Advertisers, agencies rally behind TAM in fight with broadcasters
Three television networks terminate TAM subscription; advertising agencies say move is ill-advised
First Published: Mon, Jun 10 2013. 11 54 PM IST
Both the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA), which represents companies that buy significant amount of advertising space and air time and the Advertising Agencies Association of India said the ratings form the basis on which they buy time and space.
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New Delhi: A new front opened in the battle between the broadcasting industry and audience measurement company TAM Media Research Pvt. Ltd, with advertising agencies and advertisers that use the latter’s data to buy airtime on TV channels, supporting the research firm.
On Monday, TAM, a joint venture between Nielsen (India) Pvt. Ltd and Kantar Market Research, confirmed receiving communication from three television networks terminating their subscription to its ratings data. The broadcasters included Multi Screen Media Pvt. Ltd (MSM) that operates Sony, MAX, SAB and PIX channels; Times Global Broadcasting Co. Ltd, the news network that runs Times NOW and ET NOW; and NDTV Ltd. The head of one of the three television networks pulling out from TAM said that companies do not pay their suppliers for bad products. “This measurement system is broken and we cannot keep paying for it,” added this person who asked not to be identified.
Both the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA), which represents companies that buy significant amount of advertising space and air time and the Advertising Agencies Association of India said the ratings form the basis on which they buy time and space.
“The move by broadcasters to discontinue with ratings is ill-advised and not in the interest of advertisers, advertising agencies or broadcasters. It will lead to overpaying and underpaying of advertising time, both of which will lead to the collapse of TV as an advertising medium...,” warned Arvind Sharma, president, Advertising Agencies Association of India in a statement.
The new rating system under Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), the body being set up by the broadcasters at the behest of the government, will take another year or to be operational. Under the circumstances, it was important to follow TAM, the statement noted, adding that it would hold broadcasters responsible for deliveries as per signed agreements based on the TV Ratings System. India’s top 106 agencies, accounting for 80% of all advertising spends in the country are members of AAAI.
In an interview, Sharma said that the move by the television companies could see money moving to the digital medium.
A media buyer said his company would continue to use TAM data.
“Ratings are based on a sample survey and not a census, so there will be estimation errors that does not mean the rating system should be stopped,” said Sam Balsara, chairman, Madison Communications Pvt. Ltd.
In its statement, ISA said the broadcasters’ move could adversely affect the measurement ecosystem. “An industry-accepted rating system is the need of the hour and ISA is working with rest of the industry to ensure this is in place and any action to the contrary will have an adverse impact”, Hemant Bakshi, chairman, managing committee, ISA and executive director, home and personal care, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, said.
Indeed, with TAM being the “only ratings currency available, industry should work towards improving the system,” saidMayank Shah, group product manager, Parle Products Ltd. “Abandoning it doesn’t solve the issue.”
TAM Media chief executive L.V. Krishnan said the letters received by the company do not raise specific issues or problems the networks have with TAM data. “It is unfortunate that they have cancelled the subscription without much of a dialogue. Our team is always to ready answer queries,” he added.
In recent weeks and months, several broadcasters have had issues with declining gross ratings points (GRPs).
GRP is used in advertising to measure the size of an audience reached by a specific media.
MAX, for instance, raised issues regarding declining viewership for the Twenty20 cricket Indian Premier League, while a business channel was shocked to see zero rating for its channel in Delhi recently.
Shailesh Shah, the general secretary of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), a grouping of television channels said that some of the issues with TAM data were fundamental. “If 650 million people were watching TV two years ago, 800 million are watching today. And all of this growth is coming from cable. Even if I account for viewership fragmentation, how can one justify a channel with a rating of 2.76 one week and 0 in the next week?,” he asked.
Shah said that channels were “annoyed” with the fluctuations in ratings with no resolution in sight. “Though suggestion have been made...TAM has not made any concrete change in figuring out a way to make data more robust.”
Krishnan argued that factors related to programming and distribution could explain many of the variances.
The television universe, he said, had temporarily shrunk owing to the move from analogue to digital cable. For instance, he said owing to barely 40% digitization in Chennai, IPL matches in Chennai did not have a great viewership. “There was a general drop in IPL viewership especially during the afternoon matches. Viewership of matches featuring the weaker teams was also poor. So the decline could have been a combination of factors from performance to the fact that we added some small towns to the panel this year where IPL may not have been very popular,” Krishnan explained.
The agency claimed it furnished all the details to MSM which pulled out of TAM ratings. “It is ironical that MSM had pulled out as it was flaunting TAM numbers for one of its channels (comedy channel SAB) just a few days ago in an advertising mailer,” Krishnan said.
Shuchi Bansal and Suneera Tandon contributed to this story.
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