The single-source survey measures weekly consumption of all UK national press titles and their websites.
Conducted by BMRB, the research is based on a nationally representative sample of 8,000 UK adults. This sample will be rotated annually, with figures available at six-month intervals.
The data has also been merged with TGI (also produced by BMRB) to provide "total audience" data across the full spectrum of consumer behaviour captured by TGI including time diary, life-stage and word of mouth data.
Weekly "total" readership for national qualities has grown from 12.1 million in 1994, according to NRS data, to 15.2 million today, according to the GNM research.
ABC has already moved to providing group product reports, which include average daily circulation figures for newspapers and average daily unique users for websites. However, the reports do not provide audience figures and cannot provide net figures by group.
Stuart Taylor, GNM's commercial director, said: "More traditional forms of measurement ignore the fact that it's content that's relevant to audiences, not the platform of delivery.
"We believe that newspaper and internet audiences of nationals should be counted together, enabling advertisers to accurately measure the true reach of their campaigns."
Julie Hampshire, director of research at ZenithOptimedia, welcomed the move. She said: "This is exactly what media owners should be doing. This is a good start, because until now we have had nothing that measures the combined reach.
"The sample size of 8,000 per year is pretty robust. It is not as good as the 25,000 per year of NRS or TGI, but it is better than no data at all."
The NRS has been working to combine its readership figures with online users, accounting for duplication. A committee meeting is due to be held this week and if the plans are approved, fieldwork could begin in June.
.jpg)
.jpg)