Finding and choosing the best media monitoring services isn’t as easy as you think.
There are a lot of media monitoring services out there and it can be confusing.
This article will help you find the service that’s right for your business.
Our comprehensive overview of the best media monitoring services of 2022 will provide the intelligence you need to make the right investment.
Why Have A Media Monitoring Service?
Measurement and monitoring is an essential part of any PR Plan – but we know what it’s like.
Subscriptions mount up – you’ve already subscribed to a press release distribution service or a social media management tool.
But this is a service that you cannot overlook.
If you’ve put the effort in to figure out how to get a story on the local news or how to write a press release then you do not want to miss your media coverage.
Below we run through the cost of each service and outline their strengths and weaknesses so you can choose the right one for your public relations campaign.
Whether you’re monitoring the success from your influencer marketing and awareness days campaign or you’ve implemented some of our best marketing ideas for small business this guide to media monitoring is a good place to start.
1. Critical Mention
Entry level: Price withheld
Main features and benefits: You can be across all mentions of your brand on TV, radio, social media and online thanks to Critical Mention. Better yet, you can clip and share broadcast mentions and delve deeper into the analytics of their reach with ease.
Billed as the fastest and one of the best media monitoring services out there, Critical Mention customers also love the user-friendly platform and getting their notifications in real-time.
A good fit for organisations who regularly appear in broadcast, need to harness audience data and share insightful reports with colleagues and stakeholders.
9/10
2. Gorkana
Entry level: £250
Main features and benefits: PR juggernaut Gorkana pride themselves on having the “most comprehensive list for global media across all channels”. This is one of the best media monitoring services.
What’s great about their offering is the ability to create tagging tools for self-evaluation of your campaigns. So, you can chart your mentions and then layer other analytics on top. This is just the beginning of the functionality offered by Gorkana’s platform, but with training for newbies and a customer service team on hand 24/7, you can go deeper and make sure you have an exceptional monitoring and assessment system in place.
Tiers of affordability of freelancers vs agencies mean that Gorkana aims to be accessible for all. It’s definitely worth the premium price tag if you can afford it.
10/10
3. Meltwater
Entry level: If you go for Meltwater Press alone, you’ll pay around $7,000 a year.
Main features and benefits: Meltwater bills itself as business intelligence software and it’s all about the analytics. Users say they love the ability to build your own dashboard, enabling you to decide on the metrics that mean the most to your clients and then delivering vital insights.
With their analytics, you can work out neat things like the locations where your most receptive audiences are, performance comparisons with your competitors and a return on campaign investment.
It’s not a cheap option, but businesses who want to drive growth by delving deep into their data are going to love what Meltwater has to offer.
8/10
4. LexisNexis Newsdesk
Entry level: LexisNexis doesn’t publish it’s prices, you have to call for a quote.
Main features and benefits: There’s a good reason why LexisNexis has a great reputation for being the media monitoring service that gives businesses the access they want. They offer unlimited search terms on their content and that content includes licences for outlets that can be missed by their competitors.
The relevant content is delivered in real-time and it lands in your inbox, rather than requiring you to go into the platform to retrieve it. Customers praised LexisNexis for helping them to find reporters, outlets and influencers to which their brands and clients should align, but reported some frustrations with the platform itself.
It’s likely to price itself out of the start-up market, but established and big businesses will definitely want to have a preliminary chat and try out this well-respected service.
9/10
5. Glean.Info
Entry level: $1,000 per month
Main features and benefits: Monitoring media and social is the name of the game for Glean.info but it’s in the reporting analytics that the company really excels.
You can easily create dashboards for each customer or line of business you are working in, helping large organisations track specific brands, clients or campaigns seamlessly. The reporting is in real time, so reports are continuously updated and the data sets arrive looking clean, if not that pretty.
You can get accurate insights and impact data in just a couple of clicks, helping you quickly tailor your campaigns accordingly. That’s no small thing for brands who need to stay ahead of the competition.
It’s not cheap to glean that info, but you get plenty of powerful data-driven insights for your money. It’s easy to see why big businesses would see Glean.info as a great fit for them. One of the best media monitoring services.
9/10
6. Kantar Media Monitoring Services
Entry level: Pricing isn’t available unless you talk to Kantar Media’s team, so expect it to be a bespoke offer depending on your requirements.
Main features and benefits: Want to know your consumers inside out? Media monitoring is only part of strategy giant Kantar’s offer – it’s all about the insights.
Kantar’s team comprises of experts in many different fields, allowing you to create strategies using metrics from everything from online outlets to exit polls. Their aim is to empower the user with unparalleled insights into their target audience and the opportunity to craft your strategy using their results. Needless to say, they have a lot of happy customers.
