November was an interesting month in the world of media and data. Facebook saw a variety of sources use data to define its fake news problem. Meanwhile the FIBEP Congress explored the road from media to business intelligence, AirPR and Trendkite both received further funding and Ornico explored the opportunities in Africa.
Fake News and Facebook
Source: Jumpshot
Kantar Media: we are an independent measurement business 
Kantar Media has been undergoing a bit of a reorganisation of late. CEO Andy Brown caught up with Ad Exchanger to explain what was happening at Kantar Media. According to Brown, “we’re creating more synergies between our different businesses. Instead of clients having four separate conversations with Kantar Media, they’ll have one conversation and we can still pull in subject matter expertise wherever needed”. Kantar Media has access to astonishing amounts of data. A single client conversation is likely to result in complex client questions, and some very interesting data integrations as Kantar finds answers.
Africa offers a unique opportunity for measurement
Francois van Dyk from Ornico, a market leader in Africa, reports on the state of measurement on the continent. According to van Dyk “Africa faces a unique opportunity in that the greatest effort in promoting best practices is to unlearn previous poor practices. Many of these measurement practices, such as a reliance purely upon AVEs, has not featured in much of Africa — measurement being mostly non-existent”. Instead of media output metrics, the need to understand the impact of communication is seen as more important.
Stanley Ogadigo, from the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), underlined the thinking: “audience research that ascertains the level of positive attitudinal change in relation to executed PR campaigns or activity is now key to PR measurement in Africa. Today, any PR measurement devoid of impact and real values cannot match the current trend and reality in the business of public relations.”
FIBEP Congress
The 48th annual FIBEP World Media Intelligence Congress took place in Washington DC. The theme of the congress was “from media intelligence to business intelligence”. It’s a journey that many of us can understand, and I was there with Mike Daniels talking about how to create a PR measurement business. FIBEP president, Alexis Donot, sat down with Carolin Klinke from pressrelations. Donot reflected on what business intelligence means to traditional monitoring companies and the state of the industry.
Time to think about the AMEC Awards 
The AMEC Awards 2017 site is now up and running. Each year, the AMEC Awards celebrate exceptional work in measuring communication effectiveness. The awards are open to research and measurement firms, digital and social agencies, PR agencies, in-house teams and media agencies. (In other words, anyone that measures the effectiveness of communication activities.) The deadline for entries is in February, which will come around sooner than you think, so start thinking about your entry now. If you are wondering about 2016’s winners and nominees, take a look at our round-up.
Funding Rounds
November saw two start-ups receiving funding – Air PR and TrendKite.
AirPR announced $5million in Series B funding, led by Storm Ventures with Salesforce Ventures also investing. The company has increased its focus on PR analytics tools. AirPR’s co-founder and CEO Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer said AirPR looks at a variety of different metrics. Fouladgar-Mercer felt that it’s important for companies to get data quickly. “What’s happening right now is that companies are finding out the information far too late,” he said. Looking ahead, Fouladgar-Mercer said he wants to bring more data science and artificial intelligence to the process, and even potentially work more closely with journalists.
A couple of days later, TrendKite announced today that it has raised $16.3 million in Series D funding. Much like AirPR, TrendKite’s focus is on measuring communication activities. The company says it helps businesses understand the impact of their news coverage and public relations strategy — like which articles are driving the most awareness of their brand, the total audience that’s being reached by the coverage and the sentiment of that coverage. CEO Erik Huddleston told Techcrunch, “we see a bigger opportunity to tightly integrate PR into the rest of marketing. We see that as the key to redefining PR as the earned media leg of the integrated marketing stool.”
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