Collect
Articles on the brand, products, people, sector and competitors.
Media monitoring guide
Every morning, what has been written about you.
Media monitoring, or a press review, is the orderly collection of articles about a brand, its sector and its competitors, with a reading that says what matters. Find out which sources to include and how to measure without inflated numbers.
In brief
Media monitoring: what it is today.
It used to be a folder of clippings; today it is a stream of online articles, wire stories and trade titles to collect, clean of copies and read with a clear criterion, every day.
Clean up
Separate the original article from its pick-ups.
Read
Say in a few lines what has changed and what to do.
The sources
Which titles to include, and why.
Useful monitoring does not chase every site: it chooses the sources the brand’s audience reads and those others pick up. Trade titles often matter more than national ones.
The types of source to include in media monitoring, why each one matters and the information to note when an article appears.
| Source | Why it matters | What to note |
|---|---|---|
| National titles | They reach many people and get picked up. | Section, byline and placement of the article. |
| Local titles | They matter for shops, offices and local areas. | The city or region concerned. |
| Trade magazines | They are read by those who make purchase decisions in your market. | The product or technical topic covered. |
| News agencies | One wire story gives rise to many pick-ups. | The release time, to recognise copies. |
| Specialist sites and newsletters | They go deeper into comparisons and tests. | Whether the article is a test, a comparison or a news item. |
The article record
One article, seven pieces of information.
Logging every article in the same way lets you compare weeks and quickly answer the question “what has been written about us?”.
An example record of an article on a fictional brand: title, date, headline, how the brand is cited, tone, original or pick-up and next action.
Article no. 112 · Northstar Audio, demonstration brand
- Title and date
- A technology magazine, 14 October, reviews section.
- How the brand is cited
- In the headline, as a product tested for a week.
- Tone
- Positive on sound, critical of the charging case.
- Original or pick-up
- Original: three sites picked it up the next day.
- Action
- Pass the criticism of the case on to the product team.
Rights
Reading articles does not mean you may copy them.
Pointing to an article with a summary and the link is different from distributing its full text. European rules grant publishers their own rights over the online use of their articles.
Article 15 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright in the Digital Single Market grants press publishers rights over the online use of their publications; hyperlinks and the use of individual words or very short extracts are excluded. National implementing rules may add details.
A summary with a link and a full copy of an article, compared on what is shared, what is needed and when to choose one or the other.
| Summary with link | Full copy | |
|---|---|---|
| What you share | A few lines you wrote and the link. | The full text or PDF of the article. |
| What is needed | A reading criterion and a cited source. | A licence from the publisher or the rights holder. |
| When to choose it | For the team’s daily monitoring. | When the full text is essential and authorised. |
The rhythm
A report that arrives every morning.
The value of media monitoring lies in its regularity: same time, same format, same sources. Recipients learn to read it in two minutes.
The steps of daily media monitoring, from collecting the day’s articles to sending a short summary and archiving for comparisons.
Collect
Articles published since the last report, from the chosen sources.
Remove copies
A wire story and its pick-ups become one entry.
Log the article
Title, brand mention, tone, original or pick-up.
Summarise
Five lines at the top: what matters today and why.
Archive
To compare weeks, campaigns and competitors.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions about media monitoring.
The difference between a press review and media monitoring, tools to get started, advertising value equivalency and the role of the press in AI answers.
Are a press review and media monitoring the same thing?
Almost. The press review is the product, the collection read and summarised; media monitoring is the ongoing work that feeds it, including radio, TV and websites.
Can an article’s value be measured in euros of advertising?
It is a common but discouraged practice: the Barcelona Principles of AMEC, the international association for the measurement of communication, state that advertising value equivalency does not measure the value of communication.
Can I send colleagues the PDF of the articles?
Only with a licence that allows it. For daily monitoring, a summary you wrote and the link to the article are enough.
What does the press have to do with AI answers?
Assistants often cite articles and trade magazines. An article with wrong facts can end up in many answers: it is worth asking for a correction.
Related paths
After “Media monitoring guide”, the next step.
The guides explain the concepts with examples on fictional brands. From here you continue with the other guides, the methodology and the features that apply them to your brand.
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