BARC sets Rs 15 lakh annual fee for broadcasters for Respondent Level Data

BARC India has established a price of Rs 15 lakh per year for Respondent Level Data (RLD) for broadcasters. Until now, RLD was exclusively accessible to agencies that paid an annual fee of Rs 60 lakh.
The rating agency has announced that RLD will be made available weekly to broadcasters starting with the data of week 40 on 12 October 2023 like the currency data.
RLD will also be released every Thursday by 2 PM to subscribers of this data.
The RLD provided will:
i) adequately be anonymised to maintain the integrity of panel homes.
ii) not include OOH data.
iii) have individual level data but not household level information.
RLDis the final validated viewership and has demographic details of each panelist which is aggregated in YUMI in order to produce the final published audience estimates. The data enables end-users to link a particular panelist, or group of panelists to understand how their viewing may have evolved over time with respect to a channel, or their competition.
This will be possible since they will have the ability to view the viewership details panelist by panelist on a minute-by-minute level.
In a letter sent to broadcasters, BARC said that the RLD provided will adequately be anonymised to maintain the integrity of panel homes, not include OOH data and have Individual level data but not Household level information.

The letter said that RLD is the final validated viewership and has demographic details of each panelist which is aggregated in YUMI in order to produce the final published audience estimates. The data enables end-users to link a particular panelist, or group of panelists, to understand how their viewing may have evolved over time with respect to a channel, or their competition. This will be possible since they will have the ability to view the viewership details, panelist by panelist, at a minute-by-minute level.
The individual level RLD will be released simultaneously in three component parts every week:

1. Demographic Files - which provide a unique anonymised ID for each panelist along with their demographics and the daily weights which they have been assigned.

2. Viewership File - which provides for each panelist their viewing for each day of the week, in particular, which channels were viewed and at what times of the day.

3. Playout File- which provides the playout data for each channel across all minutes of the week (as it currently appears in YUMI), said the letter.