Another Acquisition and More Podcast Monitoring Tools [PR Tech Sum No. 24]

Meltwater acquires Klear; Muck Rack enhances reporting; Talkwalker adds podcast monitoring; TVEyes partners for podcast audience data

About this time last year, I was slowly coming to grips with the fact we were just at the very beginning of this Coronavirus thing. A year – and two jabs in the arm later – it feels surreal to look back but the pace of things is picking up again.

You can see it in this month’s summary of news – the 24^th edition of the PR Tech Sum – there’s a corporate transaction, a few new products and a handful of PR surveys at the end.

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1. Meltwater acquires social media influencer platform

Meltwater said it acquired Klear, an Israeli-based company that provides an influencer marketing platform. The price tag was $17.8 million in cash and earn-out – which represents 1.4 times Klear’s revenue in 2020.

Klear CEO Eytan Avigdor says his product uses “algorithms and artificial intelligence to help customers identify relevant influencers, manage influencer relationships, and measure the impact of those relationships – something that Meltwater has done for traditional media relations for many years.”

In a video review of the product, (embedded nearby) the Influencer Marketing Hub called Klear a “hybrid social listening and analytics tool.” It gave the product high marks for analytics, which can be used to parse social data to find social media influencers a brand may wish to engage.

Klear is the second acquisition Meltwater had made this year. In March, Meltwater acquired Linkfluence, a French company for that uses artificial intelligence to mine social media for consumer insights, for $59 million. The company has been explicit that M&A is part of its growth strategy – ever since it raised $400 million in capital from a public offering in late 2020.

2. Muck Rack enhances reporting

Muck Rack announced new dashboards that centralized reporting for PR measurement. “This new feature lets PR pros view, compile and share key data and produce customized executive reports,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Each dashboard is a collection of customizable graphs, charts and metrics that visualize data available in Muck Rack. Examples of customizable widgets include share of voice, sentiment, unique outlets, top authors and more.”

The metrics and interaction aren’t new, the company is aiming to make it all easier, according to Muck Rack CEO Greg Galant:

“Dashboards introduce the ability for users to combine all relevant public relations metrics into one place for users – rather than having disparate reports. This makes it easier to share a comprehensive look at metrics, such as executives having one place to look, that updates consistently.”

And setting up the framework for future features:

“Now that it’s centralized, we can continue building on additional widgets, graphs, and more. Over time, the relationship management features that set Muck Rack apart will be surfaced through Dashboards as well. In other words, we’ll be set-up to track team activities, pitch performance and more in one place.”

(click image for higher resolution — and animation)

3. Talkwalker adds podcast monitoring

Talkwalker added podcast monitoring to its media monitoring platform. The company will monitor 35,000 podcasts to the sources it monitors for brand mentions for it’s customers.

The product is proprietary according to Talkwalker Chief Product Officer Pierre Detry Talkwalker. PR and marketing “professionals no longer need to manually sift through hundreds of hours of audio” to find mentions of their brands or keywords.

Combined with the other sources Talkwalker offers, brands get visibility across text, images, video and now audio.

4. TVEyes partners for podcast audience data

TVEyes said it partnered with Podchaser to provide audience measurement data for podcasts, for customers of its podcast monitoring service. Customers will be able to see an estimate of how many downloads a given podcast receives across all podcast apps.

This gives “context to which podcasts are more influential than others and a metric against their mentions,” said Susan Aitkin, senior manager for Global Partnerships and Partner Marketing at TVEyes.

All data is at the “show level” which means you won’t see is geographic, demographic or data about an individual episode.

The company has long provided broadcast monitoring tools, which are often embedded as white label solutions for other media monitoring vendors. TVEyes launched podcast monitoring in the fall of 2019, quickly became a white label partner to Meltwater, Burrelles and Cision and today monitors 25,000 podcasts.

Talkwalker and Critical Mention are the only vendors that offer independently made podcast monitoring tools.

5. SocialChorus redesigns FirstUp Studio

Social Chorus said it’s redesigning its employee engagement platform FirstUp Studio. The platform provides an interesting way for internal communicators to target internal audiences, create content for those audiences, personalize the delivery and has analytics to measure the effectiveness.

It’s also introducing “content microapps” which are content widgets internal communicators can make and deploy on platforms like SharePoint and Salesforce. The idea is you can add new information to a widget, put it on a page an employee already visits, and they don’t have to leave that page. It’s also a no-code tool with drag-and-drop functionality.

The catch is, these tools don’t exist as described currently – SocialChorus says they are coming out this summer. The demo below looks pretty slick though.

6. PR tech mentions

The consulting firm Burton-Taylor published a new report on “media intelligence” – like contact databases sold to PR – grew 7.5% in 2020. The market is valued at $4.8 billion.

Meltwater is starting an online learning program. Some courses are open to just customers, and other courses, like it’s “social media management certification” class which starts in June are open to anyone.

G2 recognized Agility as a “momentum leader” for media monitoring in a Spring 2021 report.

7. Content picks

The State of the Media survey by Cision, which surveyed 2,700 journalists, found, “More than 1 in 4 journalists (28%) receive over 100 pitches per week with most ending up in the virtual trash due to irrelevance. And, contrary to popular belief, a sizeable percentage say they like receiving pitches on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”

“After a year of disruption, division, and a whole lot of headshaking, the public and journalists alike are hungry for positive news. Reporters are also looking for stories on furthering diversity, equity, and inclusion as those conversations continue across communities. In addition, journalists want more research-based, thought leadership content,” according to Media Bylines by PR Newswire.

The State of Pitching report by OnePitch, which is based on 50 reporters the company interviewed for its podcast, found, overall, 48% said subject lines are important when considering opening a pitch.

While we’re on pitching, Spin Sucks looks at tips from recent surveys.

Mention examines peer influence in Facebook Groups for PR.

“A third (32%) of respondents reported feeling ‘very positive’ about the future of their business over the next year, with another 58% feeling ‘quite positive’,” according to a running survey by Vuelio.

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Have an interesting announcement from a PR technology vendor? Here’s the list of PR technology companies I’m watching and here’s how to get on my radar.