Category: media-monitoring

News clipping service or a monitoring tool: What’s best for your requirement?

In today’s fast-paced business world, staying on top of current events and industry trends is critical to a company’s success. For this reason, media monitoring has become a vital part of many businesses’ operations. Media monitoring allows businesses to keep track of their brand’s visibility and track the impact of their marketing efforts. 

The importance of monitoring

The process of monitoring is critical for businesses to stay updated about the latest trends, developments, and discussions relevant to their industry. Media monitoring helps to identify threats, opportunities, and potential PR crises, which can be addressed proactively. By keeping track of your brand’s media coverage, you can get insights into the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and adjust your strategies accordingly. Media monitoring can also be useful for reputation management, as it helps to track public sentiment and identify negative coverage that needs to be addressed.

Here are some of the major benefits of media monitoring

Staying informed: Media monitoring helps you stay informed about what’s happening in your industry, the latest trends, and what your competitors are doing. By keeping up-to-date with the latest news and insights, you can make better-informed decisions and stay ahead of the competition.

Reputation management: Media monitoring allows you to track your brand’s reputation and identify any negative coverage that may be affecting your business. This helps you to respond faster and proactively to any potential PR crises, and to protect your brand’s reputation.

Crisis management: Media monitoring helps you manage a crisis situation effectively. 

Identifying opportunities: Media monitoring helps you to identify new opportunities for your business, such as investment opportunities or emerging markets for your products.

Tracking marketing campaigns: Media monitoring allows you to track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, by monitoring your brand’s media coverage and tracking key metrics such as share of voice, sentiment analysis, and engagement rates.

Competitive intelligence: Media monitoring helps you to keep track of your competitors by monitoring their media coverage and identifying any new strategies or initiatives they may be implementing.

Primary methods for media monitoring

There are two primary methods for media monitoring: clipping services and monitoring tools. Let’s explore the differences between these two methods that would help you decide which one is right for your business.

Clipping services involves hiring a service provider to perform comprehensive and customized news monitoring for your business or communication agency. Clipping services are ideal for businesses that require a flexible and critical examination of media content. The services can help with decision-making along with identifying negative brand stories, evaluating the quality and quantity of the news, and providing an analytical eye for issues. Additionally, the service offers daily nimbleness and punctuality in delivery, making it a valuable process. This monitoring is generally beneficial, as these service providers are allies who assist in building your brand and achieving desired outcomes.

The advantages of clipping services

Clipping services offer several advantages over traditional news monitoring methods. They provide a more targeted approach by focusing on specific keywords or topics, allowing clients to receive only the news that is most relevant to them. Additionally, clipping services offer a faster and more efficient way of monitoring news, as they use automated tools to scan through large volumes of content and deliver it in a concise and organized manner. This saves time and effort in manually sorting through news articles and enables them to stay up-to-date on industry trends without having to invest in expensive software or tools. At Ninestars, we offer two distinct types of clipping services to meet the diverse needs of our clients. The first option is Clip-all, where we provide a comprehensive service of clipping and delivering all articles from newspapers or magazines. The second option is based on specific keywords provided by the client, which we use to scan for relevant articles that match the given criteria. Our team is proficient in performing both simple and Boolean searches, ensuring that we extract all relevant articles and provide them to you in a timely and efficient manner. 

Monitoring tools, on the other hand,  offer the freedom to be strategic and ensure that data is preserved in the cloud and can be viewed from anywhere. Monitoring tools are perfect for teams who require flexibility to be strategic whenever and wherever they choose. The tool automatically produces results based on configured searches and segments the results of news monitoring through the use of keywords and filters. It also enables the creation of specific searches on your brand, competitors, and market segment. However, while monitoring tools offer more freedom and flexibility, they require more effort from the user to set up and manage. Monitoring tools require the user to input specific keywords and filters to ensure the results are relevant to their business needs. 

The advantages of monitoring tools

Monitoring tools provide a more holistic view of how a brand is being perceived by the public and helps to identify emerging trends and issues that require attention. Monitoring tools also offer advanced analytics and reporting features that allow businesses to track key metrics such as share of voice, sentiment analysis, and engagement rates. This data can be used to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and inform future strategies. However, all monitoring tools require the users to be familiar with the system’s features and capabilities to get the most out of it. At Ninestars, our team is proficient in using a wide range of monitoring tools, including social media monitoring tools, online news monitoring tools, and brand reputation monitoring tools. We have the expertise and skills to efficiently extract and analyse data from various sources, such as news sites, social media, blogs, and forums. Our team of professionals is trained to navigate and use different monitoring tools and software to ensure that we deliver accurate and timely results. We work closely with our clients to tailor our services to their specific monitoring requirements. Our goal is to provide our clients with a comprehensive view of their brand’s online presence and reputation, enabling them to make informed business decisions and improve their overall brand reputation.

