Why govt entities and private firms need media monitoring

By Fahed Aldeeb

Founder, Managing Director, Media Observer

With robust digitisation and increasing adoption of web and social media platforms by end-users, media monitoring has changed substantially in the past few years. This fast-growing industry now involves much more than just data gathering and is not limited to collecting intelligence on brands, competitors and the industry.

Thanks to the rising investments in digital advertising and increasing internet penetration, the global media monitoring tool market, which was worth $2.48 billion in 2019, is expected to touch $6.51 billion by 2027. As demand for digital media portals such as online magazines, newspapers and e-books is growing, and the popularity of social media platforms is surging, the role of media monitoring has become more crucial.

These investments focus on developing media monitoring services technology compatible with various traditional and new media, and enhance the user's ability to benefit from the data collected during monitoring processes in the short and long terms. The most popular hi-tech tools include artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) that help in archiving, retrieving and analyzing media monitoring data.

Professional media monitoring, which includes the use of AI and machine learning, assists companies in getting robust insights and build a strong long-term relationship with customers. Besides providing analytics, AI and machine learning help companies in keeping tab on quality and popularity of their media coverage. Machine Learning, for example, enables businesses to effortlessly discover new trends and patterns from large and diverse data sets. This helps them automate analysis to interpret business interactions, which were traditionally done by humans, to take evidence-based actions. All this empowers enterprises to deliver new, personalized or differentiated products and services.

Proper measuring of social media reach and understanding trends help brands in making informed decisions that only connect them with the customers but also help them in supporting the clientele as per their requirements. Simply put, the latest predictive analytics and statistics make them proactive rather than just reactive.

Broadly, there are five significant areas of a business that directly benefit from media monitoring: Reputation Management, Crisis Communications, Competitor Monitoring, Customer Service marketing and PR and Avoidance of Information Overload. All this helps in making a venture smarter and more successful.

Media monitoring, if done professionally, allows you to track topics relevant to your organisation and industry across print, online, and broadcast media output. To ensure long-term success and become a household brand or big player in a particular industry, businesses need to keep track of what’s happening around them. To see a crisis emerging and protect the business from any impact on its reputation, there is no better way than monitoring the media.

If it’s done well, media monitoring contributes a huge amount to delivering on business goals by providing insights on competitors, industries, and the relevant wider world, as well as insight into the effectiveness of communications campaigns. Simply put, scouring the fast-moving worlds of social media and the internet, as well as traditional media and broadcast, help the business survive and thrive in today’s competitive world.

But again, media monitoring that provides actionable insights requires intuitive tools and an understanding of what needs to be monitored. It also needs the right processes to ensure the information and statistics are analysed and acted on quickly when required. After all, what is monitored and what is done with the results affects the whole company and the brand.

#media_monitoring #artificial_intelligence #machine_learning