SOURCES OF MEDIA RESEARCH

1. MODULE II
SOURCES OF MEDIA RESEARCH

2. INTRODUCTION
• Media research includes the whole range of study about the
development of media, their achievements and effects. It
includes the techniques used in collecting and analyzing with
regards to Newspapers, Magazine, Radio, TV, Cinema or other
mass media. It also concern with scientific method of research.
• Media research relates to coverage, depth and impact of
different advertising media.It is also related with frequency and
effectiveness of different advertising media.
• It provides information as regards popularity and effectiveness
of each advertising medium, comparative position of cost of
advertising in each medium. This facilitates the selection of
most suitable media mix for the benefit of the advertiser.

3. IMPORTANCE OF MEDIA RESEARCH
1. Readers, Viewers and Profile- Media research helps to perceive the profile
of the readers, listeners and viewers in respect of their age, income,
occupation, buying pattern and other demographic and socio-economic
details.
2. Choice of Media- Proper media research assists to select the most
acceptable media mix that would be required by the advertiser depending
upon the category of product, prospects, ad budget, etc. The advertiser
will select that media which has maximum readership or viewership or
listenership of the target audience.
3. Booking of Time and Space- Media research empowers Media Planners to
understand the ratings of TV or Radio Programme. Media planner can
book time and space in the media depending upon the programmes
viewed or articles read by the target audience.
4. Help to Media Owners- The media research assists the media owners to
improve their programmes or editorial contents so as to increase

4. 5. Sponsorship of Programme- It assists the advertiser to select a special
programme for sponsorship. The advertiser may choose the sponsorship
of that programme which is mostly viewed or listened by the target
audience.
6. Gains to Audience- Audience gets better editorials and programmes as the
media owners make every effort to improve their programmes or
editorials, so as to attract the attention of large number of readers,
listeners, or viewers. This would bring more advertising income.
7. Gains to Media Planners- Media planners collect the information about
media popularily, reach and its effectiveness from media research. It
assists the media planners to understand the rating from the various
programmes on TV channels and radio through Television Rating Points
(TRP) reports and also helps to understand the circulation trends of
Newspapers and magazines through Audit Bureau of Circulation Reports
(ABC).
8. Gains to Research Organization- There are various Research Organizations
such as Indian Meeting Research Bureau (IMRM)the operations Research
Group (ORG), Marketing and Research Group (MARG), Pathfinder India,

5. NEILSON CLEAR DECISION (NCD FOR PRINT): NIELSEN CLEAR
DECISIONS
• It is a software platform that analyzes media and marketing data
which has been designed to work the way you do. NCD provide
several state of the art analytical tools that support media and
marketing decisions. The software is used to analyze more than
1,200 syndicated and proprietary databases each year. NCD enables
advertising agencies, media companies and marketers to quickly and
easily access data to pinpoint markets, channels and target groups.
Clear Decisions goal is to help clients more accurately identify and
profile key audiences in order to make better media decisions and
generate better return-on-investment results. Neilson Clear
Decisions offers a simple, flexible interface design that provides the
quickest path to the most frequently used analyses, requiring far
fewer steps to extract insights. Clear Decisions also provides flexible
report formats, custom templates, and hundreds of presentation

6. BROADCAST AUDIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL (BARC)
• BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) India is an industry
body, to design, commission, supervise and own an accurate, reliable
and timely television audience measurement system for India. Guided
by the recommendations of the TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority
of India) and MIB (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting)
notifications of January 2014, BARC India brings together the three
key stakeholders in television audience measurement - broadcasters,
advertisers, and advertising and media agencies, via their apex
bodies. BARC India seeks to establish a robust, transparent and
accountable governance framework for providing the data points
required to plan media spends more effectively.
• BARC measures viewership habits of India’s 153.5 million TV
households. Of these, 77.5 mn are in urban India, and 76 mn are in
rural India. Currently, 22,000 homes are seeded with BAR-O-Meters.
BARC reports viewership of 658 million individuals as compared to

7. BARC INDIA’S SYSTEM REPORTS THE FOLLOWING ALSO:
• a. Time shifted viewing: Metrics of programs that are recorded
and viewed later. It observe VOSDAL+7, i.e. Viewed on Same
Day as Live + 7 days after.
• b. Simulcast viewing: Details of programs broadcast
simultaneously on more than one channels – viewership of
every individual channel can be reliably tracked.
• c. Viewing as per the New SEC (NCCS): Details as per the new
classification based on the education of Chief Wage Earner of
the family and the number of durables owned by the home
from a predefined list of 11 durables.

