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Topic: MyMediaInfo vs. Cision Media Source
| Author | Message |
| advicewelcome | Posted – 6/30/2009 1:49:00 PM | show profile | email poster | flag this post We are thinking of switching from Cision to MyMediaInfo but after a 1-day trial are still a bit torn if it's worth the savings. Does anyone have experience with these two databases and can offer insight into the quality of MyMediaInfo? Thanks for your help! |
| maphop | Posted – 6/30/2009 6:06:21 PM | show profile | flag this post MyMediaInfo is decent. Not fabulous but decent. US only, not international modules available (if that is important to you) and some of the report generation is a bit less than intuitive. If you like Cision, I would stay with Cision even at double the price but if your alternative is to try working without anything because of budget issues, MyMediaInfo is fairly good. |
| Cyrus | Posted – 7/1/2009 3:59:35 PM | show profile | flag this post I just got an e-mail marketing piece from them the other day and noticed they're priced slightly higher than Burrelle's Luce, which I've found to be a great product and spoken about here many times. I love the fact that research is done regularly, you can see how old contacts are and can get fast, free updates once contacts "age" past a certain point in the system. I don't use any international capabilities, so if that's important to you, other research should be undertaken. ------ Cyrus Afzali Astoria Communications www.astoriacomm.com |
| hawkmail | Posted – 7/3/2009 11:57:11 AM | show profile | flag this post I did the one day trial as well and I thought it was pretty easy to use. I looked up contacts of editors and writers I know well to see how accurate they were and they seemed fine. The customer service was great, but isn't it always while a company is trying to sell you something? I'm still unsure about signing up. |
| Charles2 | Posted – 7/9/2009 12:26:40 AM | show profile | flag this post Hawkmail, BurrellesLuce also has a free trial. Charles |
| suki64 | Posted – 7/9/2009 8:09:34 PM | show profile | email poster | flag this post I vote no. I don't have experience with Cision (only PR Newswire), but i am really disappointed with MyMediaInfo and would not recommend subscribing. Here are some of the issues i have: 1) completely scraped data: the information is scraped from publicly available sources by (i believe) teams in India. That leads to a number of issues: - poor data ie: Katherine Couric is the main pr contact for CBS News. All of the editorial calendars for Vogue list the main contact as Anna Wintour. Obviously no one with any knowledge of the US market added those. - missing data: if there are no online edcals, or the information is sparse, it doesn't exist in mymediainfo. There didn't seem to be any truly researched (via phone etc) results. - weird categories: i can't remember offhand, but i know that weathermen and traffic reporters come up under some weirdly phrased category. There for some reason are a ton of journalists that fall under the category of "animal husbandry". Not sure what that is or why there are so many. My guess is that anyone who covers agriculture ends up with a check next to husbandry. - if you look closely at the journalist profiles, you will see that 95% of them are just merged fields with the exact same language. So you will see "Katie is a reporter with XYZ." Then you will see "Joe is a editor with XYZ" Their software doesn't even make small changes like a/an. 2) Really poor search/sort capabilities: They tout "google-like" search capabilities, but it is anything but. It is just a very rudimentary keyword search. If Katie Couric says she likes fashion in her profile, she will come up in a search for fashion. My recollection is that they trial only shows you the first 20 or so items. If you notice, you are not seeing alphabetical entries. My belief is that they stack the most complete profiles upfront for the trial, then the rest are not nearly so strong. There is no good way to sort through and eliminate entries. You can go through and check off the ones, but it is very slow. I ended up just downloading a ton and doing all the sorting and deleting in Excel. Still a pain and was shocked at the mix of things that showed up. for every 2000 entries i downloaded, I probably ended up with 100-300 acceptable ones. 3) They tout themselves as having designed the software from the ground up, but whoever designed it had no understanding of media. The radio is particularly bad. Do a search on Rush Limbaugh for example. he will come up under all of the affiliates he works for and the contact email will be something like 'generalmanager@podunkradiostation.com" obviously not the right contact. They have no system for dealing with affiliates vs personalities vs shows. Overall...i would say that i have wasted so much time having to cull through and correct the information in their database - definitely not worth the break in price. |
