While television news channels across the country regularly publicise their viewership figures from BARC data (an audience measurement metric) to establish their dominance, Malayalam news television channel MediaOne went beyond this and started something different. Two weeks ago, the channel began putting out data on its digital viewership – the number of people who view them via Facebook and YouTube. In the first such advertisement that the channel shared, they said that they were leading as far as Facebook views on recorded videos were concerned.
MediaOne publishing its digital viewership data
And soon, other channels followed. Manorama News, a leading Malayalam channel soon published their digital viewership and said that they have the most views on Facebook and Youtube among all Malayalam channels- live and recorded videos combined. Even as MediaOne and Manorama News continue to spar on who fared better, it is clear that channels want to showcase online views as an important metric to rank them.
Manorama publishing its viewership data
Roshan Kakkat, CEO of MediaOne News says that viewership today comes from various distribution platforms, and not just from household televisions. There is a large segment of viewers from all walks of life watching on digital platforms due to their convenience.
“MediaOne started establishing social media ranking among all the Malayalam news channels… We are getting relatively larger share of views online than any other Malayalam news channel and we thought let's communicate this achievement to our viewers and the industry that we are among top three even if you consider social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. It's becoming the industry benchmark nowadays and people are interested to know the ranking of channels among on digital platforms as well,” he says.
But the increasing focus on digital media platforms is not limited to these Malayalam channels, nearly every news channel has been trying to bolster its presence on Facebook and YouTube.
Navaneeth C.M., Business Head at Karnataka’s Kasthuri Media Pvt Ltd also says that viewers have started becoming more comfortable with consuming news on Facebook, YouTube and even OTT platforms. This is because of various factors, such as cable and DTH becoming more expensive and mobile data becoming increasingly cheap and accessible.
“Instead of renewing cable TV subscription, viewers are subscribing to OTT platforms and thanks to penetration of smart TVs as well, digital viewership is growing and so from a broadcasters perspective, we are also trying to increase presence on OTTs,” he adds.
In fact, Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC), which is the go-to organisation for viewership and TRP data for new channels too, has been looking to include audience measurement in the digital space as well.
A testament to the importance of views from digital platforms is also the fact that advertisers are already acknowledging it.
“To my knowledge and based on the feedback receiving from the market, advertising agencies are significantly considering digital viewership data. It is currently one of the key parameters they measure while decision making. So yes, industry stakeholders are seriously considering a television channel’s digital presence,” MediaOne’s Roshan says.
Srinivas Murthy, VP – marketing at Telugu news channel TV5 says that while they have been concentrating on Facebook and YouTube viewership over the past two years, traditional TV is where serious viewership comes from and therefore those ratings still matter the most.
“Even today traditional TV viewership is very strong. On digital platforms you won’t find serious viewers. People won’t watch beyond 3-4 minutes, but on TV, if the program is good, they watch for 30 minutes and even an hour,” he adds.
Srinivas also points out that advertisers continue to focus largely on television ratings. “Even today, out of Rs 100, advertisers spend Rs 85-90 on TV and Rs 10-15 on digital and so BARC ratings continue to play a major role for all television channels.”
But Navaneeth is of the belief that this is set to change. He says that while advertisers aren’t necessarily paying more to advertise digitally as well, they are acknowledging the channel’s digital presence. “Agencies are still comfortable with TRPs and conventional methods, but I feel that about two years from now, they may pay extra for digital advertising. So, having a digital viewership will definitely give us an edge.”
Experts also point out that even if advertising agencies are now using digital reach of TV channels as one of the parameters for taking media buying decisions, the digital reach numbers only serve to bolster the numbers on the TV medium. The actual revenue made by TV channels through their digital presence is still pretty low, and will continue to be low for the foreseeable future, thanks to the Google-Facebook duopoly. “Even of that Rs. 10-15 which is spent on digital media, a bulk of it goes to Google-owned YouTube and Facebook, and only a fraction goes to news publishers,” a media executive pointed out.