2nd tweetstorm on #TRPscam - 1st pinned to profile

And it could be even more insidious as some of my colleagues suggest. The offer to TV channels from agency group was – pay us a higher kickback – and we'll make sure your channels rate better on the system we own.
1/n

Now the TV ad industry is ~Rs. 25,000 crores today. Print is another Rs. 20,000 crores. Outdoor adds another Rs. 10,000 crores.

The undocumented kick-backs by large agencies from all of them can easily amount to over Rs. 5,000 crores a year.
2/n

You can see signs of it everywhere. India has 3 or 4 large media buyers - all parts of global ad groups. They each boast of handling spends of over $1bn or Rs. 7,500 crores.

Given official commissions are <1%, they each should be earning Rs. 75 cr a yr or Rs. 6 cr a month
3/n

But look at their balance sheets. Or their employee count – each of them has over 600 people.

Given industry salaries you can't support 600 employees on income of 6 cr a month. Let alone pay rentals, taxes, overheads or entertainment bills & still show the profits they do.
4/n

But I digress.

The world was indeed going @WPP’s way as it owned TAM.

TAM dragged its feet to increase the sample size and over next 15 years took it from 2,000 homes to 12,000. Basically a drop in the ocean of 250 million households in India.
5/n

(Another aside, if someone says 600 million Indians watch IPL on TV, pl take it with a large dose of bullshit-flavoured salt.

It assumes households to be 6 people in size, assumes all are watching TV all the time during matches & strategic ad break time outs
6/n

...they found that 800 metered homes out of 2,000 or 4,800 metered homes out of 12,000 i.e. 40% had tuned in to IPL at some time.

40% of 250m households = 100m hh = 600 m people

Yes, lies, dammed lies and statistics.)

But back to #TRPSCAM
7/n

Eventually, TV channels & non @WPP agency groups in India wanted power away from @WPP and back to them.

They formed @BARCIndia some 5 years ago.

The first big offer was that was it would take the sample size up from 12,000. It has around 33,000 metered homes now.
8/n

But wait @WPP pivoted and sold its 12,000 metered homes in TAM for 49% in BARC.

So 35% of current metered homes are the compromised ones of old. And lord knows how many of the new ones.

But you can see the system is just as ‘fixable’ as before.
9/n

33,000 metered homes will mean ~3,300 in Mumbai. Which will mean ~300 in a suburb like Bandra / Khar.

BTW @Republic is not even among top 10 TV channels in India. To quote BARC, impressions garnered last week by no. 10 channel Star Vijay are 17 times that of Republic.
10/n

Now to get a TRP of 1 in a prime demographic suburb like Bandra in a city like Mumbai – which would be pretty darn good in a country with over 500 channels, all that @Republic or @IndiaToday or whoever) has to do is to fix exactly 3 homes with meters.

That’s it.
11/n

And if you want to do it at scale across cities in India, all you have to fix is 33 to 330 homes.

That's it. You’ll be seen as the leader.

What difference does this make? Enormous

The cost of fixing even 330 homes at scale, will probably be Rs. 1 crore a month
12/n

Or Rs. 12 crore a year.

Republic TV revenues in 2018 were Rs. 160 crores. The India Today group of TV channels did Rs. 700 crore that year.

So you can see why fixing meters is a no-brainer.
13/n

Why bother too much with quality of programming and journalist salaries when just fixing the meters gives you a 15 times or 1,400% ROI? Rs. 12 crores of payments can fix Rs. 160 cr of revenues.

That is a basic problem of the TV industry.
14/n

Are there solutions?

Sure. Killing the commission system at agencies is one.

E.g. Google & Facebook don't pay commissions to agencies so you won't see as much of them in their media plans as you should.

You'll see other sites that pay up to 50% undocumented commissions.
15/n

Having a truly independent metering system for TV is another. No publisher or agency should own this.

Channels going OTT is a 3rd.

Of course, smart brands will place different response messages on different channels to see how many & which are being seen and responded to.
16/n

You might imagine that it's 2020, we launch spacecraft towards Mars, we are this incredible digital-driven planet, all this minor crap must already be sorted out.

Short answer: no.

And hey, thanks for bearing through this, my longest tweetstorm :-)