| hawkmail | Posted – 7/10/2009 1:47:26 PM | show profile | flag this post Has anyone gotten Cision to give them a free trial? It's been years since I've been in-house at a company that has a subscription. I focus on something kind of specific and have built my own lists and editor/reporter relationships over many years. I'm now considering taking on a few new clients that would necessitate going the database route again and I'm afraid of spending thousands of dollars on something that doesn't make my life easier. Give the feedback on MyMediaInfo I'm feeling that paying the higher Cision fee is really the only safe way to go. I'll also check out Burelles's. Thanks for that suggestion. Any further thoughts? |
| Charles2 | Posted – 7/21/2009 3:47:34 PM | show profile | flag this post Hawkmail, As far as I remember, Cision only had a live demo conducted by a salesperson, not a trial. They may have changed, though, so you should check with them. As of a few months ago, BurrellesLuce offered something like a two- or three-day trial. Again, I would ask them directly. Vocus may have a free trial, but unless you join a co-op, they are more expensive than Cision. They also may not have any significant advantage over Cision except possibly better support, which you may not need. Charles |
| hawkmail | Posted – 7/23/2009 4:34:33 PM | show profile | flag this post Charles, thanks for the info. I appreciate your input. |
| batterup | Posted – 8/17/2009 2:07:54 PM | show profile | email poster | flag this post Mymedia info etc I've been using Vocus for a year, but main client doesn't want to participate in cost offset. Looking at MyMediaInfo, have a four day demo to use. Seems simple, but inlight of some of the comments, I'm worried. Last year I had a quick demo with Cision, and no they wouldn't give you a trial. My concern about Cision was they limit number press/emails that can be distributed per year. which would not work for some of my clients. If I keep Vocus, do you know anyone who might like to share? |
| Cyrus | Posted – 8/18/2009 6:32:10 PM | show profile | flag this post e-mail and distribution limits To combat those, why not just send your information out with original cover letters yourself? I never, ever, ever send anything automatically with any of the bots used by any of the major services I've ever used. Reporters and editors can tell that a mile away and it doesn't do a lot to win you points with them. ------ Cyrus Afzali Astoria Communications www.astoriacomm.com |
| maphop | Posted – 8/18/2009 8:15:23 PM | show profile | flag this post Once again, I am with Cyrus -- I have never used the distribution "blasts" offered from any of the media database companies and I have used almost everyone out there. We purchase the databse, use it for search function, report generation and record keeping and not for distribution. We distribute all of our own releases ourselves and I suspect we get better responses that way. There is a huge price difference between Cision and Vocus and the two least expense, MyMediaInfo and MediAtlas but I also do not think there is any comparison in quality of data so it's an expensive decision to make. And, for what it's worth, I've never had a client offer to cost share -- it is simply part of what they get when they put us on retainer and it is our cost to deal with. |
| Cyrus | Posted – 8/19/2009 10:43:10 AM | show profile | flag this post passing along costs One way to combat and/or deal with these costs is to put language in your contracts that add on a certain percentage of your retainer/project fee to cover expenses. Most agencies do this and not only do they pass along expenses, but they mark them up to cover the cost of people who send out bills but aren't billable themselves. I personally make a point of mentioning that I don't pass along routine expenses to clients, but there's nothing to say you can't. ------ Cyrus Afzali Astoria Communications www.astoriacomm.com |
| Wiredout | Posted – 8/24/2009 1:09:37 PM | show profile | email poster | flag this post Marketwire's Mediahub Hi, I work for Marketwire and give demo's of our media Database called Mediahub. We are competitive to both tools mentioned above. If you are still in the market to compare and contrast databases please let me know by going to our website at www.marketwire.com/mediahub or feel free to reach out to me at 212-542-3017 Best, Evan |
| mosscom | Posted – 8/28/2009 3:34:36 PM | show profile | flag this post Cyrus, I'd be interested in the language you've seen on passing along costs for media databases; it's a big cost and trying to figure out how to manage it as not all clients use the same |
| maphop | Posted – 9/2/2009 2:41:01 PM | show profile | flag this post Mosscom, I am not sure whether this will help you the same way as the written language you are asking Cyrus for but there are two things I always let prospective clients know; that I pay upwards of $7K a year for my leased databases and that that's part of what they are paying for and that only if they request a very specific service outside of our normal range (a clipping service for a particular project or just for them, expert listings in a couple of databases for speakers, etc.) do we charge them pass-along costs. Most of them blink when they hear how much we invest each year in our databases and our retainer fees seem much more reasonable after that! |
