NRSC embarks on an innovative marketing and sales drive

Namrata Singh in Mumbai

In a significant development, the National Readership Studies Council (NRSC) has decided to offer the basic data of National Readership Survey (NRS) free of cost to advertising agencies which are members of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) and Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAA of I).

This is aimed at further strengthening the usage of NRS as an effective media planning tool.

According to industry sources, the availability of the basic NRS data without cost to professional ad agencies — which constitute bulk of buyers of media — is in keeping with NRSC’s objective of getting more and more ad agencies to use NRS in their media planning. However, while what is being made available free of cost is only the basic data, the agencies will have to pay for other related information.

Industry sources estimate the total cost of the data to agencies at about Rs 1 crore per annum.

The NRSC, in association with the ABC, the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) and AAA of I, commissioned the first NRS in 1995, in order to bring together a scientific approach to understanding readership behaviour. Since then, the NRS has been widely acknowledged as an authoritative and reliable source of data for the critically important functions of media planning and marketing.

The NRS has evolved as the industry’s largest and widespread survey covering rural and urban areas of the country and providing reliable data on readership, demographics and psychographics. The survey covers a study size of 1,47,000 individuals in 828 urban towns, plus 64,000 individuals in 2,071 villages. Further, it covers 484 publications and includes an overview of the mass media, Internet and data on press, television, radio and cinema. It covers a spectrum of 129 product categories, classified into 21 broad classifications.

For the NRS 2001 survey, Taylor Nelson Sofres Mode, IMRB and AC Nielsen were jointly commissioned for the syndicated study along with NRSC. On the other hand, the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) is conducted by the Media Research Users Council (MRUC).

Going by the history of the various readership surveys conducted in India, market research firm ORG had brought out the first readership survey in 1971. After a gap of seven years, in 1978, the second readership survey was brought out jointly by ORG and IMRB. In 1984, IMRB alone brought out the third survey. Subsequently, in 1991, IMRB and MARG together conducted the fourth survey. Then after four years, the fifth survey was brought out by IMRB, MARG, AC Nielsen and MODE. It has been continuous since 1999.