BARC India seeks paradigm shift in audience measurement technology

In a bid to seek next gen technology solutions to better meet the needs of TV audience measurement in India, Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India has partnered with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). The partnership is also in line with BARC India’s philosophy of providing robust TV viewership measurement to the country of 197 million TV homes.
 
As part of the partnership, IITians across the country were asked to suggest newer ways of measuring TV viewership habits of 836 million TV owning individuals. The solutions BARC India was seeking included newer methods for channel, content and ad identification as well as alternative to button pushing and current visible meter used for capturing viewership data from panel homes.

10 IITs from across the country participated in the competition and presented their solutions to a jury.
After a rigorous evaluation process, IIT Kharagpur’s T.Y.S.S. Santosh won the Gold prize and a summer internship with BARC India for coming up with the best solution. The proposed solution can potentially transform large conspicuous hardware in panel homes to user-friendly smart assistants, and also reduce dependency on third parties for channel identification. IIT Kanpur bagged the Silver and IIT Bombay was placed third with a Bronze. All solutions presented by the students are platform agnostic and will be further tested for their feasibility. If proven, the solution would be adopted into the system to enhance the measurement service.