CorpComms Magazine

This is set to be a another year of rapid evolution for the media monitoring market as newspaper publishers review access to web content, other information sources multiply and technology continues to accelerate the pace of change - all in a challenging economic environment.

The good news for media monitoring companies is that despite the inevitable budget pressures, their services are increasingly valuable for PR professionals. The accurate selection of relevant information is more important than ever in a world of burgeoning information sources where the client needs to know now - and probably on the hoof.

The NLA is set to have a busy and challenging year, evolving licences and extending database services to support these market needs. Licences enabling agencies and their clients to monitor newspaper web content came into effect in November, with the beta launch of our eClips Web service following shortly afterwards. The web licence allows media monitoring companies to harvest content from hundreds of UK newspapers sites and rewards UK newspapers for the increasing volume of business-relevant content they are publishing. eClips Web will encourage the growth of web monitoring by offering PCAs and web aggregators a superior service to web-scraping with a faster stream of deeper content, fed directly by newspapers' editorial systems.

Because digital content and clients' media interest transcends borders, the NLA database began to serve international press cuttings agencies and their clients last year: and will roll out to more this year. Coming in the other direction, a goal for this year is to expand the number of key international titles on the eClips database - the Economist, Wall Street Journal (Europe), Le Monde and International Herald Tribune are a good start, but we aim to provide more major international titles. So I think this will be a year of challenge and change for everyone in this market - but there are opportunities for growth too.

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