and managed – Advantages and Disadvantages
b. System architecture- Establishment, Metering, other services
c. One vendor or many vendors
d. If multiple vendors, how scopes of work are clearly delineated
e. If multiple vendors, how accountability is clearly defined
3. Sampling design: How viewership volume, viewing intensity, audience economic attractiveness and other factors are accommodated
4. Measuring viewing across multiple screens
5. Measuring viewing across individual, family and community settings
6. Familiarity with Ascription, Data Fusion and Data Synthesis in multimedia measurement
a. Need for fusing consumption data from multiple media
b. How fused data are being introduced into commercial application
7. Typical relative error levels in measurement systems operating in different geographies.
a. Levels considered generally acceptable for a robust Peoplemeter system
b. Sampling designs that will ensure a systematically lower relative error
8. Audit mechanisms typically put in place to ensure reportability of data
9. Keeping Panels representative of a fast changing Universe while allowing for continuity of data reads without trend breaks.
Brands
Zscaler, Airtel launch India AI Cyber Research Centre
New hub to boost cyber resilience and trusted AI use
NEW DELHI: As India’s digital engine roars ahead, so do the risks riding shotgun. In response, Zscaler, Inc. and Bharti Airtel have joined hands to launch the AI and Cyber Threat Research Center – India, a national initiative aimed at strengthening the country’s cyber defences and accelerating responsible AI adoption.
The centre is designed as a multi stakeholder platform that brings together industry, government and academia. Its mission is clear: protect critical sectors such as telecom, banking and energy, shield everyday digital users, and future proof India’s fast expanding online ecosystem.
India has long been a major innovation hub for Zscaler, with a substantial portion of its cyber research talent based here. With this new centre, that footprint evolves into a national collaboration engine. The idea is simple but ambitious, build in India, for India, and help power the country’s journey towards a secure and digitally self reliant future.
The timing is telling. India is building digital systems at population scale, not just enterprise scale. That scale has widened the attack surface dramatically. At the same time, cyber criminals and nation state actors are deploying AI to scan, probe and exploit vulnerabilities in minutes.
Zscaler’s research arm, ThreatLabz India, reports millions of infiltration attempts every month. These include espionage campaigns linked to regional geopolitical tensions, 1.2 million intrusion attempts from 20,000 sources targeting 58 Indian digital entities, and a rise in zero day exploit attempts across multiple industries.
In such an environment, perimeter based security models are struggling to keep pace. The new centre aims to push a shift towards secure by design systems and Zero Trust architecture.
Its strategy rests on four pillars: protect through real time intelligence, remediate by working directly with government agencies, facilitate adoption of AI driven security and Zero Trust frameworks, and build a stronger cybersecurity talent pipeline through specialised certifications.
As founding members, Zscaler and Airtel will combine global threat intelligence with local network visibility. Zscaler will deploy a dedicated India focused research team and draw insights from its Zero Trust Exchange platform, which processes over 500 billion daily transactions worldwide. Airtel, meanwhile, will contribute deep visibility into IoT and mobile traffic, helping detect suspicious activity faster and coordinate response across the ecosystem.
Bharti Airtel executive vice chairman Gopal Vittal, said the partnership extends Airtel’s commitment to safeguarding customers and the nation’s digital fabric. He added that the collaboration would address challenges unique to the Indian market and encourage secure and confident digital engagement.
Zscaler chief executive, chairman and founder Jay Chaudhry, said India’s digital ambition cannot be secured with legacy firewalls and VPNs. He noted that a modern Zero Trust architecture is essential for a hyper connected world and that the new centre would harness the scale of Zscaler’s global security cloud while empowering a new generation of Indian cyber defenders.
Additional members from critical public and private sectors are expected to join the initiative in the coming months, expanding its scope and deepening collaboration.
In a world where threats travel at machine speed, India’s answer is to think faster, collaborate wider and build smarter.
