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 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.
Role of Media Research
The role of media research can be stated as follows :
1. 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.
2. 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 listenership of the target audience.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Benefit to Research Organisations : Media research enables the research Organisation to keep their activities moving in the right direction.
