Have you ever wondered about buzzwords like media monitoring, and how they came to be
a thing?
Check out this video for a super quick review on the history and evolution of media monitoring!
Hey guys, it’s Chia from Brand24 and today I want to talk about media monitoring!
Media monitoring, as we know it today, is the practice of monitoring the media for publicly
available mentions of a specific topic or keyword — this includes mentions found in:
news sites, blogs, forums, social media, review sites, and a bunch of other sources.
For example, a lot of influencers, celebrities and artists... they monitor the media for mentions
of their name or personal brand, to see what their fans are saying about them.
Entrepreneurs and businesses monitor mentions of their companies and products, to see how
their customers like them.
PR specialists and digital agencies alike, like to monitor mentions of their clients, to measure
how people are responding to their campaigns.
Media monitoring today is commonly used in reputation management, brand monitoring, market
research, marketing campaigns, customer service and sales, and many, many other areas...
To better understand the general concept of media monitoring (like what it’s used for and
how), let’s quickly go over the history and evolution of media monitoring!
So, first of all, media monitoring has always been a thing; it’s just taken different
forms during different stages of development.
Back in the day, before the Internet blew up, media monitoring was restricted to print
media and it was known as “press clipping”.
That’s because it was mostly about people looking through newspapers (the press) for
mentions of themselves, so that they could clip the articles.
In fact, this is how the first media monitoring (or press clipping) agency came to be established,
back in 1852, by a Polish newsagent based in London.
When Romeike (Romejko) observed that a lot of actors, musicians and writers were going through his
inventory just to look for articles mentioning themselves, he realized that he could turn
this into a really good business by providing a press clipping service.
Almost 30 years later, another notable press-clipping agency popped up.
This one was based in Paris, and we can see the demand for media monitoring grow through
the way that these agencies started to develop their services.
While Romeike’s agency in London would provide his clients with newspapers and publications
that contained mentions of their name, Alfred Cherie’s agency in Paris would collect the
individual articles containing these mentions, and turn them into small, little booklets for his clients.
Once the 20th Century rolled around, with the introduction of radio and television broadcasting,
mass media no longer referred to just print sources.
Press clipping agencies began to monitor media like radio and television for mentions.
Of course, the methodology wasn’t exactly high-tech back then: instead of algorithms,
agencies would have to watch and listen to radio and television transmissions, and then
transcribe sections containing mentions for their clients.
Monitoring radio and television became a lot easier in the 50’s and 60’s, with the
development of video and audio recorders.
Later, the Digital Age arrived in the ‘90s, and the Internet became much more accessible
to many parts of the world.
“Press clipping” became “media monitoring” (finally), and services developed to include digital
search and scan technologies, just to monitor online sources.
In 1998, media monitoring firm, WebClipping, was the first of its kind to monitor Internet-based
news media, which prompted the entire media monitoring industry to move towards monitoring
digital sources in general.
The development of the Internet was a real catalyst of change for many industries — not
excluding media monitoring.
According to a study conducted by IBM a couple years ago, 90% of all the data in the world
was created in a span of just 2 years; that’s how quickly information moves on the Internet.
Finally, in the 21st century, in response to a growing demand for more data and more
analytics, we saw the launch of some of today’s top media monitoring tools (such as Brand24).
Apart from monitoring mentions, tools like Brand24 also provide advanced sentiment detection,
competitive analysis features, and much more!
It’s a far cry from the earlier forms of media monitoring that history has seen!
Today, even academic institutions and scientists use media monitoring tools to study things
like bias and objectivity in the media (along with a long list of other topics).
And this doesn’t even include how governments, schools, and other public entities practice
media monitoring.
Over the years, media monitoring has really evolved to meet the needs of a changing society.
Previously, this meant monitoring print media for press clippings; today, this means monitoring
online news sites, media, press and lots of other sources of data.
To get a better idea of what modern-day media monitoring entails, you can take a look at
a media monitoring tool like Brand24.
I’m throwing a link to the Brand24 website in the video description below, so you can
stop by, see what it looks like, and see what kind of information media monitoring provides
today — you might be surprised at what you find!
Alright, thanks so much for watching guys!
If you have any questions or thoughts on the history and evolution of media monitoring,
definitely let me know in the Comments section below!
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and digital marketing each week.
Thanks again for watching, I hope you learned something new, and I’ll see you next time,
bye!