Month: February 2022

“Content is king, but video content is God”

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Vladimir Petkov

Interview with Vladimir Petkov, Chief Data Officer of Updata One and CEO of Identrics in Bulgaria.

Hi Vladimir, Updata One is a newly formed community. What companies are included and what are the main purposes of the community?

The four companies that make up the Updata One community (A Data Pro, Identrics, SeeNews and Perceptica), have a variety of expertise and knowledge. Though they’re different companies, they operate in the very same knowledge-intensive industry and this makes the relationship between them beneficial and essential at many levels while allowing each company to build valuable partnerships with the others.

We have many examples of the group’s collaboration in order to answer a specific customer request or perform internal process optimisation. This collaboration leads to an increase of expertise within the community of professionals and provides an opportunity to deliver better products and services to current and potential clients.

What is your background and what is included in your current role as Chief Data Officer at Updata One?

Almost all of my professional path has been related to data and innovation. I have six years of experience in digital media and business development, gained at Economedia, Bulgaria’s top news publisher. After that, I continued my journey as CTO at A Data Pro, a global company specialising in content, data and business intelligence services. Since 2016, I have been CEO at Identrics, and now I am also Chief Data Officer at the newly established business community of Updata One.

In this role, I am responsible for data. I oversee the effectiveness of processes such as data collection, management and transformations and find ways to improve them. In addition, I pay attention to the development of the market we are operating in and find ways to innovate and implement automation.

Outside my professional life, I am a podcast producer and host and deliver lectures on online business and digital media-related topics at various universities.

You are also the CEO of Identrics where you provide automated abstractive summarisation. Can you explain why that is important for media intelligence?

Abstractive summarisation is a solution we launched recently. The media intelligence industry is in constant search for better solutions of content aggregation, transformation and analysis, and we can all agree that we witnessed the rise of a phenomenon during the pandemic – the infodemic.

Nowadays it is even hard for communications experts to know everything about the organisation they are responsible for and respond to the emerging crisis in the fastest possible way.

These problems need the development of new technologies to help media intelligence company deal with the heavy load of information and improve its process, so they can meet the need for accurate, immediate delivery of news resumes.

Abstract summaries are tough and necessitate significant language modelling. It’s also usually more difficult than extractive summarisation. The information in a text is interpreted by abstractive summarisation, which generates new sentences for the summary. It’s pretty similar to how long text summaries are written. This method differs from prior versions of summarisation, which used input sentences to construct shorter texts. To develop human-like summaries, