The AMEC Summit and Barcelona Principles 3.0 were certainly July highlights. AMEC, however, wasn’t the only story. Talkwalker and SoundAware made acquisitions and CreatorIQ picked up funding. Meanwhile, Isentia is exiting Asian markets and expanding its Australian service.
Talkwalker buys Nielsen Social
Talkwalker has acquired Nielsen Social for an undisclosed sum. Nielsen’s Social Content Ratings, which includes social TV measurement, will be folded into Talkwalker’s platform. The acquisition will expand Talkwalker’s share of the US market. July was rather busy for Talkwalker, with the launch of a refreshed platform, a range of new features and plans to integrate Quora data into their service.
Isentia exits North Asia 
Isentia has decided to exit North Asia, closing its operations in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Rather than withdrawing from the market completely, Isentia has announced a strategic partnership with Hong Kong-based Wisers Information to continue servicing clients. Isentia has also announced plans to sell its Korean business to a local partner. Meanwhile, in its home market of Australia, Isentia has launched a Culturally And Linguistically Diverse (CALD) media monitoring service, expanding its coverage to non-English publications across the country. The service will monitor Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Italian, Greek, Punjabi, and Filipino.
Media Distillery sells monitoring business
SoundAware Group has acquired the broadcast media monitoring business of its fellow Dutch company Media Distillery. The monitoring operations will be merged with RTV Monitor, which SoundAware acquired last year. Media Distillery commenced media monitoring in 2014, and will focus its attention on supporting the development of broadcasters platforms.
CreatorIQ raises $US24 Million
CreatorIQ, the influencer marketing platform, has raised $US24 million in Series C funding. The funding round was led by Kayne Partners Fund with participation by TVC Capital and Unilever Ventures. The company is continuing its focus on expanding its presence in EMEA. The round comes a year after the company closed $US12 million in Series B funding. In other funding news, Spiketrap picked up $US3 million for its social media intelligence platform.
AMEC’s Virtual Summit
The AMEC Summit was virtual this year, thanks to Intrado’s conference platform. As regular readers know, I’m a fan of applying our media intelligence toolset to misinformation research, so I was hooked on Jim McNamara’s keynote. Looking beyond the usual sources of data was a theme, as Mischief PR’s Daniella Graham points out in her Summit review. Quantum’s Jesper Andersen also picked up the idea in his 10 key takeaways. If you didn’t manage to make it to the Summit, head over to the AMEC blog to catch up on what you might have missed. The winners of the AMEC Awards were also announced, in record time by AMEC’s CEO Johna Burke. Congratulations to all of the winners, and a special congratulations to Sandra Macleod, Group CEO of Echo Research, for receiving the Don Bartholomew Award.
Barcelona Principles 3.0
Back in 2010, I joined a couple of hundred of my fellow measurement pros in a hot conference room in Barcelona and voted for the original Barcelona Principles. In 2015, we piled into Ketchum’s office in London for coffee, a croissant and an updated list of Principles. In 2020, FleishmanHillard Fishburn’s Ben Levine unveiled the third version of the Barcelona Principles at the AMEC Summit. CARMA’s Jason Weekes has outlined what’s changed. The updated principles continue to provide a baseline standard for all PR measurement. It’s telling that across all three versions, Barcelona Principle number 5: “AVEs are not the value of communication” has not changed. As we look forward to 2025 and Barcelona Principles 4.0, let’s work on finally eradicating AVEs.
Dataminr in trouble over “surveillance”
Dataminr and Twitter have been accused of facilitating US domestic surveillance. US law enforcement monitored the recent Black Lives Matter protests using Dataminr’s First Alerts tool. The Intercept is reporting that Dataminr tipped off police to social media posts with the latest whereabouts and actions of demonstrators. Both Twitter and Dataminr denied that the monitoring meets the definition of surveillance.
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