This issue is my ninth annual round-up, feel free to take a look at the previous reviews for 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016, and you’ll be amazed by how our industry has changed. Thank you for reading.
January: Edelman’s Trust Barometer
Each year, Edelman releases its Trust Barometer. The reports tracks changes in attitudes from over 32,000 respondents in 28 countries. This year’s report focuses on innovation, and respondents give their verdict on AI, among other topics. The report continues the trend of a general reduction of trust in the media and government, and highlights the trust given to scientists and subject matter experts. It is always a fascinating read.
Key Deals & Partnerships: WPP merged BCW with Hill + Knowlton to form Burson; Mavrck renamed itself Later
February: Meltwater partnered with Microsoft
Meltwater announced a collaboration with Microsoft. Meltwater will provide Microsoft with its media intelligence services. But, the interesting element of the partnership is the planned integration of Meltwater’s tools into Microsoft’s technology stack. Meltwater will leverage Microsoft’s advanced AI services to support customers. The solution will allow enterprise users of Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams who are Meltwater customers to engage conversationally with Meltwater’s global data set, providing easy access to real-time insights such as brand mentions, sentiment analysis, key issues, and competitive benchmarking.
Key Deals & Partnerships: Signal AI acquired Social 360; CARMA acquired mmi analytics.
March: All eyes on Reddit
Reddit shares ended their first day of trading up 48%, as the social network launched its IPO in March. The company has not turned an annual profit since launching in 2005, but focused its investor pitch on the use of its content as training for AI. Reddit is an incredibly rich source of audience data, and ahead of its IPO the company launched Reddit Pro its organic social tool, which include social listening. It also shouldn’t be a surprise that soon after its IPO, Reddit announced a partnership with Cision to expand the use of Reddit’s Data API. Unsurprisingly, Cision plans to supercharge the development of its proprietary AI-powered brand reputation and audience analysis technologies across its entire product suite
April: OpenAI partnered with the Financial Times
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has announced another news licensing deal, adding the UK’s Financial Times to a growing list of publishers it’s paying for content access. (The company has recently announced deals with the likes of Le Monde, Axel Springer and Prisa Media). On the content licensing front, the pair said the deal covers OpenAI’s use of the FT’s content for training AI models and, where appropriate, for displaying in generative AI responses produced by tools like ChatGPT. In addition, ChatGPT users will be able to see select attributed summaries, quotes and rich links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries, which sounds a little like media monitoring.
Key Deals & Partnerships: Hootsuite acquired Talkwalker; PRNewswire partnered with SoSha
May: OpenAI partnered with News Corp
OpenAI has signed a multi-year global partnership with News Corp. The five year deal will allow OpenAI to display content from News Corp publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch, Investor’s Business Daily, FN, and New York Post; The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and The Australian among others. OpenAI will receive access to current and archived content. The agreement is thought to be worth up to $USD 250 million over five years. The deal follows similar licensing agreements from OpenAI, including the Financial Times last month. OpenAI has also signed an agreement with Reddit. The deal will allow OpenAI to train its model using Reddit data, as well as bringing AI-powered features to Reddit users.
June: Burrelles closed
The media monitoring provider Burrelles closed on 30 June. Founded in 1888, Burrelles had been the leading media monitoring provider in the US for many years. The US market has transitioned away from traditional, scanned print media monitoring to digital content over the past two decades and the closure of Burrelles marks the end of that process. Existing clients are being migrated to Agility PR Solutions, however a scanned print clipping service will no longer be offered. The Burrelles closure is a significant moment. Burrelles was one of the longest-operating PR services companies in the world (alongside Cision, which traces its history back to 1867). The Burrelles closure leaves the US market without a large scale print clipping provider.
July: Dow Jones sued Cision
Cision’s exclusive partnership with Dow Jones appears to be coming to an end. Less than a year after the agreement was signed, Dow Jones has issued court proceedings. According to the filing, Cision sent Dow Jones an email stating that Cision would “suspend further payments to Dow Jones” because “Cision has lost ~$6.5M on th[e] relationship” and unilaterally concluded that “the partnership is not economically viable” for Cision. In response, Dow Jones has issued a lawsuit to recover the $USD 173.6 million that Cision agreed to pay for the exclusive content over eight years. It appears that Cision has not publicly responded, and continues to promote its Dow Jones content.
Key Deals & Partnerships: Retriever merged with Infomedia; Meltwater partnered with Blackbird.AI; Stagwell acquired LEADERS and its InfluencerMarketing.AI platform; Publicis acquired Influential
August: Cision responded to Dow Jones
In August, Cision returned the favour, issuing proceedings against Dow Jones. Cision’s counterclaim states that before and after the execution of the Dow Jones partner agreement, the company failed to meet its legal obligations. Cision has noted 12 identified breaches of the contract by Dow Jones and 20 misrepresentations or fraudulent omissions that Dow Jones used to induce Cision to enter the agreement in the first place. Cision alleges the actions of Dow Jones has resulted in more than $USD 170 million in damages for Cision.
Key Deals & Partnerships: Notified partnered with CLEAR
September: Bellingcat launches free toolkit
A treat for data-loving researchers. Bellingcat, the community of open source researchers and citizen journalists, has released an Online Investigations Toolkit. The toolkit is designed to help researchers discover tools in categories like social media and satellite imagery, and help researchers learn how to use each tool. Bellingcat’s toolkit is free.
Key Deals & Partnerships: True North Media Monitoring acquired Maverick Media Monitoring; Prowly partnered withh TVEyes
October: Meltwater partnered on disinformation
Meltwater has announced a strategic partnership with AI company Cyabra to combat disinformation and protect brand reputation. The collaboration will integrate Cyabra’s AI-powered platform, which detects fake profiles and harmful narratives across social media, with Meltwater’s existing social intelligence solutions. Supporting over 100 languages, the joint offering will provide customers with real-time alerts about emerging threats and disinformation campaigns. The partnership aims to help organizations better understand genuine consumer sentiment by filtering out manipulated conversations and fake accounts. It’s Meltwater’s second mis-disinformation partnership this year, following its partnership with Blackbird.AI announced in August.
Key Deals & Partnerships: Meltwater partnered with Cyabra; CARMA partnered with SAFC;
November: Forrester: Emplifi & Sprinklr lead
Forrester released its Forrester Wave report on Social Suites. The report found that when evaluating social media management platforms, customers are often disappointed with AI features that don’t meet expectations, despite vendor hype. Success factors include going beyond basic AI content assistance, prioritizing customer service and user experience over individual features, and carefully considering whether an all-in-one suite meets both core social media needs and emerging capabilities like employee advocacy and influencer marketing. Emplifi and Sprinklr were both highlighted as leaders. If you want to read the report, Brandwatch has made the report available to download.
December: The Stagwell Group acquires Unicepta
Stagwell announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire UNICEPTA, the Cologne-based media monitoring and analytics provider. The company will join Stagwell Marketing Cloud’s PRophet Comms Tech Suite of AI-powered offerings purpose-built for modern PR and marketing professionals. Stagwell has been building the PRophet Comms Tech Suite of late, adding LEADERS and InfluencerMarketing.AI in July. This is a challenger organisation to watch.
Omnicom has announced its acquisition of Interpublic Group in a stock-for-stock transaction, creating what is expected to be the world’s largest marketing services group with combined 2023 revenue of $25.6 billion. The merged entity will bring together several top PR agency brands including FleishmanHillard, Ketchum, The Weber Shandwick Collective, and Golin (which won big at the AMEC Awards this year).
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