Archive for ‘Media Measurement’:


Is “Automated” Costing You Results?

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

by Carol Holden*

Flickr Image: ohad

Flickr Image: ohad

Among all of the lists of trends and predictions for the industry in 2010, as the person in charge of BurrellesLuce Media Measurement custom, Sentiment Analysis (aka tone) jumps to the top for me. Even as more social media monitoring companies add new measurement tools, the question regarding accuracy continues to linger.

In thinking about how to work with a sentiment analysis tool the analogy with online banking comes to mind. Would you continue to pay your bills online or use an ATM if you knew you lost 30 cents for every dollar you spent? Certainly 70 percent accuracy is not good enough for my money. How can it be good enough to reflect the hard earned efforts of an ongoing PR program, which ultimately comes down to money as well? How much staff time would you still need to invest in the sentiment results to make up the difference lost? And how would you pinpoint the percentage of stories that need human review or would you ultimately have to re-review everything?

Forester Principal Analyst Suresh Vital raised some interesting points involving the maturity of sentiment analysis in a recent article on Destinations.com. The most telling point: in talking with his clients, who have deployed some form of sentiment analysis, accuracy rests at about 50 percent.  “In the near term,” Vital says, “human intervention will still be necessary.”

Automated, hybrid, all-human-judgment, please share your experiences in judging the sentiment of your coverage. What is good enough and what can you afford to miss out on?

*Bio: I’ve been in the media business all of my adult life, first in newspapers before going full circle and joining BurrellesLuce, where I now direct the Media Measurement department. I’ve always enjoyed meeting and especially listening to the needs of our customers and others in the public relations and communications fields; I welcome sharing ideas through the Fresh Ideas blog. One of my professional passions is providing the type of service to a client that makes them respond, “atta girl” – inspiring our entire team to keep striving to be the best. Although I have been lucky enough to travel through much of Asia and most major U.S. cities for business or pleasure, my free time is now spent with my daughter, visiting family/friends, and of course the Jersey shore. Twitter: @domeasurement LinkedIn: Carol Holden Facebook: BurrellesLuce

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Posted in Media Measurement, Public Relations | No Comments »

Are You Traditional or All Digital in 2010?

Monday, January 18th, 2010

By Crystal DeGoede*

With diminishing advertising budgets, most companies cannot afford to be everywhere; social media seems like an affordable and cost-saving way to engage and market to your target audience (especially if that is where your audience tends to “hang out”).  As a result, more and more organizations are turning to digital agencies for building their brand online, instead of using their traditional shop. “Fifty percent of US users spend more time online than on any Retro TV Commercialother medium.  Of this percentage, fewer and fewer engage with branded sites, rather they flock in growing numbers to social networks – the sites they also prefer for sharing viral content with peers,” states Emmanuel Vivier in his blog post from VanksenCultureBuzz.

In fact, the rise of social media as a marketing platform has sparked a land grab among communications agencies — digital, public relations, traditional ad firms, etc. – all claiming rightful ownership of the space. Despite concerns about measurement, 64 percent of CMOs said they planned to increase their spending on social media in 2010, according to a December report from The CMO Club. And a “state of interactive agencies” survey of about 100 global interactive marketers conducted by Forrester Research found:

23 percent believed their “traditional brand agency” is capable of planning and managing interactive marketing activities. About 46 percent did not believe them capable, with the rest neutral on the question.

While some decision makers are a little cautious when it comes to a digital agency handling all of their marketing/branding strategies,  and  traditional agencies scatter to get on-board, some organizations need their online presence today, not tomorrow.  And that is why some companies are taking on two agencies, a digital agency to help them in the social media space and the traditional agency to make sure those web guys are keeping with the branding guidelines. The double agency approach means higher cost and more organization.

Will you or your company do more traditional or more social media marketing this year? Has the economy affected your advertising budget for 2010?  Will you drop your traditional agency for a digital one in 2010? Please share your thoughts with the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.

*Bio: After graduating from East Carolina University with a Marketing degree in 2005, Crystal DeGoede moved to New Jersey. In her four years as a member of the BurrellesLuce marketing team and through her interaction with peers and clients she has learned what is important or what it takes to develop a career when you are just starting out. She is passionate about continuing to learn about the industry in which we serve and about her career path. By engaging readers on Fresh Ideas Crystal hopes to further develop her social media skills and inspire other “millennials” who are just out of college and/or working in the field of marketing and public relations. Twitter: @cldegoede LinkedIn: Crystal DeGoede Facebook: BurrellesLuce

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Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Media Industry, Media Measurement, Public Relations, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Names (Mom and Google) You Trust Sometimes Lack Accuracy

Friday, January 15th, 2010
Flickr Image: bunchofpants

Flickr Image: bunchofpants

If you don’t know what day your birthday is for 33 years what else may you not know? I was talking to my friend Frankie and he was relaying the story about how he celebrates his birthday on both January 14th and 15th. I’m in favor of stretching out a celebration, but it was the reason he gave that I share with you today. Frankie’s parents told him his birthday was on January 15, 1954. One day, while going through important family documents, he ran across his birth certificate and to his (and his mom’s) surprise his stated date of birth read January 14, 1954. When he asked his mom about the contradiction, she told him that he was born close to midnight so she “thought” it was the 15th and she just never looked that close.

