The new survey is the first to be conducted entirely online, as opposed to by telephone or in person. It covers free and paid-for news titles, although City AM is the only title to have come onboard so far.
It includes a comprehensive set of questions to segment newspaper readership by key demographic measures such as age, gender, residence, job title and income.
iCD Research has a panel of around 250,000 users, who are contacted about a range of surveys that the company conducts, including this readership tracking survey. People are constantly invited to join its panel via email and can earn points for taking part.
The market leader in newspaper readership surveys, which assesses the percentage of the population that have read a given newspaper over a set time period, is the National Readership Survey.
City AM is not eligible to sign up to the NRS because its circulation of around 100,000 copies a day does not meet the minimum requirement of 250,000 readers set by the NRS. However, the paper said that the online survey format at iCD is better suited to its target audience anyway.
Jens Torpe, chief executive of City AM, said: "The strong audience access and high quality reporting make the tracking survey ideal for monitoring our reader volume and distribution as we continue to experience consistent growth."
Results from the iCD Readership Tracking survey are available to buyers in quarterly reports to view long-term trends over successive fiscal periods.
Paul Dixon, managing director of iCD Research, said: "We are delighted to have City AM purchasing the tracker as it demonstrates our approach to quality online research is attracting more and more strategic clients."
iCD Research has also reportedly approached the other freesheets, such as thelondonpaper and the London Lite. Last month, thelondonpaper criticised the NRS for not being able to release its inaugural data for the two freesheets until September.
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