Mumbai: India’s television measurement system may be entering its most consequential transition yet, with the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) initiating a pilot to measure audiences across linear TV, connected TV and mobile streaming. Multiple media reports, citing BARC board members, said the pilot—currently being conducted with JioStar—marks the ratings body’s first structured effort to create a unified, cross-platform measurement framework.
The initiative reflects a structural shift in viewing behaviour. Campaigns and live events increasingly span screens, yet audience currency has remained anchored in traditional television metrics. Industry sources described the pilot as a foundational step toward aligning measurement with consumption, rather than a routine methodological update.
The timing is closely tied to regulatory pressure. In 2025, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) directed BARC to incorporate connected-TV viewership into its system, highlighting major gaps in the current ratings architecture. India has roughly 230 million TV households, but measurement relies on about 58,000 people-meter homes—around 0.025 percent of the universe. The ministry also noted that smart-TV, streaming-device and mobile viewing remains largely untracked, potentially distorting both broadcaster revenue planning and advertiser media allocation.
BARC’s pilot appears to build on emerging cross-screen research. JioStar and Nielsen’s study during TATA IPL 2025 showed how audiences shift between linear TV, CTV and mobile for live sports, underscoring the importance of capturing total reach and incremental impact across platforms. Observers say translating such learnings into an industry-owned currency could materially change planning and valuation.
Advertisers have broadly endorsed the move, according to people familiar with industry discussions. Marketers argue that cross-media measurement would allow them to identify incremental reach rather than repeatedly hitting the same viewers, improving return on media investment and reducing duplication. Broadcasters, meanwhile, see a pilot-led approach as necessary to build technical credibility and ecosystem consensus before wider rollout.
Neither BARC nor JioStar has issued official comment, but media reports suggest the framework could expand to other broadcasters once validation thresholds are met. If scaled, India would move closer to a single audience currency spanning television and digital video—potentially reshaping how billions of advertising rupees are planned and traded.
For an industry long debating ratings reform, the experiment signals that measurement is finally being redesigned for a screen-agnostic viewer—and that the economics of video advertising may soon follow.