8. • BAR-O-meters: The BAR-O-meters BARC place in their metered
homes are compact and use the latest technology. They have a
3rd-generation OLED display (being more easily visible, this
facilitates interaction between the viewer and the bar-o-meter)
and an embedded SIM to automatically upload viewing data
(tie-ups with leading GSM operators ensure wide coverage). As
they are indigenously manufactured, they cost almost one-
sixth the price of imported meters, which lets us deploy a lot
more of them to measure viewership.

9. AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS (ABC):
• The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) of India is a non-profit circulation-
auditing organization. It certifies and audits the circulations of major
publications, including newspapers and magazines in India. ABC is a
voluntary organization initiated in 1948 that operates in different parts of
the world. The Bureau (ABC) certifies circulation figures of member
publications every six months i.e. for the audit periods January to June and
July to December. The Audits of circulation figures are carried out by
empaneled firms of Chartered Accountants as per the prescribed Bureau's
audit guidelines and procedures.
• Circulation figures that are checked and certified by an independent body
are an important tool and critical to the advertising business community.
The Bureau certifies audited Net Paid circulation figures of publications
enrolled with it for a continuous and definite six-monthly audit periods and
supplies copies of the ABC Certificates issued for such publications to each
member. Free distribution and bulk sales are also shown on the certificates
provided the relevant records are adequately maintained. Such records are
checked and facts and figures are scrutinized by impartial Auditors, and

10. FUNCTIONS OF ABC:
1. The ABC has its own field force that collect circulation figures of its
members published by contacting newspaper and magazines distributors.
2. It spread the information relating to the circulation figures of various
periodicals and publication member of advertisers and agencies.
3. It conducts its own readership survey to evaluate the reading habits of
particular publication.
4. The ABC also assesses the effects of various available media on different
section of the society. Thus, an advertiser can obtain valid comparative
picture of effectiveness of different media.
5. The certified figures published by ABC are taken as the true indicator of
the circulation and popularity of the newspaper/magazine.
6. The ABS collects its data from the sellers of the periodicals and
publications by using standard techniques of mail interviews or personal
interviews.

11. THE INDIAN READERSHIP SURVEY
• IRS is the single source survey for media and product
ownership/usage. The prime objective of the study is to collect
readership information from a cross-section of individuals, in great
detail, so as to present a true and unbiased picture of their
readership habits. On the media front, it also captures information on
television and cinema viewing habits, radio listening habits and
Internet usage. In addition to this, IRS captures information on
various FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) products, usage and
consumption and durable ownership amongst households. Since
media and product ownership/ consumption information is captured
from the same household, it enables linkages between the media and
product data. IRS equips you with information that is truly reflective
of the Indian population for making informed decisions

12. • IRS is the largest continuous readership research study in the
world with an annual sample size exceeding 2.56 lakh
(256,000) respondents. IRS collects a comprehensive range of
demographic information and provides extensive coverage of
consumer and product categories, including cars, household
appliances, household durables, household care and personal
care products, food and beverages, finance and holidays.[1] IRS
is not restricted to survey of readership alone but is
synonymous with both readership & consumption across
various FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) products
throughout India. IRS covers information on over 100 product
categories. IRS is conducted by MRUC (Media Research Users
Council) and RSCI (Readership Studies Council of India).

13. RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS OF MEDIA (RAM):
• RAM is an international media research company working with online
surveys and analysis of advertising and editorial content for media
companies, media consultants and advertisers worldwide. With hundreds of
media clients and about 1000 publications in 18 countries, RAM provides
the industry with cutting edge metrics of how ads, articles and other media
communication are consumed and understood – and what kind of impact it
has. RAM’s vision is to provide easy to use advanced IT solutions and be the
world’s leading supplier of knowledge-based and cost efficient analysis
services for media companies. With probably the largest reference database
in the world for media, RAM compare measured results against standard
values in order to evaluate the results achieved. In a period of over 10 years,
RAM has carried out over 50 million interviews of ads and editorial content
in order to measure the effectiveness of the communication and the
database is continuously growing. RAM was founded in 2001 with its
headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2007, RAM started a subsidiary
company in the United States, Research and Analysis of Media of Americas
Inc. and subsidiaries also in Norway and Finland in 2008. RAM opened 2008
an office in London for the UK & Ireland and most recently in Germany in

14. TELEVISION AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT (TAM)
• During mid 1990s, the industry body, then known as Joint Industry Body
(JIB), comprising of Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA), Indian Broadcast
Foundation (IBF) and Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI),
started looking at TV as an essential block of their media/marketing plan.
• All these industry stakeholders wanted to keep a regular track of the
variation of audience behavior across markets & viewer profile as well as
understand how they react to boost such as TV programme changes,
marketing and promotional changes, distribution changes, scheduling
changes, etc.
• Television audience measurement helps media companies and brands make
the right planning and programming decisions depend on their audience.
• To look deep intelligence into viewing behavior can improve both returns on
investment and brand reputation.

15. • To provide a valid and reliable television audience data, marketers with
specialized expertise are required.
• The system needs to be the result of many years of acquired proper
experience, research and development linked with the capacity to develop to
changes in TV technology, research technology, and the users’ TAM system
needs.
• When the measurement system is observing very comparable findings, the
television audience measurement is reliable. Also, the television audience
measurement is independent when the supplier operates from a position of
impartiality identified by all the market’s members.
• When the television audience measurement is transparent, each component
of the system is understandable and accessible to qualified auditing by the
market.

16. COMSCORE DIGITAL: COMSCORE
• It is a global media measurement and analytics company providing
marketing data and analytics to many of the world's largest
enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. With the
introduction of Unified Digital Measurement (UDM) in May 2009,
comScore implemented a solution to digital audience measurement
that organically blended both panel and census-based measurement
approaches into a single unified methodology. comScore has
developed this proprietary methodology to calculate audience reach
in a manner not affected by variables such as cookie deletion and
cookie blocking/rejection to help reconcile longstanding differences
between the two measurement approaches.
• ComScore Digital is a competitive intelligence tool that allows
agencies, advertisers & publishers to quantify and evaluate the
overall display advertising landscape.

17. NATIONAL READERSHIP SURVEY (NRS)
• NRS is conducting survey of all media, but mainly the print medium is
conducted by the National Readership Survey Council. This body consists of
members from INS (Indian Newspaper Society), AAAI (Advertising Agencies
Associations of India) and ABC (Audit bureau of Circulation).
• The survey is conducted on all-India basis, urban as well as rural, amongst
individuals who are 12 years and older. All town classes are covered in the
urban areas.
• NRS gives information on large-scale like the reach of each medium among
various audiences described demographically.
• NRS describe readers by sex, age, income, socio-economic class,
occupation, education, and geographical location and lifestyle parameters
such as product ownership and consumption patterns.
• The survey is conducted only on urban readers across the country. The
country is primarily divided into four zones i.e. North, South, East and West.

18. • The survey in West Zone covered towns in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh,
Maharashtra and Goa.
• Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir were excluded because of the uncertain law
and order situation.
• Himachal Pradesh could not be included since the sample size after the
exclusion of Jammu & Kashmir was too small to provide representative
estimates of readership habits and media exposure.
• The objective of NRS is to provide advertisers, ad agencies, publishers and
others with evaluates readership of major publications and to make broader
differentiation exposures to press, cinema, radio and television.
• NRS is to provide information that can be used as the basis for buying and
selling advertising space in the press medium.

