In an age where every headline can spark a ripple effect and immediate action is needed to contain or propel messages, media monitoring is a necessity for PR professionals. Whether it’s tracking brand mentions, crisis signals, or competitive narratives, professionals in public relations need to stay alert, informed, and instantaneously responsive. However, traditional media monitoring presents several impediments that can, at the very least, slow down performance, and at the other extreme increase costs, and limit competitive ability.
Here are the biggest challenges PR professionals face when it comes to media monitoring—and why the need for a smarter, more agile solution is more urgent than ever.
1. High Cost of Traditional Media Monitoring Services
Many media monitoring solutions come with hefty monthly fees, platform costs, and keyword-based pricing. This makes them inaccessible to smaller agencies, freelancers, or boutique PR consultancies, who often work on tight budgets. Not that this is less a burden on large agencies who shell out between 7% to 10% of their fees on monitoring the media. What’s worse, these costs are recurring, regardless of the media value derived from them.
2. Limited Customization
Most media tracking platforms offer rigid keyword structures. You may want to track client-specific narratives or monitor nuanced keywords, but you’re stuck with a fixed framework typically decided at the beginning of the monitoring engagement. PR mandates are dynamic, requirements change often, and these changes are difficult to implement with an external monitoring agency. For PR professionals that pride themselves on time-specific strategies, this lack of control hampers effectiveness. The effectiveness of professionals would increase manifold if each PR practitioner gets the ability to monitor news on the keywords they want – not on the ones that (typically) get reviewed only once a year.
3. Delayed or Missed Coverage
Timing is everything in PR. Whether it’s responding to a breaking crisis or leveraging a positive mention, delayed alerts can mean missed opportunities. Traditional systems often deliver updates with a lag—sometimes hours after the news gets broken. In the PR world, that’s an eternity and can cost a client both reputation and value.
4. Updating as it happens
If you are a PR professional and you get your client news after your clients sees it, its probably your worst disaster. Clients expect the PR agency or professional to be constantly informed, and there is no way to reliably do this, other than with latest technology.
5. No DIY Options for Agencies That Want Control
Most legacy media monitoring tools require demos, onboarding calls, and sales follow-ups just to get started. There’s no self-serve model for agencies that want to test, set up, and customize their monitoring independently. In a world where everything from design tools to analytics is DIY, media monitoring remains frustratingly rigid.
A Better Way is Here
That’s where News That Matters (NTM) comes in — India’s first DIY media monitoring app built specifically for communicators and professionals who want full control, real-time updates, and broad coverage at a fraction of the cost.
With customizable keyword alerts, updates from 4000+ Indian websites, and real-time notifications more than 30+ times a day, NTM gives PR professionals the ability to act and react in the moment — not hours later. Its free till August 21, with much remaining free even after. Even when it is paid, it is at a ridiculously low price.
If you’re a PR agency tired of limitations and looking to take media monitoring into your own hands, NTM is the tool you’ve been waiting for.
Try it. Control the news you want. Own your narrative.