If you plan to get serious about strategy and building business plans from extremely-detailed consumer analysis, Kantar is the place to go.
9/10
7. Trackur Media Monitoring Services
Entry level: $97 per month
Main features and benefits: Let’s be clear, Trackur doesn’t offer the comprehensive deep dive of the main players – it’s all about social media. That said, it still deserves a spot amongst the best media monitoring services because it is a well supported and useful marketing tool.
As well as offering a few news blogs too, it’s on the main social channels that Trackur comes into its own, offering impact metrics, sentiment analysis and competitor tracking. It allows brands to find the right influencers to court on a simple dashboard, but don’t expect a global report of mentions, because Trackur doesn’t offer it.
If your marketing campaigns all revolve around social, this is a smart choice and will help you track the conversations around your brand.
6/10
8. Mediatoolkit
Entry level: $58 per month.
Main features and benefits: Brand reputation is key and Mediatoolkit is a great product for those businesses seeking to track and respond to all good and bad feedback.
The ability to track mentions across forums and chat rooms, as well as the usual social, media outlets and influencer analytics mean that you can be across all the conversations surrounding your brand. That empowers the user to react quickly, chart their marketing metrics and provide detailed reports from the same place.
This is a particularly good product for those who need a robust crisis comms strategy as well as the benefits of traditional media monitoring and metrics.
8/10
9. Linkfluence
Entry level: $500 per month
Main features and benefits: Like Trackur, Linkfluence is all about social media and helping clients discover, track and analyse all the conversations around their brand on those platforms.
Their Radarly software has collected a lot of positive reviews as it easily integrates with any system and offers users multi-lingual options. A pioneer in ‘social listening’, the Radarly software has been adopted and championed by big players including McDonald’s and Coca Cola.
It’s been a winner for many big businesses, so brands wanting to be as thorough in their own social listening and response may be willing to dig deep to get this level of insight.
8/10
10. Vueilo
Entry level: £3,000+ VAT per year
Main features and benefits: Vueilo is a PR all-in-one, just like Gorkana, where you can get media contacts lists, press release distribution and media monitoring in the same place.
They score big when it comes to influencers, bloggers, and reporters because their metrics assess how important different contacts are to your business. This helps your brand focus in on the most important contacts and build relationships that have a meaningful impact on your target customer base.
With a mid-level price tag, Vuelio is for businesses with a decent budget, but the targeted insights could pay dividends and save hours of courting the wrong contacts.
8/10
11. Mention
Entry level: $29 per month.
Main features and benefits: Mention is a social media monitoring system that delivers results in real-time, allowing you to jump into conversations involving your brand straight away.
As such, it allows brands to be agile in their customer conversation, manage their reputation and understand where they are winning and losing in their market place.
So, if social media is where your market lives, Mention is the perfect tool to keep on top of everything, and steer the conversation where you can. Set your keyword alerts and wait for notifications to roll in as Mention monitors the internet and reports back to you straight away.
Given how small the cost is, this tool is a no-brainer purchase for any brand. It’s a great starter product for those doing big marketing drives on social.
8/10
12. Newsmeter
Entry level: $199 per month
Main features and benefits: There’s no need to download Newsmeter, this online platform is easily accessed with just a browser and has great functionality. The offer is simple, comprehensive global media monitoring of traditional media outlets and social, in-depth reporting on your target keywords and data-driven insights.
Users can analyse campaign performance, keep on top of their mentions and use analytics to inform strategy decisions going forward. The interface and reporting is clear and user-friendly and the company has won awards for indexing technology.
Their price tag may put off small businesses with small budgets, but there’s no doubt that Newsmeter is worth the money if you have it to spend.
9/10
13. News Exposure
Entry level: You need to contact News Exposure to get a price, but the word on the street is that they are pretty reasonable.
Main features and benefits: News Exposure keeps you informed of all the conversation of your brand/business and has won plaudits from customers for never missing a mention.
They are particularly popular for their broadcast clippings service, which is delivered fast and in a high-quality video format. According to reports, their customer service and response time is also impressive and they scored big on being great to work with in general. They definitely save those monitoring TV and radio broadcast a lot of time and help reporting to clients be much easier.
This is the perfect place for broadcast-focused brands to keep on top of their mentions, and have HD quality clippings to use in their reporting.
9/10
14. Onclusive Media Monitoring Services
Entry level: Onclusive don’t share their prices, but sources suggest they are at the higher end of media monitoring platform costs.