19. BUSINESSMAN’S READERSHIP SURVEY
• Indian Media Research Bureau (IMRB) introduced first time in India, a
Businessman’s Readership Survey a specialized research to measure the
readership of publication among the business and professionals and the
private and public sections.
• It provide estimates of- Primary and secondary readership, place of reading,
the extent of business travels and use of business services.
• IMRB has initiated a syndicated research about the readership habit of
professionals engaged in various activities in India.

20. TELEVISION RATING POINT (TRP)
• Television Rating Point (TRP) is a tool that helps to find out which
programmes are viewed the most.
• This gives us an index of the choice of the people and also the popularity of
a particular channel.
• In India INTAM (Indian Television Audience Measurement) is the electronic
rating agency which does this work.
• INTAM uses the following methodologies for calculating TRP. TRP is
measured by : Diary system, People’s meter and Laser meter.

21. • Diary system is a system of programme where panel members keep a diary
on what they watch.
• A device called as People’s meter is attached to the TV set in a few
thousand viewer’s houses for judging purpose. It records the time and the
proramme that a viewer watches on a particular day. These numbers are
treated as sample for the overall TV owners in different geographical and
demographic sectors. Then, the average is taken for a 30 day period which
gives the viewership status for a particular channel. It reads the frequencies
of channels, which are later, decoded into the name of the channels and the
agency prepares a national data on the basis of its sample home readings.
• Nielsen people meters are installed on every TV set in the panel home. Each
meter is capable of accurately monitoring and storing individual panel
member viewing on each TV set- every second, 24 hours a day, 365 days a
year. One meter in each home is then enabled to transmit all the stored data
to a production center by means of the household’s telephone line or a
dedicated cellular.

22. ADVANTAGES OF PEOPLE’S METER
• The people meter measurement technology surpasses all previous
measurement methods and dominates TAM methodologies worldwide.
• Any people meter proposed by Nielsen to their clients represents state-of-
the-art hardware and software solutions based on reliable, flexible and non
intrusive design and development guidelines. This is only way for Nielsen to
guarantee clients that they have invested in an advanced, future-proof
electronic device capable to continue measuring TV audiences for decades
to come.
• Within this dynamic environment, people meters have proved themselves
capable of measuring audiences with a degree of accuracy and detail which
surpasses previous alternatives measurement systems.

23. DISADVANTAGES OF PEOPLE’S METER
• People meter show smaller audiences for programs on the major television
networks than did the previously used methods of telephone surveys and
viewer diaries.
• People meters, which are located primarily in private homes, fail to take
account of many young adults who regularly watch those programs in
college dormitories and at military bases.
• Although people meters presented substantial improvements over the
previous system of the diary method, which consisted of viewers physically
recording measurement caused significant controversy.
• The method change costs stations whose audience had been overestimated.
• Another drawback in the technique, as cable operators frequently change
the frequencies of the different channels before sending signals to the
homes. It may be very misleading to read a channel according to a particular
frequency even if the down linking frequency is same all over India.

24. • Laser meter records the number of people sitting in the room through heat
sensors. It is more advanced device. The limitations of diary system and
people meter are overcome by laser meter. If panel member forget to note
in the diary or viewer’s forget to clock in the people’s meter then the system
becomes inconclusive and unreliable.
(a) TRP Weekly Reports- the TRP Weekly Reports provide data on weekly
viewership of different programmes by cities. The viewership details are
provided separately for primary audience and for the total audience (Total
audience= primary audience + secondary audience).
(b) TRP monthly reports- the monthly reports present additional analysis like
frequency of viewing, duplication in viewership between leading programmes,
cumulative reach gained over several episode of the same programme and the
profits of readers.
(c) Special reports- They provide rating for a specific event of programme.
TRP helps the sponsors in selecting the programme to be sponsored for
placing the ads before these programmes.