What is Media Research?

What is Media Research?

Media Research involves the collection of data about the various advertising media, surveying consumers on their media preferences and habits, and carrying out primary and secondary research on the effectiveness of each medium for selling particular types of products. Few advertising agencies or advertising departments in India have “media research departments”; where these exist; it is the department’s responsibility to draw up media plans and strategies.

Most advertising agencies, however, have a “media department or media division” which carries out the task of media planning. The majority of agencies depend upon outside marketing agencies to conduct readership or audience surveys for them.

Media research is concerned with advertising reach, frequency and the effectiveness of different media and combination of media (media-mix) in reaching target audience. Media research attempts to finds out the most suitable media or media-mix that would suit the needs of the advertiser.

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Role of Media Research

The role of media research can be stated as follows:

Readers Profile

Media research helps to understand the profile of the readers, listeners and viewers. Readers’ profile relates to the data on the age, income, occupation, buying pattern and other demographic and socio-economic details. Such profile helps to draft effective ad messages to the target audience.

Selection of Media

Proper media research helps to select the most suitable media mix that would be required by the advertiser depending upon the type of product, prospects, ad budget etc. The advertiser will select that media which has maximum readership or viewership or listener ship of the target audience.

Booking of Time and Space

Media planning department or the media operations department can book time and space in the media depending upon the programmes viewed or articles read by the target audience.

Importance to Media Owners

The media research helps the media owners to improve their programmes or editorial contents so as to increase listenership, viewership and readership. It also helps the media owners to fix charges for their time and space that would be used by the advertisers. For example, if the research indicate that the programme has increased the viewership by 50% then the advertisers will have to increase frequency of advertise.

Sponsorship of Programmes

It helps the advertiser to select a particular programme for sponsorship. The advertiser may elect the sponsorship of that programme which is mostly viewed or listened by the target audience.

Benefit to Audience

Audience get better editorials and programmes as the media owners make every effort to improve their contents. The media owners try to improve their programmes or editorials, so as to attract the attention of large number of readers, listeners, or viewers. This would bring them more advertising revenue.

Benefit to Media Planners

It helps the media planners to understand the rating from the various programmes on TV channels and on radio through Television Rating Points (TRP) reports. Again, it helps them to understand the circulation trends of newspapers and magazines through Audit Bureau of Circulation Reports.

Benefit to Research Organisations

Media research enables the research Organisation such as Indian Marketing Research Bureau (IMRB), the Operations Research Group (ORG) and others to keep their activities moving in the right direction.

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Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC)

Audit Bureau of Circulation is research agency operating in India for more than 44 years, which for a fee does circulate assessment for newspaper and magazines. Media Research agencies are specialised agencies which collect information about various advertising media (Operations, circulations, popularity, cos tetc.) and supply necessary information to their clients.

ABC is one of such agencies operating in India. Initiative for establishing ABC was taken by people from advertising profession. As a result of their efforts, the ABC was established in 1948 as a voluntary, self regulatory, co-operative association of advertiser and publisher.

The ABC is incorporated in 1948 as a non-profit making organisation with liability limited by guarantee. The management of ABC is by a council of management. Equal representation is given to nominees of publishers on the one hand and to advertisers and advertising agencies on the other hand. ABC is a co-operative agency or an association of advertisers, advertising agencies and publishers of periodicals that disseminates information about newspapers and periodicals. For this, each publication supplies periodical information to this Bureau.

All important publications are the member of this Bureau and nearly every daily, newspaper circulation is audited by ABC. Only those publishers where publications are paid by the readers can become the member of ABC. These publications, which are distributed on free basis, cannot become the members of this Bureau. ABC charges a fee and every six months it provides its members with Audited Circulation Certificate in respect of important newspapers and periodicals published in the country.

Functions of Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC)

The ABC performs the following important functions:

• The ABC has its own field force that collect circulation figures of its member published by contacting newspaper and magazines distributors.
  
  
• It disseminates the information relating to the circulation figures of various periodicals and publication member of advertisers and agencies.
  
  
• It conducts its own tests and readership surveys to assess the reading habits of particular publication.
  
  
• The ABC also assesses the impact of various available media on different segment of the society. Thus, an advertiser can obtain reliable comparative picture of effectiveness of different media.
  
  
• The certified figures published by ABC are taken as the true index of the circulation and popularity of the newspaper/magazine.
  
  
• The ABC collects its data from the vendors of the periodicals and publications by using standard techniques of mail interviews or personal interviews.

The ABC plays an important role in providing reliable and authentic data relating to the circulation of newspapers and magazines. This information becomes the basis of buying space, in different newspapers and magazines.

The membership of ABC is purely voluntary and any publisher willing to follow the rules and procedures of ABC regarding his circulation data can join its membership.

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Television Rating Points (TRPS)

The TRP system was introduced in July 1986 to provide quick feedback on the viewership of different television programmes.

TRP is conduced by Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB). It is conducted in 9 major cities of India – Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kanpur, Ahmadabad and Trivandrum. The TRP system involves collection of viewership data in respect of TV programmes on a weekly basis from a panel of sizeable number of respondents. The member of the panel record their viewership of different TV programmes daily in a special diary provided to them. The filled diaries are collected every week from the panel members and the data is analysed.

TRP panel members belong to either of the two groups:

• Primary Audience: Adults from TV owning households (irrespective of their TV viewing habits).
  
