Why are TRPs so crucial?
Advertisers bank on TRP to zero in on not just a particular channel but also the genre and programmes they want to spend their dollars on
Television business means big money. Thousands of crores are spent on advertising every year as this is only medium that reaches both India and Bharat. For instance, the FMCG sector spent over Rs 1,860 crore on TV advertisements in 2019. Now with the Mumbai police investigating a TRP buying racket, the spotlight is on the sanctity of the entire investment.
Understanding TRPs
As per the Pitch Madison Advertising Report of 2020, TV is still the largest contributor to AdEx and in 2019 TV AdEx grew by 8% to Rs 25,291 crore. In terms of absolute numbers, TV AdEx has grown by Rs 1,860 crore in 2019.
This growth was fuelled by three major sectors — FMCG, telecom and e-commerce — that spent hundreds of crores on the medium. To delve further, data for last year shows while FMCG spent Rs 740 crore, Rs 275 crore went to Telecom and Rs 220 crore to e-commerce.
While these players allocate their ad dollars for different channels of the medium, what becomes the single-most important factor in terms of this decision making is the reach of individual TV channel and that is where BARC’s audience measurement and TRP comes in.
For a better understanding, we can see what TRAI defines in one of its consultation papers. “On the basis of audience measurement data, ratings are assigned to various programmes on television. Television ratings in turn influence programmes produced for the viewers. Better ratings would promote a programme while poor ratings will discourage a programme. Incorrect ratings will lead to the production of programmes which may not be really popular while good programmes may be left out.”
The Process
For advertisers, the Cost-Per-Rating-Point (CPRP) is of utmost importance and that’s why TRPs are so important. So, how is CPRP calculated? Every show on each channel has a TRP and the sum of all the TRPs is the GRP (Gross Rating Point). CPRP is the amount spent by the media buyer to achieve one rating point, which is the total spends divided by the GRP.
Advertisers use TRP to decide on not just a channel but also genres and programmes.
As per highly placed sources in the media buying industry, a popular soap can charge upto Rs 1.5 lakh/10 seconds and a high impact show (like KBC, Bigg Boss) has a spot rate between Rs 2.5 lakh/10 second and Rs 3.5 lakh/ 10 seconds. And while a Hindi news channel’s 10-second slot comes anywhere between Rs 2,500 and Rs 5,000, the same channel sells its prime time show slots for Rs 20,000/10 seconds to Rs25,000/seconds solely pitching on the show’s TRP.
Where does BARC come in?
As for BARC, it uses 44,000 BAR-O-meters installed across the country to record data. Out of these 2,000 are located in Mumbai. This has now become a point of importance, considering the TRP rigging case started off with Hansa Research, an agency hired by BARC to monitor viewership, complaining of possible anomalies in the system.
