The Indian Society of Advertisers has warned members about advertising with TV networks that have opted out of the Broadcast Audience Research Council, or BARC.

The ISA is a 70-year-old body with 160 brands as members, such as Amazon, Reliance, ICICI Bank and Airtel.

Its warning was conveyed in an advisory dated April 27. It hinted that if channels did not subscribe to BARC ratings, it was likely that brands were wasting money by giving them ads.

“Attention of advertisers is invited to the practice of some platforms which do not subscribe to the established system of measurement, as jointly agreed by all stakeholders. Advertisers may independently assess the situation and make an informed decision with respect to such platforms while dealing with advertisements,” it said.

The statement was couched in the language of profit and loss. “By measuring audience data, one can ensure very little advertising money is wasted,” it said. “The primary objective is to know the returns on the heavy media investments made by advertisers.”

Several TV channels, especially news broadcasters, have complained that BARC ratings are not accurate even after a long pause of 17 months between October 2020 and March 2022. One of them is the News Broadcasters Federation, or NBF, led by Republic TV chief Arnab Goswami. Last week, the federation told the information and broadcasting minister that BARC had failed to address how landing pages exaggerate TV ratings. Landing pages are the channels that play automatically when a viewer switches on the TV.

Despite discontent, NBF has not hinted at quitting BARC. NDTV, however, opted out of the agency in March this year, expressing dissatisfaction with its measurement process.

News channels have long used BARC ratings to aggressively market their viewership. Even tiny changes in their numbers trigger internecine slugfests in the genre and sharp missives against the agency.