  
• Secondary Audience: Adults from non-TV owning households who view TV at least once a week. Programme rating is the percentage of the panel members who viewed that programme. One TRP is equal to one per cent of TV audience. For example, if 60% of the audience viewed Crime Petrol, then Crime Petrol gains 60 TRPs.

TRP report: TRPs report is as under:

• 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 andfor the total audience (Total Audience = Primary Audience + Secondary Audience). Weekly viewership data is given across sex, age and income of the viewers.
  
  
• TRP Monthly Reports: The Monthly Reports present additional analysis like frequency of viewing, duplication inviewership between leading programmes, cumulative reach gained over several episode of the same programme and the profits of readers.
  
  
• Special Reports: They provide rating for a specific event ofprogramme.

The TRPs are very useful in media planning.

• It assists in selecting the programme that is to be sponsored.
• It helps in placing the spot ads before a particular programme.

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National Readership Survey (NRS)

The history of NRS in India dates back to 1970. Since then, four NRSs have been conducted. The first was carried out by ORC in 1970. The second jointly by IMRB and ORG in 1978. The third was conducted solely by IMRB in 1983-84, and the Fourth NRS jointly by IMRB and MARG in 1990.

Objectives National Readership Survey (NRS)

The objective of NRSs is to provide advertisers, ad agencies, publishers and others with estimates readership of major publications and to make broader comparisons exposures to press, cinema, radio and television.

The objectives of NRS can be broadly divided into two:

• Primary Purpose: The primary purpose is to provide information that can be used as the basis for buying and selling advertising space in the press medium.
  
  
• Secondary Purpose: The secondary purpose of the NRS is to provide the media users with data on comparative exposure levels to other major mass media namely, television, video, cinema and radio.

Information Areas Covered by NRS

The NRS provided information on the following areas:

• Readership estimates for various selected publications.
  
  
• Listenership of radio.
  
  
• Viewership of television, video and cinema.
  
  
• Inter-media duplication (i.e. those persons who are exposed to more than one media), and
  
  
• Duplication between publication (duplication means those readers who read more than one publication magazine or newspaper).

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. For instance, the survey in West Zone covered towns in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Goa.

The NRS-IV has covered Urban India excluding all off-shore territories (such as Andaman & Nicobar Islands), Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, and Himachal Pradesh. 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 selection procedure of respondents for the survey was made using a two-step procedure, which are:

• A sample of voters was first drawn from the electoral rolls in group of a pre-determined size.
  
  
• The addresses where the selected voters were residing were located. Within each such contacted household, adults‟ age 15+ years constituted the frame for randomly selecting an individual for the readership interview.

Publication

A special Publications Committee, comprising of senior media controllers and directors from advertising agencies, decides on the Publications to be included in the NRS. The Committee identifies and includes those publication covered by ABC depending on their circulation figures.

They use their collective judgment to include publications not covered by the ABC. NRS III covered 322 publications, whereas NRS IV included 288 publications. It is to be noted here that Operations Research Group (ORG)did conduct a similar study in 1989-90 called ORG-NRS, which covered 604 publications and interviewed readers in both urban and rural areas.

Social-Economic Classification

For the first time, NRS-IV provides the distribution of households by social class, according to the new Socio-Economic Classification (SEC) system that has been developed by the Market Research Society of India (MIRSI). This system, which is based on the occupation and education of the chief wage earner of the household, has been created so as to provide an alternative to household income which has so far been the basis of classifying households.

The socio-economic classification as developed by MRSI consists of eight socio-economic classes labeled as A1, B2, C, D, E1 and E2, A1 denotes the upper most socio-economic class, and E2 stands for the lowest socio-economic class.

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What is Media Survey?

Media survey refers to the research survey conducted on various facets of media such as press circulation and readership exposure levels to television, video, cinema and radio. Media survey provides useful information about readership for various publications, viewership of television, video and cinema, listenership of radio etc.

There are several organisations which conduct media survey on a regular basis for their clients. They conduct marketing research according to the requirements of their clients on payment basis and supply them useful data. Such services in marketing research are known as syndicated research.

Syndicated research is conducted in the area of movement of consumer and products through retail outlets, advertising audit by measurements of newspaper readership, survey of TV viewing etc., periodic survey of consumers‟ attitude and behaviour research. These studies choose a number of samples from the all India market and obtain estimates of the consumer response (e.g., brands consumed, newspapers/magazines read viewership of particular TV programmes etc.) at different point of time on regular basis. Such surveys are of great help in estimating the marketing potentials.

Syndicated Research Services

The following agencies offer syndicated research services

• National Readership Survey (NRS): Five NRS studies have so far been conducted. The first one was conducted by ORG in 1970, second NRS was jointly done by ORG and Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB) the third and the fourth NRS was conducted exclusively by IMRB. The third NRS was conducted in 1985. The following NRS conducted in 1990 whereas the fifth NRS was completed in 1995.
  
  
• Businessmen’s Readership Survey (BRS): IMRB has initiated a syndicated research about the readership habit of professionals engaged in various activities in India. It mainly highlights the newspapers read, the place of reading and obtains some profile of the readers from about 8,800respondents located in twelve large cities in India.
  
  
• Television Rating Point (TRP): IMRB conducts a panel based study of about 3000 households in 9 cities about their television viewing patterns. It cross-classifies the viewership data on age,six, income basis for each television programme watched.