A firm that aggregates information gathered by traditional and social media content providers, using its software to compile and analyze that information – sometimes further refined by human analysts. The resulting media intelligence is packaged according to client specifications and delivered to those clients in a timely fashion, i.e., as close to real-time as possible. Organizations use this media intelligence to determine what is being said – positive or negative – about the organization itself, its brand, or an issue that can affect it. Among other things, media monitoring and analysis can help organizations track publicity campaigns, discover the nature and extent of various social trends, and obtain insight on how media and other opinion leaders are responding to their products and messages.

•   Prominencerefers to the attention a story on an organization, brand, issue, message, etc. gets in the media. It can be measured by a number of factors that measure the quantity and quality of media coverage, including type of media, extent (of coverage), share of voice, story size or length, placement, media circulation or audience share, media relevance (to the organization’s audience), story treatment, use of visuals, type of coverage, etc

•   Media type the type of media – daily newspaper, blog, television station, community newspaper, business publication, etc. – covering the story.

•   Scope the geographical area the media reach, including national, provincial, regional, and specifically defined and selected areas.

•   Share of voice the organization’s share of media attention in the total coverage of a product, issue, industry, cause, etc. This information can contribute to competitive intelligence studies.

•   Story size/length – the space the story occupies in print media (half a page, xx lines, a tiny mention, etc.), the time (10 seconds, one minute, etc.) devoted to it in broadcast media, and the space/time it earns in new media.

•   Placement where the story was placed in the media. In print, it could range from the front page to back cover or in the xx section. In broadcast, placement is where the story was aired in the newscast (lead story, story number xx, etc.). In new media, it could refer to the space it occupies on a blog, the number of mentions, etc.

•   Circulation/sharethe total number of copies of a publication delivered to print audiences (media circulation).

•   Audience shareis the percentage of listeners or viewers within a defined market of listeners/viewers who are tuned in to a broadcast outlet.

•   Media relevance the criteria that determine the relevance of a specific medium to the organization’s target audience. This can be assessed by how closely the composition of the media audience – demographics and/or psychographics – matches that of the organization’s audience.

•   Story treatment how a story is treated in the media. It could be a cover story, a running story earning coverage day after day, a one-shot mention, or a story earning multiple mentions in one issue, one broadcast a day.

•   Use of visualsinformation on the content and placement of such visuals as photographs.

•   Type of coverage it can be identified as an editorial, news story, blog post, news brief, comment to a blog post, etc.

•   Tone sentiment measures how a person, group, organization, or issue is portrayed in the media. Tone is normally categorized as positive, neutral or negative, with various degrees of negative and positive tones. (Toning can be enhanced when a human analyst – able to recognize sarcasm, irony, and various human quirks – serves as a filter.)

•   Message fidelity delivers information on how well the message conveyed by the media matched the message or messages the organization wanted to communicate.

•   Content and nature of quotesan amalgamation of what was said/printed in the media, who was quoted in the story, including the quotes themselves as well as the source – media, organizational spokesperson, and/or third party.

•   Reachrefers to the number of audience members who potentially receive a message. Most reach measures use circulation/audience share figures.

•   Frequencymeasures the number of times (within a specific period) an audience potentially receives a message

•   Print circulationthe total number of copies of a publication available to subscribers as well as via newsstands, vending machines, and other delivery systems.

•   Paid circulationis a distribution method where readers pay for the publication

•   Controlled circulationis the method of distributing publications free of charge (usually in bulk) to specific areas, groups of people, or locations.

•   Content measuresare evaluations of how web content – facts, opinions, messages, etc. about an organization, issue, or topic – is accessed, adapted, shared, and amplified on a site or sites or across the web.

•   Conversation measuresstudy online conversations (blog posts and comments, etc.) related to an organization, issue, etc. The conversation may be measured by quantity, tone/sentiment, message fidelity, etc. One such content measure is the conversation index or conversation rate, created by dividing the total number of posts by the number of relevant comments and trackbacks.

•   Outcome measuresare used to evaluate how content measures correlate with outcome objectives.

•   Page viewsare a count of the number of times a page was viewed. This includes duplications.

•   Traffic sourceshow visitors get to a site or page on a site. They may arrive directly or through a referring site or search engine.

•   Unique visitsadd up the number of individual people who visited a site within a specified period of time used for reporting purposes

•   New visitorsthe number of unique visitors who access any page on a site – via a web browser – for the first time

•   Repeat visitorsthe number of unique visitors who make two or more visits to a site.

•   Visit durationthe length of time visitors spend on a page or a site.

•   Bounce ratesstatistics on those visitors who remain on a site for five seconds or less or those who visit only one page of a site.

•   Advertising value equivalency (AVE)is the amount in dollars a story would cost if it appeared as paid advertising. It is determined by multiplying the size/length of the story by the advertising rate for the relevant publication or station.

•   Benchmark refers to a point of reference for measuring coverage of an issue or campaign. It’s a standard or yardstick used when measuring progress in a campaign.

•   Clip countrefers to the total number of stories that mention a client company, product or campaign.

•   Related articlesare those that relate to the main story. It may be a sidebar with a human interest angle, another (perhaps opposite) point of view, an editorial, etc.