So
far, BARC has released two batches of segregated data for rural and urban
regions for Hindi GECs.
India is a heterogenous country where every 100 kilometres reveal a
totally different scenario. Despite its heterogenous nature there are two broad
classifications that the country has: 'Bharat' and 'India'. While Bharat
signifies the rural part of the country, where people's aspiration is to live
an 'Indian' life, at the other end, 'India' is a dot com-equipped one. From the
media and entertainment perspective, 'Bharat' (rural) is the one which hardly
encountered with the pay TV phenomenon, and hence, missed the 'Kahaniis',
'Uttarans', and epics like 'Jodha Akbar'.
Moreover, they are now enjoying the DD Freedish services which enable
them to watch the Free-To-Air (FTA) channels. 'India' pays hefty amounts per
month to get access to high-quality televised content. But, most importantly,
'Bharat' is the one that satisfies itself with basic needs, while 'India' has
huge disposable incomes and is never satisfied; those in 'India' are the
'lucrative' ones for bomb-spending brands.
The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, the television
ratings auditor body, after its rural rollout, was bombarded with questions on
how are rural and urban FTA and PayTV measured and listed on the same list
after BARC's rural roll out channels like Zee Anmol, Sony Pal, and Star Utsav,
which have no investment on content, getting placed over Colors and Star Plus.
BARC India has 22,000 bar-o-meters in India. Seventy per cent of those
are placed in urban India, while the remaining 30 per cent are installed in
rural India. Says an insider at BARC India, "Given the homogenous nature
of TV viewing patterns in rural India, 30 per cent representation is no worse
than 50 per cent."
While all the big broadcasters had their FTA presence, seeing their pay
channels drop was an agonising sight for them, and gradually, they started
voicing it. The loudest of all was Colors CEO Raj Nayak, who has been
unabashedly vocal about it. Week 18 must have pleased him; that's when BARC
India dished out its first batch of separate ratings for urban and rural.
BARC India, clarifies, however, "It must be noted that these
separate rankings for urban and rural viewership of the top Hindi general
entertainment channels/programmes were only reported in the data that BARC
India puts out for the public at large - on its website, social media
platforms, etc. BARC India users (subscribers) have always had the option of
looking at these data cuts within the BMW software, and this was not the first
time broadcasters and agencies saw this data split."
"We have been advocating this for long. We welcome this
development. All broadcasters have separate pay and FTA strategy, and it is
unfair to club pay and FTA channels together," reacts Nayak.
He feels this will enable broadcasters to maximise their earning
potential from both urban and rural markets. "With the separate data
release for the two strata, it will now be imperative for broadcasters to push
the agenda for getting the right value for the two sets of different eyeballs
on offer for the advertisers. Depending on the specific audiences that the
advertiser wants to target, broadcasters will now be able to clearly
differentiate, and hence, get the right value from the advertiser," he
adds.
Separate urban - rural selling is on the cards as far as Colors is
concerned. "At Colors, we are already thinking of selling urban and rural
separately. Technology allows us to do that. This will help both the advertiser
and the broadcaster who can now target the urban and rural viewer
separately," informs Nayak.
This is a step in the right direction, but there is no reason to
restrict only with GECs, believes Nayak. "GEC is the best space to start
this with, especially since the key FTA players are GECs. However, going
forward, movies, regional, would be important genres for the data to be clearly
segregated, especially with multiple launches in these genres in the FTA space
catering to the rural eyeballs," he opines.
Apart from the rural - urban separation, Nayak also voiced his
reservations against the idea of 'ranking'. "This is my personal view and
I have voiced it to Partho Dasgupta (CEO of BARC India). I believe BARC's job
is to collect data and give it out as it is. I feel it shouldn't give rankings
of channels, it is for the broadcaster and the advertiser to interpret and
decipher data the way they want to see it," says Nayak.
He goes on to say, "Ours is not a weekly business, maybe the data
comes out every week (actually, it should come out every day as it happens in
some other evolved markets), but the decisions we make are long-term. This
weekly No.1, No.2 story actually puts tremendous pressure on content
teams."
The insider at BARC India tells us that following stakeholders'
proposals, the ratings body held an interactive campaign asking if they (the
stakeholders) wanted the segregation. The survey supported the proposal and
BARC went ahead and did the segregation. The segregation did not require any
major technological change, informed the insider.
BrandSpeak
Anisha
Motwani, former chief marketing and digital officer, Max Life Insurance (author
of Storm the Norm)
The core of any marketing plan is the core segment and the core
geography. If BARC's data helps achieve that it's great for the industry. I see
this move help in more specific targetting and the wastage can be avoided.
Pravin
Kulkarni, general manager, Parle Products
"For brands targeting rural markets, DD was the only option
earlier. Now we have more options, so it helps us design our media plan better.
Targetting also becomes finer and wastage can be avoided because of this data.
Sony Pal and Zee Anmol have already hiked their ad rates, and now the other
broadcasters in the Top 10 will do the same."
Planner
Speak
A quick at what media planners say about the development...
Anita
Nayyar, CEO, India and South Asia, Havas Media Group
It will, of course, make a big difference for us. Now we know where the
rural and urban stands independently. This will help us plan more effectively,
and will certainly result in more fine-tuned investment. Broadcasters, too,
will now strategise their rural and urban inventories accordingly. We were
talking to BARC for a long time for this.
Ashish
Bhasin, chairman and CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network South Asia
The rural data is what is important, the segregation is just another
tool for agencies. Media planners will plan seeing both the data, the split
just becomes an add-on. We need to understand it is not like stock exchange,
how we make it look, the rates never change every week.
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