In conclusion

Choosing the right approach to news monitoring depends on a variety of factors, including the size and complexity of your business, the industry you operate in, and specific goals and objectives. Clipping services are ideal for businesses that need a targeted approach to news monitoring and want to save time and effort in manually sorting through news articles. Monitoring tools, on the other hand, are more suited for businesses that require a comprehensive view of their brand’s media coverage across multiple sources and want to track key metrics and trends over time.

Both clipping services and monitoring tools are useful approaches to news monitoring and analysis. Each approach has its own strengths and challenges, and the choice ultimately depends on the specific needs of your business. At Ninestars, we understand the importance of effective media monitoring for an organization. We offer clipping services as well as expertise in media monitoring tools and can help you choose the right approach to achieve your media monitoring priorities. With the expertise and support of Ninestars, you can effectively stay on top of your brand visibility, identifying key trends and insights, and making informed decisions for your business.

NFT Culture: Hype or Favourable?

With a hefty $91.8 million price tag, The Merge (collection of art series) is the most expensive NFT sold so far. This series was created by renowned digital artist Pak making him arguably the most valued living digital artist. 

NFT culture survives at the intersection of art, culture, and the blockchain. Investors and collectors seem to be pouring money into non-fungible tokens, tokenizing anything unique as an Ethereum-based asset. In fact, sales are believed to surpass last year’s total by going up to $90 billion by the end of 2022 despite NFT prices seeing a downturn of late.

But what’s really manoeuvring the market and what makes people want to invest millions of dollars in NFTs? 

Getting to know NFT

According to Wikipedia, “A non-fungible token (NFT) is a record on a blockchain which is associated with a particular digital or physical asset. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the blockchain, and can be transferred by the owner, allowing NFTs to be sold and traded”.

NFT is simply any form of digital asset that symbolizes real-world objects like art (any form), music, in-game items, and videos. They are traded online using mostly cryptocurrencies and they are encoded with blockchain.

Cash (physical money) and cryptocurrencies are “fungible,” meaning they can be exchanged or traded for one another (which defines specific value for specific items). They’re also equal in value: one rupee is always worth another rupee; one Bitcoin is always equal to another Bitcoin. The nature of Crypto’s fungibility makes it a trusted means for carrying out business transactions and administering them on the blockchain.

Even though cryptocurrency and NFT have almost the same encoding software the similarity ends there. Every NFT has a unique digital signature that makes it rather impossible to be exchanged or considered equal (hence, the “non-fungible” moniker). For example, an NBA Top Shot gif is not equal to a cat gif just because they’re both NFTs.  For that matter, even two seemingly similar NBA Top Shot clips aren’t necessarily equal to each other.

But, anyone can view the individual images or even the entire collage of images online for free. So why are people crazily spending millions on something they could easily download, screenshot or just access online?

Because an NFT allows the buyer to own the original item (OG is the new trend!). But that’s not the only reason, NFTs contain built-in authentication, which offers proof of ownership. Collectors and investors value the “digital bragging rights” more than the piece itself (most of the time).

Essentially, NFTs are like physical collector’s items, but only in digital form; i.e., when a collector auctions a painting, instead of getting an actual painting to hang on the wall, the buyer gets a digital file instead. They also get exclusive ownership rights. NFTs work with the concept of ‘one owner at a time’, and their adoption of blockchain technology makes it easy to verify ownership and transfer tokens between the owners. The creator of the art piece can store specific information in an NFT’s metadata in the file, like their signature.

NFTs are offering more power and control to content creators than ever before…

Looking beyond the hype and the price tags; NFTs could represent a huge opportunity in content marketing. Each token has an exclusive and transparent ID which can be used to track and control them. This paves the way for fundamental changes in the relationship between content creator, consumer and brand.

Traditionally after the first sale goes through, the artist or the creator’s journey ends there with their item. Once the art has been sold, the transactions usually end there. The buyers, however, could sell the same work of art again at higher prices if there is demand and if the buyer is willing to sell. However, there is one more way that the non-fungible tokens help the creator and is called ‘NFT Royalties’. NFT royalties give a certain (usually specified) percentage on the sale price every time the NFT creation is sold on a marketplace. These are automatic pay-outs to the author made on repeated sales. The percentage of the royalties are coded into the smart contract on the blockchain of the NFT. Each time a secondary transaction takes place, the encoded smart contract ensures that the terms of the NFT are fulfilled to the dot and the specified cut of the royalty percentage on the sale price goes to the artist who created them. 

This works equally well for digital content, gaming accessories, physical items, real estate etc. NFT royalties are a never-before-opportunity to maximize the earnings of artists and content creators and to give them what is their fair share of profit. 

NFT has the power to triangulate the relationship between artists, collectors, and the brand to create a strong community that benefits all.

We are participating in AMEC 2021 Global Summit

It is with great pleasure that we announce that we are participating in the 2021 AMEC Virtual Global Summit on Measurement: Communication Accountability: Planning, Purpose and Proof. 

