Audience measurement organisations
The audience of Nicaraguan media is measured through costly surveys prepared by the Organización de Agencias de Publicidad (Organisation of Advertising Agencies - ONAP). Each year, ONAP elaborates these surveys and distributes them to its affiliate agencies to use when advertising. Generally they only measure the audiences of radio and TV. ONAP ranks the most followed media in the country, details the type of audience segmented by educational, economic and age group, and provides schedules of greater consumption and places of residence. With this segmentation, advertising agencies can offer companies the most appropriate schedules according to the level of income and the educational level of the audience. Surveys are only available to those media who can afford to pay US$10,000 to know more about their audience.
Some polling companies also conduct studies, but most of them only as opinion polls, measuring the perceptions of people on certain political and social issues, not on consumer media. Some universities, such as the Central American University (UCA) and the University of Commercial Sciences (UCC) have also conducted studies of audiences, but very rarely.