Unified Measurement System - Is it still the need for Indian radio industry?

“The need of an hour is a unified Radio audience Measurement system that can provide more detailed listenership statistics to the India radio stations.” – said radio industry experts.   

Radio Mirchi & Red FM, the two leading Indian radio stations, follow IRS to gather listenership data but they also do research internally time to time for getting engagement data and measuring consumer behavior.

However, still there are a few radio stations like My FM that neither follow IRS nor RAM but follow their own currency and gazes the listenership preferences on RJs, music and time band.  

Although RAM and IRS provide indicative inputs on radio’s reach across the country, the coverage of just four cities of India can’t serve the purpose. A more accurate measurement currency is absolutely necessary for the Indian radio industry to measure their audiences and to typically understand the user behavior across digital radio and traditional radio.

So, which the agency can provide you an accurate India radio rating and how? 

IRAM Radio (Indian Radio Audience Measurement System) launched this year. It came as a ray of hope for the Indian radio market by providing detailed breakups of the listenership data such as reach, total listening hours and demographics of the radio listeners.

IRAM conducts telephonic surveys across 107 cities all over India and these cities are further divided into four categories based on their population. The surveys are conducted on a quarterly basis to benefit both private and AIR radio stations and then data is released at their official website. Advertisers or advertising agencies can check the top line figures for free at any time but detailed listening habits by gender, age group, and economics demographics are only available on subscription.

According to the recent survey conducted by IRAM radio, Radio Mirchi and Red FM pull in maximum users in Delhi location i.e. 1.3 million and 1.2 million respectively. Undoubtedly, such detailed insights from IRAM radio will be really helpful for advertisers in making decisions relating to the placement of advertisements in various channels.

Hence, IRAM radio is a pushing limit for any radio station and fits into the overall vision of measuring not just engagement, but detailed reach as well!