AMEC is the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication which is the world’s largest media intelligence and insights professional body, representing organisations and practitioners who provide media evaluation and communication research.

The two-day summit scheduled on May 26 – 27 is a great opportunity to immerse in the world of communication measurement and evaluation. It features inspiring keynotes and informative spotlight sessions from a line-up of international speakers and offer countless opportunities to connect virtually with industry leaders and influencers. 

Ninestars is participating as a Gold Sponsor and we would also be showcasing our content intelligence SaaS platform, PRANA, through our virtual booth. 

A quick note on PRANA. It is an AI-driven ESP (Event Stream Processing) platform that help derive actionable real-time insights from diverse content sources. Architected on high compute and stream processing engineering principles, PRANA is built to manage scale , processing thousands of feeds every second. It has flexible touch-points to compliment and seamlessly integrate with client’s ecosystem. PRANA offers a unique proposition with its AI-HI model (AI-enabled Human Intelligence), which ensures continuous learning and high accuracy for near real-time intelligence and analysis on bespoke dashboards. 

Even though we love the chance to meet and greet our visitors in person, this year we will use our virtual booth to meet you. Our team will be available to discuss any requirement in media content analysis, intelligence or services that could add value to your business. 

To access the virtual exhibition, make sure you register here : https://amecorg.com/summits/2021-summit/

Browse through our solutions and latest innovations here: https://www.ninestarsglobal.com

Reflection from FIBEP 2019

Our CTO Mohan Doshi recently attended FIBEP World Media Intelligence Congress, an annual media monitoring event, held in Lima, Peru. FIBEP Congress is one of the largest events that brings together communications professionals worldwide to share best practices, industry developments and innovation. The theme for the event was exploring and expanding the media intelligence world. The three-day conference helped the Ninestars team gather insights and connect to the industry. We showcased PRANA, our flagship product for media monitoring, at the event. We caught up with Mohan soon after the conference and excepts from our conversation are provided below.

 Did this year’s event meet your expectations? Why or why not?            

I am a firm believer in attending events where our customers frequent. It is not just to get more customers, but these events give us a sense of belonging, helping us connect with one another, humanizing what would otherwise be just transactional. No amount of business transactions can replace a human touch. FIBEP helps me reconnect with my acquaintances and friends from the industry and also help gather insights that would help us offer personalized services to our customers. This year’s FIBEP was a small event with fewer people. But through my tech-talk presentation and panel discussion, I was able to drive home the point that innovation requires bold aspirations. Media Monitoring has invested heavily on content (with amazing results) but now it is time to invest in data engineering.

Tell us more about the tech talk. 

The topic I chose was “Tapping data and analytics to innovate faster and at scale”. Data engineering has been gathering momentum across industries and it is important to focus on it. The content automation had its momentum for the past 15 years. Media monitoring organizations have invested heavily on software solutions to automate their processes. Today content automation is baked in and efficient. Social media and online content have however made archaic the older technologies used for content monitoring. The volume and streaming nature of such content need very different technologies to monitor and measure them. The need for information in real time to add certainty to decision-making is key. PRANA as a platform addresses the veracity, volume, velocity, variety and drives the momentum toward value.

What impact do you see FIBEP having on our immediate business goals?                       

In FIBEP 2017, we had unveiled ‘PRANA’ as a solution to all things data and this year, we presented an updated version of PRANA. PRANA is a modular data platform that makes it easy to analyze data in near real-time. I feel that media monitoring organizations are overwhelmed with non-stop stream of data, most of which is creating an information clutter. With PRANA, they can bring all relevant data under one data point, eradicating inefficiencies and improving processing capabilities which leads to better customer experiences. PRANA has evolved in the past year to provide a bouquet of services which are relevant to the industry. The use cases PRANA caters are well-formed. We see an immediate demand for organizations to subscribe to the platform as a whole or a set of services which integrate with their existing workflows.

What is Momentum Mindset and how PRANA will help organizations get into that mindset?                   

Momentum is the fuel that drives an organization toward its goals. Momentum allows us to evolve from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, helping us open ourselves to more opportunities.  Organizations with legacy systems need an immediate process upgrade  to cater to the demanding outcomes their customers are willing to engage in. PRANA can provide that upgrade in a short time and at an affordable budget. Organizations can focus on delivering the value their customers are willing to pay for instead of spending time on engineering solutions. Data being the paradigm of choice for their customers, PRANA can help organizations accelerate toward adopting this paradigm.

Which elements of the event did you like the most?

FIBEP discussed some key areas with a focus beyond media monitoring.  There were topics on risk management, customer experience, World PR Report, deep fake AI and post truth, fact checking and communications-based product offerings to get attention from C-Suite.  The city of Lima, its culture, heritage and the weather were memorable.