Report: Strong growth in media intelligence spend
Annual spend on media intelligence tools for PR pros grew by 7.5% to surpass US$4.8 billion, says Burton-Taylor International Consulting.
Annual spending on media intelligence solutions for public relations professionals has now surpassed US$4.8 billion, with 7.5% year-on-year growth, according to a new report published this week by Burton-Taylor International Consulting.
According to Digital Diplomacy, to keep up with the rapid growth of online activity, companies are turning to quicker, more comprehensive tools to measure the returns on their PR, communications, and marketing efforts. These tools generate a variety of insights and together are known as media intelligence. The media intelligence field can be broken down into three main categories: media monitoring, social listening, and data analysis.
Burton-Taylor’s analysis shows that customer demand for social media management tools and insights into the impact of communications activities kept the overall market in growth mode, even while spending on other PR tools declined during the pandemic.
According to Burton-Taylor, many small to medium-sized media intelligence providers flourished in the socially distanced market environment, while several of the bigger ones had muted or negative performance.
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“There is a really noticeable trend, across regions and areas of activity, for buyers to turn toward smaller and more nimble providers,” said report author Chris Porter, Director at Porter Walford Consulting and a consultant to Burton-Taylor.
Porter explained that many long-established companies such as Cision, Meltwater, Kantar, and Isentia have been going through various forms of transition. Meanwhile the space has seen significant growth from highly focused newer-generation providers such as Muck Rack, PublicRelay, Roxhill Media, UNICEPTA, Access Intelligence, and others.
The report highlights the rapid growth of social media software tools such as Sprinklr and Sprout Social, as well as significant expansion in the social media space by Meltwater – whaving acquired specialized social solution vendors Linkfluence and Klear – and Cision, acquiring Brandwatch.
“When Burton-Taylor started analyzing buying patterns for PR tools back in 2012, we expected a move toward larger providers, helping users to manage all aspects of PR communications through an integrated solution,” said Robert Iati, Managing Director at Burton-Taylor. “That has sort of happened, to some degree; but PR professionals still have unmet needs, which is why so many new niche PR management tools are coming to the market.”
Click here to access the Burton-Taylor in full. If you like report summaries like this, click here to check out the one we ran from Cision on how best to pitch your branded content to journalists in 2021.
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