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Umbria Listens, Accepts J.D. Power Bid

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:43:27 +0000

J.D. Power and Associates acquired Boulder-based reputation tracker Umbria to get a better handle on what people say about quality and satisfaction with products and services.

Modern times call for modern efforts at gathering effective assessments of products like the famed awards J.D. Power issues to car manufacturers and firms in other industries. Their studies should receive an infusion of new information with news of their Umbria acquisition. Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.

With the deal, J.D. Power will be able to tap commentary on blogs, message boards, and social networking sites about the categories of products and services they cover. People who haven’t ever been in a J.D. Power survey, but post online about the issues they experience, may be fueling the next set of quality awards the firm bestows on the best of what they find.

In 2005, Umbria founder Howard Kaushansky called blogs “a very rich source [of market intelligence], because people don’t just go to talk about a recent movie, they go to talk about their lives.”

That insight, and the ability to cull such details from the thousands of sources online, apparently put Umbria in a position to be acquired. J.D. Power’s move probably made a few companies slap their heads and realize the opportunity they missed.

MediaSense Blog Measurement Tool Debuts

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 03 May 2007 16:58:14 +0000

Umbria and PR Newswire have partnered on the launch of MediaSense Blog Measurement, for use by clients seeking insight into the buzz around their brands on the Internet.

MediaSense Blog Measurement Tool Debuts

The subscription-based MediaSense Blog Measurement service will delve into the sometimes murky and always widespread conversations of the world of blogs and other consumer-generated media. Clients will be able to find out what people have to say about their brands.

The aphorism about knowledge equaling power has become more of a truism in the 21st Century. Problems arise when trying to sift the more useful knowledge about people discussing brands from the many disparate conversations taking place online.

Specialized services have evolved to focus on intelligence gathering from blogs, and Umbria has been among them. Their technology will be at the core of PR Newswire‘s MediaSense Blog Measurement service.

PR Newswire said the Blog Measurement service will be available separate from or bundled with their MediaSense product. More details arrived from them in a statement about the deal:

Reports are delivered monthly and contain an evaluation of media coverage based upon several measures including volume of coverage, coverage by media type, tonality (positive, negative, neutral), the presence of key corporate messages within articles, the overall quality of coverage based upon an article

Red Hot Blog URLs …Pitch to Bloggers

Shel Holtz — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 20:53:09 +0000

Just as PayPerPost has revised its business practices by requiring its bloggers to disclose the fact that they’re getting sponsorship money, another enterprise has unleashed a service that will make it drop-dead easy for anybody to start pitching bloggers without any such constraints.

Umbria Inc., which describes itself as “a market intelligence company that specializes in blog research and consumer generated media (CGM) for market insight,” has launched Umbria Connect. Customers will be able to get URLs of blogs that talk about themes or topics that match their line of business. Umbria Connect will sell the URLs in batches of 25.

I can just imagine companies utterly clueless about blogs-and mercenary organizations that just don’t give a damn about blogging etiquette-jumping all over this offer, grabbing up URLs and sending out bazillions of terrible pitches without ever reading the blogs whose URLs they’ve bought. (This could be a real boon to The Bad Pitch Blog.)

Umbria sees it differently, of course, as “a way to connect people who care deeply about specific topics,” according to Janet Eden-Harris, CEO, Umbria Inc. And there probably will be companies that use the service to this end. But the easier it is to snag a URL, the easier it is for companies that aren’t interested in conversation to solicit bloggers for digital ink. (Don’t think so? Look what happened when these same kinds of companies were able to get their hands on email addresses.) I expect to start getting pitches for mortgages, Viagra, and poker parlors any day now.

Pricing wasn’t covered in the press release; maybe it will be high enough to discourage the worst offenders out there.

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Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.

Finally, Somebody Ranks Brand Monitoring Services

Mike Manuel — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:36:32 +0000

If there was ever a research report I’d like to get my hands on, it’s this one from Forrester.

The folks at Forrester have completed what looks to be a pretty comprehensive analysis of the most popular brand monitoring services (e.g., Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Cymfony, Biz360, Umbria, Brandimensions, MotiveQuest, and Factiva).

