Measurement: Impact, trends and developments

Media Monitors hosted an event last week to launch our Media Influencers Survey, and I thought I’d share some of the results.

We surveyed both public relations professionals and media professionals (journalists, bloggers and the like) in Singapore and Malaysia with the goal of providing the community with a better sense of their collective views on media in the region, and, well, each other.

The findings are posted on our website at http://www.mediamonitors.com.sg/insights/media-influencers-survey-findings, but I thought I’d focus in on what seems to be a hot issue from both perspectives: the shift to online.

Interestingly enough, we found that traditional media is considered more influential by PR professionals in both markets. In Singapore, 55% of communications professionals believe newspapers and TV to be most influential, while 57% find the same in Malaysia – strong majorities in both cases.

Contrastingly, media professionals themselves prefer to look to online news sources over traditional media for information – 80% deemed online sources their preferred platform for research.

However, it seems like few want to pay for news content online across the board: 57% of PR professionals would not pay for access online, and a whopping 70% of media professionals would not pay.

In tandem with these changes the economic downturn has had a significant impact on both media and PR professionals – while journalists face challenges of declining audiences and shrinking budgets, communications professionals face more pressure to justify their budget by demonstrating return on investment. Although optimism is returning in line with the improving economy, this has had an impact on both professions.

The role of public relations may be increasingly outsourced in some arenas – while 44% of corporate or government sector PR budgets saw a decrease, PR agencies were split, with 33% saying their revenue declined, and 31% recording an increase. However the importance of PR to organizations is supported by figures that show that 6 in 10 heads of communications have a direct line of reporting to the Chief Executive Officer of their organization.

Similarly, journalists are increasingly charged with multi-tasking by adapting content to print, broadcast, and online mediums – MediaCorp’s switch to a NewsHub model(http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporebusinessnews/view/1013079/1/.html) is a timely example of this. In fact, journalists say one of the biggest challenges they say they face is coming up with unique and relevant online content that is interactive – something that communications professionals may benefit by taking into account when pitching. This is also the case for bloggers, who welcome contact from PR professionals but prefer if media releases are customized to fit their platforms.

One last little tidbit – despite widely held views that PR is a female-dominated industry, we found that women didn’t have such a high majority – only 60% - of the over 250 respondents. There’s a slightly higher skew for journalists, who were 64% male out of almost 70 respondents.

The survey is the first landscaping study of its kind conducted by Media Monitors in the region – do check out the details and feel free to join the conversation. If you’d like to tweet about it, there’s a hashtag #mmsg.