As the media landscape and the insights it yields continue to evolve, so will the opportunities to refine how media intelligence is achieved and applied. That’s why we’re keeping a close eye on what the future holds for media intelligence. Here are five trends our experts predict will shape the future.
Learn more about the future of data-driven media intelligence in our latest eBook, Mastering Media Intelligence: Essential Skills for the Future of PR.
Using alternative data
When it comes to reporting success, many in PR and communications focus on whether they have maximized media coverage, audience reach or size, engagement, or sentiment/tone of voice. Other data points may include media coverage over time, share of voice, key messages communicated, and top media outlets and influencers. And let’s not forget social media analytics, such as trending hashtags and audience engagement.
All these metrics can help your team proactively identify issues and trends, benchmark your brand, organization, or campaign against competitors, and measure success. But to master media intelligence, the Nexis® Media Intelligence Research & Analytics team suggests using adjacent or unexpected search terms or applying advanced metrics such as location or multi-point sentiment scales to paint a more detailed picture of your media activity. Another approach is to provide statistical correlations that link media performance metrics to business outcomes over time—think company KPIs, ROIs, goals, sales, and/or performance expectations.
Statistical correlations are easy to calculate using the CORREL function in your favorite spreadsheet app. But if you need a place to start, check out step-by-step template in the appendix of the eBook linked above.
Artificial intelligence
AI is reshaping the world—and generative AI is playing a larger-than-ever role in social media creation across the board. Thanks to heavy investment, rapid adoption, and near-constant expansion, the global AI market is now valued at over $136 billion. Furthermore, a recent study shows marketers believe within the next year, AI use among consumers will be widespread. This presents a bevy of potential challenges and opportunities for your brand, organization, or campaign:
- Media monitoring and social listening will get easier and more streamlined. Tools will become more accurate and likely to ascertain exactly what you’re trying to discover and learn, while predictive analytics and natural language processing will help guide you there.
- Plagiarism detection software already exists—as do AI-based tools to help writers avoid it. These tools will become even more critical as communications practitioners turn to generative AI tools to produce and polish their copy and content.
- The rise of generative AI also raises questions about copyright and trademark compliance, source identification and citation, and data privacy that extend beyond the reach of existing protections. For example, according to research by the browser security firm LayerX, 15% of employees have pasted data into generative AI tools; 43% of all those inputs included sensitive internal business data that shouldn’t be exposed. And of the groups that use generative AI extensively, nearly 24% of users were from marketing and sales.
- Given the public’s easy access to tools for creating, distributing and/or reproducing their own content, AI presents a significant challenge for identifying and stopping mis- and disinformation and deep fakes that could impact your brand’s reputation—and its bottom line.
The time is now for comms teams to start considering how to monitor content created by AI; what new questions to ask about how to identify, parse and quantify this content; and how GAI content could impact their communications efforts. For instance, understanding how your advocates and fans are using GAI to create their own original content can help with consumer engagement, customer interactions, your next User-Generated Content (UGC) campaign, promotions, and even sales.
Social listening
An estimated 4.9 billion people—about half the world’s population—use social media worldwide. And they aren’t limiting their activity to a single platform. Forbes reports the average user maintains a digital footprint on six to seven platforms. We therefore predict an even greater integration of social listening tools with media monitoring efforts, to help brands and organizations ascertain how key messages are resonating, as well as which individual tactics are making the most impact.
We also foresee a shift away from simply quantifying results—something AI is extremely efficient at delivering—to qualifying results and leveraging them to add color commentary and context to broader trends, industry perceptions and market research efforts.
Data democratization
We are in an age where transparency is key. It builds trust. There is a real opportunity for media intelligence to empower collaboration between departments by making data, insights, and action plans accessible and usable for everyone within your company.
In fact, it’s likely other departments are already turning to the kind of media monitoring data PR and communications teams already deliver. As data visualization and dashboard tools become even more public and prolific, we anticipate that even those who don’t know the ins and outs of your communications strategy will still be able to quickly get a sense of your customer, competitor, and industry media landscape—a just without the benefit of the expertise your team provides.
For instance, in its 2023 State of Competitive Intelligence benchmarking report, the Strategic Consortium of Intelligence Professionals reported that 88% of business stakeholders want regular updates on their competitive landscapes. If you’re not producing these assessments, who is? What data are they using? How does that data impact their decision-making? And how can their strategies converge with yours to paint a bigger picture?
Data democratization will be the first step to creating a strong culture of media intelligence. It will require creating a robust process for data analytics that is regularly refined and incorporates new trends, technologies, or opportunities as they emerge. Plus, you’ll need buy-in; everyone, from the top down, must be on the same page with how media intelligence is achieved, why it’s important, and especially how your brand, campaign, or organization will use it.
The metaverse
Virtual worlds are already here, and they are rapidly growing. As a result, the metaverse is teeming with possibilities to forge virtual social and economic connections as extensions of the real world.
Staying on top of how your brand, organization, or campaign is represented in the metaverse will help identify the influence that computer-generated content has, or could have, on perception and reputation. It will also allow you to develop an understanding of when your brand, organization, or campaign may enter these new frontiers, how your brand will interact with the users that inhabit virtual and augmented realities, when your competitors will do the same, and what it all means for your industry.
Some brands are already using the metaverse to reach new target audiences, and plenty of others are preparing to enter this space. For example, retail companies have already created virtual shopping events and stores. There’s even a church developing a hybrid URL-IRL experience based in the metaverse. But like with anything new, there are also some risks to consider. Understanding, for example, how false information is impacting your brand’s existence in the metaverse is a piece of the media intelligence mosaic.
As we explore in our latest ebook, media intelligence means adding important context to the media landscape of a brand, organization, or campaign, and then deriving powerful, actionable insights that will drive future communications strategy. By keeping tabs on these trends, we hope public relations and communications professionals will be even better positioned to deliver meaningful media intelligence.