6.6m readership makes Prothom Alo highest read Bangladesh daily
Prothom Alo is the mostly read daily in Bangladesh with about 6.6 million readers reading the newspaper everyday, according to National Media Survey 2018.
The survey is done by Kantar MRB, a UK-based research organisation that operates in 67 countries. Kantar MRB is a sister concern of media agency network WPP.
They have been doing this survey every two years since 1997. Back then, it was named Dhaka Media Survey. From 2002, it was renamed National Media Survey.
There are 11,44,023 people in the country who are aged over 15 years. Among them, 16,183 directly took part in the survey. Besides newspapers, TV, internet, radio and billboards were taken into consideration in the survey. It also monitored mobile talktime usage and mobile financial transactions.
"Kantar MRB is a reputed organisation that has huge credibility. The survey had holistic information. It helps brands to make a better connection with the consumers. But yes there are a few sections where they could have added a few more categories." said Professor Syed Farhat Anwar, a teacher at the Dhaka University's Institute of Business Administration (IBA).
According to NMS 2016, 23.7 per cent of people aged over 15 years read newspapers regularly. There are 180 dailies and 200 magazines worth mentioning. In the 2016 survey, Prothom Alo had a readership of 5.3 million, which has increased to 6.6 million this year.
The daily is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.
According to Google Analytics, 1 million people read the online edition of Prothom Alo (www.prothomalo.com) everyday, making it the most popular Bangla website with a daily readership of 7.6 million. As per Alexa, it is the number one Bangla website. Its Facebook page (www.facebook.com/DailyProthomAlo) have around 13.9 million fans. Prothom Alo is ranked 73rd among all the media outlets of the world in terms of followers.
"To establish a brand, it is very necessary to reach the people and maintain a strong relationship with them. Surveys like NMS help people make important decisions. I think this NMS is the most credible survey. For many years now, the brands have been taking help of the survey," said Shariful Islam, founder and managing director of Bangladesh Brand Forum.
According to MNS 2018, 85.9 per cent people watch TV regularly. On the other hand, growth of internet was the highest. Around 26.2 per cent of the country's total population regularly use internet while 14.9 per cent people listen to radio.
The survey was done in multi-stage cluster sampling system. It had equal participation of men and women. As many as 184 places of divisional cities, municipalities and villages were used for this survey, with 1650 centres being used to gather information.
"To decide on the medium of advertising, NMS Bangladesh is the ideal source. It helps us, the advertising companies and brand professionals," said Gausul Alam, Dhaka managing partner and creative chief of Grey Advertising Dhaka.