MMarket ResearchIndia

Industry expertise

Media & Entertainment market research in India

Audience, content and platform research for OTT, TV, radio and publishers.

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Quick answer

Market Research India is a specialist media & entertainment research consultancy in India. We interview viewers, advertisers, creators in Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Odia and English, with field teams in 50 cities and 4 methods matched to how this sector actually buys.

  • Proposal in 24 hours

    Scoped, itemised and fixed-fee.

  • 50 cities, 14 languages

    Our own supervised field teams.

  • Senior-led, NDA-first

    A research director on every project.

2,400+

Projects delivered

50

Cities with field teams

30

Industries covered

14

Indian languages

01

The decisions we help you make

Indian audiences are regional-first and mobile-first, and the subscription decision is made in a household where four people want four different things. Churn follows the end of a show far more reliably than it follows the end of a billing month.

  • What makes viewers subscribe to OTT?

  • How are regional languages growing?

  • What content do audiences want?

  • Which titles justify the subscription price, and which merely retain subscribers you already had?

  • Where should the next regional-language investment go?

Each of these is a decision with a cost attached, which is why we design backwards from them rather than forwards from a questionnaire.

02

Who we talk to, and how we reach them

Who you talk to decides what the study can conclude. We treat each audience as a separate recruitment problem rather than as quotas in one sample.

  • Viewers

    Recruited from verified panels with quotas on language, platform repertoire and co-viewing, screened on actual viewing in the last seven days rather than on a claimed subscription.

  • Advertisers

    Approached by name at brands and media agencies, screened on annual media spend, category and whether the respondent sets the plan or signs it off.

  • Creators

    Sampled across follower bands and languages through creator networks and MCNs, screened on posting frequency and the share of income earned from content.

Interviews run in Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Odia and English, with every questionnaire translated and back-translated before fieldwork. Moderators and interviewers are briefed on the media & entertainment category itself, not handed a script — which is the difference between a respondent answering politely and a respondent explaining themselves.

04

What a typical study looks like

Indicative, not fixed — but close enough to budget against before you have written a brief.

Indicative scope — media & entertainment study

Typical sample
n=2,000 viewers across 6 languages, 8 focus groups and 40 advertiser and creator interviews
Who we interview
Viewers, Advertisers, Creators — each recruited against a separate screener rather than drawn from one general sample.
Core methods
Advertising & Media Research, Online Surveys, Focus Group Discussions, Brand Health Tracking
Fieldwork window
3–5 weeks
Standard deliverables
Ad effectiveness scores, Creative guidance, Media mix insights, Real-time dashboards
Signature output
A content-to-retention map separating titles that acquire from titles that merely retain
Lead time
6–8 weeks from sign-off to debrief

05

Compliance, ethics and data quality

Research in this sector carries obligations that a generic fieldwork house will not have thought about. These are the ones we build into the protocol before the first interview is scheduled.

  • Age-appropriate exposure

    Stimulus is matched to certification. No participant sees material above their age rating, and anyone under 18 needs parental consent.

  • Pre-release confidentiality

    Unreleased content is screened under NDA on controlled devices, with watermarking where the title requires it.

  • Creator earnings kept private

    Income and brand-deal figures are reported as banded aggregates and never attributed to a named creator.

  • Verification you can audit

    Every viewer and creator we count is screened against a written definition, de-duplicated, GPS- and timestamp-logged in the field, and re-contacted on a 10% back-check with 10% of audio audited by a supervisor who did not run the interview.

What we will not do on a media & entertainment study

We will not substitute an audience without telling you, quietly loosen a screener to hit a quota, interview anyone who has not understood what they are consenting to, or move identifiable personal data outside India without your written agreement. If the fieldwork cannot be done properly, we say so at proposal stage rather than at debrief.

How we work

Our research process

  1. 01

    Discovery

    We turn your business question into clear research objectives.

  2. 02

    Design

    Sampling, method, questionnaire and discussion guides, translated into local languages.

  3. 03

    Fieldwork

    Supervised field teams with GPS, audio and back-check quality control.

  4. 04

    Analysis

    Statistical and thematic analysis by senior researchers.

  5. 05

    Insight

    Board-ready reports, dashboards and workshops with clear recommendations.

Before you brief us

Frequently asked questions

What does a media & entertainment research project cost in India?

Cost follows the sample, the seniority of the audience and the number of cities. Reaching viewers costs a fraction of what it costs to reach creators, so the audience mix moves the number far more than the headline interview count. Send a brief and you get a fixed-fee proposal within 24 hours.

Which cities should a media & entertainment study cover?

Start where the sector concentrates — Mumbai, Noida, Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Chennai — then add markets that match your distribution rather than the national map. Most clients run four to eight cities so results can be compared side by side.

How do you make sure respondents are genuinely advertisers?

Each audience has its own written screener and its own frame. Respondents are de-duplicated against past projects, fieldwork is GPS- and timestamp-logged, 10% are re-contacted on a back-check and 10% of audio is audited by a supervisor who did not conduct the interview.

How long does a media & entertainment study take?

Fieldwork of the scope described above runs 3–5 weeks, and the whole project is typically 6–8 weeks from sign-off to debrief. Fieldwork usually begins five to seven working days after sign-off, once screeners and translations are approved.

Which methods suit media & entertainment research best?

For this sector we most often use advertising & media research, online surveys, focus group discussions, brand health tracking. The right combination depends on whether you need to size something, explain it or test it — a brief that names the decision gets a sharper design than one that names a method.

What safeguards apply to media & entertainment fieldwork?

Stimulus is matched to certification. No participant sees material above their age rating, and anyone under 18 needs parental consent. Alongside that, all personal data is collected on informed consent, held in India, pseudonymised before analysis and deleted on an agreed schedule, in line with the DPDP Act, 2023 and the ESOMAR code.

Request a proposal

Tell us the media & entertainment decision you are facing and we will scope it.

Sector at a glance

Hub cities
2
Audiences covered
3
Fieldwork window
3–5 weeks
Lead time
6–8 weeks
Proposal
Within 24 hours
See related case studies

Keep exploring

Media & Entertainment research, city by city and method by method

Fifty cities, twenty methods and the sectors that sit closest to media & entertainment. Each page is written for that specific combination of market and approach.

Tier 1 metros

8

Full-scale quantitative fieldwork, viewing-facility groups and senior media & entertainment interviews in the eight largest markets.

Sectors that sit next to this one

4

These most often appear in the same programme as a media & entertainment study, either as an adjacent market or a shared audience.

Next step

Make your next media & entertainment decision with evidence.

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