Main features and benefits: Data scientists Onclusive deliver marketing and communication analytics that promises to help their customers ‘shape the conversation’ around their brand.
There’s no doubt that the customisable dashboard, which offers unlimited widgets, helps you get granular with your data insights, helping you understand your target market better. The dashboard itself is user-friendly and clean, the media monitoring is impressive and the quality of the AI-driven data is great.
This is a great tool for marketers and communications professionals to showcase the impact of their work and direct their efforts into the most effective channels.
9/10
15. Muck Rack
Entry level: $99 per user
Main features and benefits: Muck Rack offers PR professionals a full service and media monitoring is just part of what they deliver. They bill their Muck Rack alerts as superior to Google Alerts as they are delivered in real time because they don’t have to wait until articles are indexed by Google.
There’s a true benefit to that as it allows brands to be agile and quick to respond, and the targeting functions on their alerts help you keep focused on the coverage that matters most. The coverage reports and broadcast clip sharing services also impress, but their analytic offering doesn’t look quite as stellar as the real media monitoring giants.
PR pros who want to do it all on one platform will be impressed with Muck Rack’s service – and it’s affordable for start-ups too.
8/10
16. eMedia Monitor
Entry level: Price withheld.
Main features and benefits: eMedia Monitor is focused on TV and Radio and for businesses looking for broadcast-specific reporting, they are a great fit.
They offer seamless integration into your media production system, high-quality clips and real-time alerts. Users praise their global, multi-lingual range, but have been somewhat negative about the look and feel of the platform. There’s also a nice feature, called ‘Waterfall’, which allows you to the timeline of a story, so you can track the news and the mentions before comparing it to other stories.
If broadcast is your focus and you want to share clips and data with colleagues to help shape your future marketing, eMedia Monitor is a good place to start.
8/10
17. Signal Media
Entry level: This is a bespoke product and that means the pricing is bespoke too.
Main features and benefits: With the power of artificial intelligence, Signal Media promises to provide its customers with detailed monitoring and reports in real time. They begin each contract with a briefing session to help train their AI to deliver what the customer is looking for.
However, users report that there are some outlet omissions and accuracy problems that have left them feeling unsatisfied with the product on offer. Signal Media seems to be paying attention and trying to close these gaps when they find them. However, this feels like a platform that is still finding its feet and will improve as it evolves.
The bespoke pricing model and AI-led service may make this a more affordable option for small businesses, who are willing to hang in there as Signal Media improve their offer.
6/10
18. Trendkite Media Monitoring Services
Entry level: Brands can sign up for a dashboard and that costs in the low five figures per year, for PR agencies, it’s a two-client minimum and an additional cost for each new client. Agencies should expect to pay in the mid-four figures for the entry-level service.
Main features and benefits: As its name suggests, Trendkite is all about tracking trends and that’s super useful for companies that need to know how much of the conversation around a trend is being generated or involving them.
Users wax lyrical about Trendkite’s interactive reporting systems, that allow their customers to get straight to mentions and relevant content fast. They also speak highly of the customer service team, who has won a reputation for being incredibly quick to respond to problems and fix them. The interface also gets a big tick from users, they say it’s easy to navigate and delivers the results they need fast.
This is a great tool for brands with the budget to track, analyse and measure their impact in the marketplace. Startups may need to find a more cost-effective tool to get started with.
7/10
19. Universal Information Services Media Monitoring Services
Entry level: £125 per month.
Main features and benefits: Accuracy and integrity are the focus of the Universal Information Services brand, who back up their AI with a team of analysts, experienced editors and broadcasters to maintain their standards.
One of the things their customers appreciate is the ability to customise the reports to have a local, regional or global focus. The usual analytics, reporting, and insights are all present and correct, but there’s no doubt that the US-based UIS users get the most out of their US-based service.
The entry-level price allows Universal Information Services to be affordable for most businesses, from start-ups to established corporations.
8/10
What media monitoring service will you choose?
So that’s it… the 19 best media monitoring companies in 2022.
You may find some are better at monitoring TV and radio coverage, while others may be more targeted at the types of digital coverage you get using PR tools such as Help a Reporter Out or Response Source.
But whatever your size of business or budget, and particular monitoring needs there’s a service for you. Marketing is all about tracking your efforts and monitoring the results, and these services will enable you to do just that.
If you need ideas on how to get coverage then make sure you read our 46 public relations examples to inspire a campaign with an attention grabbing headline.
And if you’re ready to take your PR work to the next level grab our PR Starter Kit.
Our must-have kit has every template, script, strategy and guide you’ll ever need to do PR – all in one place.
