BARC India has taken a step towards using Return Path Data (RPD) for TV viewership measurement. BARC India has tied up with Airtel Digital TV, Airtel’s DTH arm, for including its subscriber homes on the BARC India RPD Panel. This partnership will provide a fillip to BARC India’s plan for scaling up panel homes to multiples of the mandated 50,000.

RPD is used globally for collecting viewership data. Random selection will be done among the selected RPD homes to include them in the currency panel based on the overall Airtel Digital TV universe share in the TV ecosystem.

In October last year, BARC India had signed on multi-system operator DEN Networks for measuring TV viewership using RPD. By tying up with Airtel Digital TV, BARC India has successfully added a significant DTH subscriber base to its proposed RPD panel. BARC India will use a portion of Airtel Digital TV’s subscriber base to measure TV viewership via RPD.

The move will not only make BARC India data more robust, but will also help address the issue of panel home tampering. “Our partnership with Airtel Digital TV will strengthen our RPD roll-out plan. Panel home expansion is absolutely critical for us considering the diversity in the country, which is visible even in the way TV content is consumed. RPD will give the industry a cost-effective way of expanding panel home size. The distribution platform owners too will benefit with RPD. It will give them a better understanding of what their subscribers are consuming on TV. This will help the industry at large,” said Romil Ramgarhia, CBO, BARC India.

Sunil Taldar, CEO – DTH, Bharti Airtel said, “We are pleased to partner BARC India and support their endeavour to compile robust TV viewership insights. A credible resource like this will benefit the entire ecosystem, including content producers and marketers, and help in enhancing the experience for customers.”

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