India's 2026 TV ratings policy adds CTV measurement; no agency registered yet
Ratings agencies operating in India must now hit 80,000 metered homes within 18 months of registering, under the Television Ratings Policy 2026, which replaced the 2014 framework on March 27. The policy requires technology-neutral measurement across cable, DTH, terrestrial TV, OTT and connected TVs, and raises the metered-homes requirement by 10,000 a year until it reaches 120,000. Existing ratings agencies were initially given six months to comply, a deadline extended to nine months by a May 8 amendment. In a July 24 Rajya Sabha reply, the government said no entity had registered under the new policy. Exchange4Media reported on August 26 that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had approached TAM Media Research and Chrome DM about their connected-TV measurement capabilities.
Comparability is the real currency at stake. An advertiser buying inventory across a linear channel, its DTH feed and a connected-TV app needs a single reconciled reach number across all three. Chrome DM, one of the two firms named in the Exchange4Media report, estimates that a single connected TV screen represents about 2.5 viewers on average, so device counts need reconciliation with panel demographics before they can support planning decisions. The policy lets platforms publish their own viewership figures without registering as a ratings agency, adding volume to the market while leaving open which number a buyer should trust. Until an agency registers and a deduplication method is agreed, TV budgets built on cross-platform reach carry more guesswork than the raw numbers suggest.