I can’t tell for certain how deep this report goes, it costs a thousand bucks, but they’ve posted a Q&A and an executive summary along with the graphic you see embedded here, which tease some of the findings. A few of the nuggets (verbatim):

Nielsen BuzzMetrics and Cymfony are market Leaders, thanks to their comprehensive technology platforms and extensive data source coverage.

MotiveQuest – with the most services-focused and strategy-oriented offering – finishes as the leading Strong Performer.

Biz360′s focus on traditional PR monitoring services lands it as a midrange Strong Performer.

Rounding out the Strong Performer category are Factiva, with its strong print orientation, and Umbria, which excels at speaker segmentation.

Brandimensions falls into the Contender category, with targeted expertise in the automotive, entertainment, and pharmaceutical industries and an approach that relies heavily on human filtering.

Brand monitoring online is top-o-mind for a lot of companies that recognize the need for conversational marketing and communication, but lack the tools and insights to analyze and measure the impact and success of their efforts. It’s a real pain, and unfortunately, where there’s pain there’s also exploitation. I think some of the popular brand monitoring services have a reputation of over-promising and under-delivering — which is why I’m glad to see a report like this surface.

Brand monitoring and sentiment mining online is a tough nut to crack, I personally don’t think any of these companies have it nailed yet, but some are getting close.

For that reason, it’s good to see that Forrester will be revisiting this report next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a big shake up in the rankings, perhaps even some new players to watch. Forrester, if you’re listening, I’d totally understand if you wanted to send this to me for “review.”;p

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Mike Manuel is the founder of the award winning Media Guerrilla blog. Media Guerrilla is an insiders take on the practice of technology public relations with a focus on the issues, tactics and trends that are specific to the tech industry.
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Search Engine Strategies 2005 San Jose

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 21:01:42 +0000

Why go to San Jose in August? A chance to learn about the latest and greatest ways to benefit from the potential offered by search engines, that’s why.

Several tracks will be offered at this year’s Search Engine Strategies 2005 conference in San Jose. For those just entering the world of e-commerce, a Fundamentals Track will touch on an Introduction to Search Marketing, along with other topics like Buying Search Engine Advertising and Successful Site Architecture.

The Advertising track should be of interest to online retailers facing the upcoming holiday season. One session will walk advertisers through Creating Compelling Ads, while a later session on Landing Page Testing & Tuning tells them what to do with the customer once they’ve clicked through that ad.

Blogs have become so much of a phenomenon, companies like Factiva and Umbria Communications offer products and services specifically focused on delving the blogosphere for advanced marketing intelligence.

What do blogs and news mean to advertisers operating in the search engine medium? The News, PR, and Blogs track will hit on that over several sessions. Presenters will discuss how search engines handle blogs in their listings.

WebProNews will have two of its finest search engine reporters, Chris and Mike, in attendance at SES 2005. Be sure to keep up with WebProNews and discuss the breaking topics from the conference in the WebProWorld forums next week.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.

New Buzz Planned For Buzz Report

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 18:32:48 +0000

Umbria Communications will update its Buzz Report product next week with additional features.

Some opinions have influence, but widely held similar opinions have greater value to marketers. Umbria plans to tweak its Buzz Report to better assess the opinions and information it gathers from blogs, forums, and chat rooms.

The company collects that unsolicited information based on client requirements. One firm may want to know more about how a brand is perceived, while another wants to determine the features its target market wants from a given product.

Umbria says in a statement that it constantly scans and analyzes over 11 million blogs and forums. With the Buzz Report update, Umbria claims it will improve reports on demographic segmentation, and that it can discern characteristics of a speaker based on speech patterns.

Another improvement will see the technology do a better job of filtering blog spam (do we call this “blam” now?) Auto-generated blogs based on keywords, or blog posts unrelated to the topic of discussion, can skew reports if not filtered.

“The online world is full of individuals talking about their lives and how they intersect with brands, companies and topics of interest. Never before have companies been able to tap into these unbiased conversations to truly understand what is important to those who enjoy their products,” said Umbria CEO Howard Kaushansky in a statement.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.