Media monitoring company Streem launches with claim to offer better service than rivals
The lucrative world of media monitoring today sees the arrival of a new player with the launch of Streem.
According to 29-year-old Streem co-founder Elgar Welch’s LinkedIn profile, he spent a brief period in politics including as “Digital Adviser to Prime Minister’s Office” in 2013. Earlier in his career he worked at production house FSM.
The launch appears to be a reboot of an earlier offering launched by Welch in 2008 which was also called Streem. This offering was a subscription news service mainly carrying content from AAP. It shut down four months after launch. Welch was also behind a short-lived news service called Scopical which at the time billed itself as “one of Australia’s first independent online media portals”.
In Australia, the media monitoring landscape is dominated by the Isentia, which has been in the market for more than three decades, and as previously known as Media Monitors. Last financial year Isentia’s revenues were $156m.
Media monitoring was originally mainly based on news clippings, but now takes in all media, and is used by government and brands. Another established player globally which is making inroads into Australia is Meltwater.
Unlike the traditional media monitoring services, Streem is automated.
Streem’s board members include Alan Robertson, who spent more than 20 years at media giant Merchant & Partners and went on to chair Initiative Media.
Streem says additional advisers for its new offering include former ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel, and chair of data analytics firm Quantium, Tony Davis.
Streem’s technical lead is Antoine Sabourin.
Streem offers desktop and mobile monitoring across online, print, TV, radio and social media alongside a realtime offering which is says allows customers to evaluate audience engagement.
A Streem spokesperson told Mumbrella its charging model is “a flexible, flat-fee and competitively priced platform that delivers a tonne more value than the old-world providers”.
In the launch announcement Welch took aim at the existing players. He claimed: “We spent three years building and commercialising Streem and the more we spoke to our corporate and government customers, the more dissatisfaction we uncovered with the old-world providers. Customers want speed, flexibility to monitor and transparent pricing.
“We’ve been delivering Streem to customers for 18 months and have chosen to officially launch now with the backing of not only a great board, but some key clients including Australia’s biggest sports league, major government departments, household consumer brands and top 100 ASX corporates. We’re thrilled about the growth we’ve experienced and the organisations preparing to shift to Streem.”
In the same Davis said: “We are witnessing the emergence of another powerful data and technology-enabled disruptor in the Australian business landscape. With its fast and accurate platform, impossible to match with human processes alone, Streem will allow organisations to manage their media and audiences with far greater effect and resonance.”
Nice to see more choice in the market! Refreshing to see a new company shake up a very dull and out of date industry
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The top team at home-grown iSentia keep winning worldwide industry awards for innovation and client commitment.
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The negative/cynical angle at the top of this piece wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact iSentia (the company Streem are trying to challenge) are the sponsors of Mumbrella’s Commscon would it? #conflict
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Hi “Disclosure Needed”,
Not even slightly. We’re certainly not scared of writing bad news about Isentia. There’s been a fair bit of it about in their last couple of ASX results which we’ve covered thoroughly.
Our first impression on receiving the announcement about Streem was that a credible new media monitoring player had entered the market. And that’s how we set out to write it.
However, the impression given in the announcement, and on the site, of a company led by a highly connected political veteran with access to the office of the PM began to crumble a little when we noticed on Elgar Welch’s LinkedIn profile that the involvement with the PM’s office had been as an “adviser” and for just a few months.
Then we began to wonder why there was so little information – and, unusually, no image in his LinkedIn profile, so we became a bit more curious.
A bit more searching led us to articles about the previous incarnation of Streem, and one of the articles from eight years ago that we link to making the point that it’s never good practice to misdirect the press, as that journalist appeared to believe had been the case back then.
We were also initially impressed by what appeared at first glance to be a high powered board. Until we noticed that the board and advisers and been lumped together, again in a somewhat misleading way. The actual board – the people who will be involved and have the legal responsibilities that come with being directors – is much smaller. As far as we can tell, just two people in addition to the founders.
So yes, by that point we were feeling a little cynical. So, as is our job, we chose to put the facts that had been left out from the press release alongside the information sent out in press release.
Which is a bit of a shame because the product itself may well be great. And more competition in the media monitoring market is no bad thing.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
The negative/ cynical comment from DisclosureNeeded wouldn’t have anything to do with them obviously being from Streem would it? #conflict
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Imagine being an adviser for a short period of time in 2013… there couldn’t have been an election in that time? Weak response. Dirt digging.
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