In a BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas post last year I addressed Google and the Associated Press (AP)  “Google Alert Users: Are You Getting What Google’s Not Paying For?” and it appears the other shoe has finally dropped. In Softpedia’s article there’s speculation and rumor about why Google is no longer updating AP content, including a quote from Google that leaves more questions than answers. My concern is the impact on public relations practitioners who rely solely on free content. The “why” is equaled in importance by “what” the impact will be to media measurement reporting? Just yesterday Linda Vandevrede announced  a special “Meet the Associated Press in Phoenix” event on the Valley PR Blog. Perhaps one of the attendees can ask the AP their thoughts on the Google issue. More importantly I hope the pr pros planning to attend are also making arrangements on how to best monitor the coverage their new contacts are going to help them get for their clients.

If you rely solely on Google alerts and have AP media relationships how will you now monitor, report, and analyze the impact of your news coverage? Do you even know the full extent to which this can compromise your existing reporting benchmark? A prime example of the importance of AP stories is “Two health-care proposals may get boot, Dems say” . If you’re in Healthcare PR how do you explain to the C-Suite why you didn’t know about this story? How much will “There was no Google alert for the story so I didn’t know” cost your organization?

While Frankie has never missed a birthday, in fact the last 23 years he’s celebrated two days per year, he did have to go back and change all of his other documentation to match his legal birthday. PR pros will not escape so easily from the impact of this decision by Google. The only cost to Frankie was a few hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles, updating other government documents and work information, but what do you have at risk by not having confirmed data sources, specifically the AP content?

How will you manage year-over-year expectations of clients when your coverage declines? How will you gauge the impact of key messages and campaigns if you can’t access the information via Google? Is it important enough to make an investment?

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Posted in Media Industry, Media Measurement, News Coverage | 1 Comment »

BurrellesLuce Newsletter: Envisioning Media Relations, Predictions for 2010

Monday, December 21st, 2009
Executive_Crystal_Ball edited for web4

December 2009

Within communication circles, 2009 may well be remembered as a time when the PR and marketing communities helped to usher in a new era of media relations.

As the current year draws to a close, many have begun to forecast what the coming year has in store for the PR industry and the media at large. We at BurrellesLuce have donned our own prediction caps to offer a few ideas on what awaits PR professionals in 2010.

Ten possible trends that are worth watching during the next 12 months.

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Posted in Media Industry, Media Measurement, Media Monitoring, Media Relations, Public Relations, Social Media | No Comments »

Will Paid Online Content Change Your Media Sources?

Monday, November 30th, 2009
Flickr Image: RonAlmog

Flickr Image: RonAlmog

by Carol Holden*
Like most people, I start my business day by checking the BurrellesLuce morning news briefing to see what’s up with the competition and the industry as a whole.

Recently, I found two bright spots regarding the health of the traditional media industry.

As reported in Editor & Publisher, in a study recently released by Scarborough Research, data analysis indicates that newspapers are still read in print or online by a critical mass of adults in the U.S. on a daily and weekly basis. “While our data does show that print newspaper readership is slowly declining, it also illustrates that reports about the pending death of the newspaper industry are not supported by audience data,” said Gary Meo, Scarborough Research’s senior vice president of print and digital media services. “Given the fragmentation of media choices, printed newspapers are holding onto their audiences relatively well and this is refreshing news.”

This is certainly refreshing to me as the person directing the BurrellesLuce Media Measurement service as well as being a former employee of a small town newspaper.

The report went on to list the following statistics:

In an average week –

  • 79 percent of adults employed in white collar positions read a newspaper in print or online
  • 82 percent of adults with household incomes of $100,000 or more read a printed newspaper in print or online
  • 84 percent of adults who are college graduates or who have advanced degrees read a printed newspaper in print or online

 Secondly, as reported in Bulldog Reporter’s Daily Dog, a new survey from the Boston Consulting Group asserts that the average news consumer would likely be willing to pay for news online, but respondents insist on unique news stories worthy of buying. “The good news is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, consumers are willing to pay for meaningful content,” said John Rose, senior partner at Boston Consulting Group who leads the firm’s global media sector. “The bad news is that they are not willing to pay much. But cumulatively, these payments could help offset one to three years of anticipated declines in advertising revenue.”

This change carries a lot of implications. Top of my mind is the impact on how Google will search for news and, depending on the sources and the charges, it will likely influence my own RSS options. How will you advise your clients to navigate the new terrain? How will paid content change your online sources for news?

*Bio: I’ve been in the media business all of my adult life, first in newspapers before going full circle and joining BurrellesLuce, where I now direct the Media Measurement department. I’ve always enjoyed meeting and especially listening to the needs of our customers and others in the public relations and communications fields; I welcome sharing ideas through the Fresh Ideas blog. One of my professional passions is providing the type of service to a client that makes them respond, “atta girl” – inspiring our entire team to keep striving to be the best. Although I have been lucky enough to travel through much of Asia and most major U.S. cities for business or pleasure, my free time is now spent with my daughter, visiting family/friends, and of course the Jersey shore. Twitter: @domeasurement LinkedIn: Carol Holden Facebook: BurrellesLuce

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Posted in Media Industry, Media Measurement, News Coverage, Public Relations | 7 Comments »

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