BARC Adds Civolution to Indian Audience Package

India's Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) has commissioned Dutch watermarking and fingerprinting tech solutions provider Civolution to underpin its TV audience measurement contract, recently awarded to French firm Mediametrie.

BARC - which is a 60:40 joint venture between the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) and the Indian Society of Advertisers - is an umbrella organisation formed to oversee and control the television audience measurement system in India.

Mediametrie and Civolution will collaborate to build the technology framework for BARC's new digital audience measurement system, which is scheduled to roll out towards the end of this year. This system will use Civolution's audio watermarking coding technology for automated content identification, integrating it into Mediametrie's TV media measurement system for panellists' equipment and data processing. BARC says the resulting service will provide broadcasters with an analysis of their exposure to the public - either by number of households tuning in, or the amount of time spent watching each piece of content.

BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta (pictured) comments: 'India has one of the largest TV audiences in the world so it was critical for us to create an audience measurement system that is gold standard. By leveraging Civolution and Mediametrie's expertise in audience tracking, technology and analytics we can now study viewers' TV habits in precise detail, enabling broadcasters and advertisers to implement efficient strategies to reach their target audience.'

Web sites: www.barcindia.co.in , www.civolution.com and www.mediametrie.fr .