When searching for news media monitoring, we often stumbled on the confusion as to whether social listening tool is a better solution to cater for your online media monitoring needs.
In this article, we shall explain the facts, pros and cons on news media monitoring, social media monitoring and if having both systems (as an integrated media monitoring system) is the best solution for your business needs.
News media monitoring
News media monitoring have been around in Malaysia for decades, originating from print news, magazines, TV and radio broadcasts. Traditional (conventional) news monitoring agencies or companies such as NAMA (now known as Dataxet) and Isentia are amongst the popular choices amongst businesses in the past.
However, the rapid digitalization and transition to online media and social media adoption in Malaysia have created new demand on social (or online media) listening tools and services in the last 5 years. It means, there are more data to be analyzed from online / digital news compared to say 10 years ago.
95% of Malaysians read online news, and most of the print, news and broadcast media publishers are now moving to digital and social media platforms. As digital news outlets are fast changing, it means traditional news monitoring may no longer be important.
Industry observers and users of large companies are now viewing news traditional media monitoring (including print, broadcast, TV, radio) are less relevant due to the flawed conventional PR value. Additionally, marketers and PR experts are seeing less value from fewer data from traditional news print platforms, making the traditional news media monitoring less relevant in 2025 for most Malaysian companies.
News media monitoring may be relatively less important compared to 10 years ago and prices have gone down rapidly to attract Malaysian business owners, marketers and PR managers.
Regardless, you may still want to subscribe to news media monitoring. Price for traditional news media monitoring in Malaysia starts from RM 2,500 per month with basic functionalities such as automated email alerts. However, for newbies who just joined Corporate Communications or marketing department, you need to be aware of the pros and cons when subscribing such tools or systems.
Pros (Advantages):
- Useful if your business dependent heavily on print media news, TV and broadcast
- Low prices and fees for all-in-one media monitoring tool with automated alerts and reporting
Cons (Disadvantages)
- Most traditional print media are now available online and in social media platforms
- Noisy data means you need to refine your monitoring keywords
- Media monitoring companies are downsizing to cut back-end staff support, expect delays and poor services compared to 10 years ago.
- Fewer data to collect and PR value from news print are less relevant compared to PR metrices (eg mentions, impression, engagement) in social and online news
Social Listening / Monitoring Tools & Services
Social listening tools in Malaysia are seen as highly favourable and popular amongst many businesses, public listed companies, PR professionals, marketers and Government agencies compared to traditional news monitoring. The semi-automated service-based social listening companies are the viewed as the best solution to serve complex needs of Malaysian businesses due to multi-lingual sentiment complexities that exist in the Malay, English and Mandarin – 3 of the key languages that are widely used in Malaysia.
Social (and online news) listening service companies by market leaders such as Berkshire Media promises larger set of data that can be tracked, downloaded, processed, analyzed and used by most Malaysian companies including retail consumer brands. Additionally its proprietary SENTIROBO® is regarded as the best sentiment analytics for social media data, taking into account domain-specific sentiment keywords that are used in its machine learning AI-driven algorithm.
However, those choosing social listening tool (system) may experience limitations and some downsides such as noisy data, wrongly tagged sentiment despite low prices offered by online or social media monitoring companies such as Talkwalker, Brandwatch, Synthesio or Meltwater.
Social media monitoring tool or system are seen as enablers, but not a 100% all-in-one solution to analyzing consumer or public perception, and it does not provide deeper insights that are helpful to marketers and PR managers either.
- Lack of data – due to data privacy policy issues by Meta (Facebook), which prompted many service providers using unethical or illegal ways to harvest the data. There are companies in Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesian-owned companies who does illegal data harvesting of social media data, hiding behind the “social listening tools” with automated alerts.
- Sentiment tagging – automated sentiment analytics tools are often the weakest point in any social listening tools in the marketplace due to lack of accuracy in processing local slangs, sarcasm or Malay language that exist in social data. This prompts a customized approach of human-assisted sentiment analysis of online media and social data when monitoring or doing the analysis reports.
Pros (Advantages):
- More data volume that helps to give a comprehensive overview for better decision making
- Most online news outlets are already on social platforms.
- Easier to track, monitor and efficient
- You don’t need traditional news media monitoring (obsolete)
- Reduces margin of error when administered by the right set of people
- You can spot better patterns, trends and anticipate long term risks or plan your actions
Cons (Disadvantages)
- Social listening tools are not equipped with accurate sentiment tagging
- Further data cleaning and processing is required to give meaningful insights
- Require experienced analysts (domain experts) to fully understand and identify trends
- Expensive than traditional news media monitoring, but it is well worth it
- May be suitable for retail consumer brands, public sector (Government agencies)
Conclusions
News media monitoring agencies or companies in Malaysia have slowly migrated its capabilities into online (digital) and social media space.
Whilst some companies are largely tied to its legacy roots, you may opt for digital savvy media monitoring companies that offer both traditional news print and social listening capabilities that brings the best of both worlds.
Integrated media monitoring companies with strong data processing and analytical capabilities such as Berkshire Media is the one to choose if you want the best value from traditional news print and social media sentiment analysis. The company is backed by highly experienced data analysts offering greater data-driven social insights to Malaysian businesses, Government Linked Companies (GLCs), Government agencies and Ministries. This cutting-edge and highly advanced service-based online media monitoring company continue to bring clean datasets on the table for top executives (and policy) makers to take informed operational and strategic decisions.
About the Author
Shahid Shayaa is the founder and managing director of Berkshire Media. He specializes in data-driven communication strategies and insights using social data analytics, social media monitoring tools and machine learning text algorithms for more than 13 years. As an expert in the field of media monitoring, issue management and reputation risks for companies, his deep involvement in various research studies in this field and published various scientific papers on social data analytics, sentiment analysis and back-end algorithms on consumer sentiment, emotions and behaviour for marketers and campaign managers.
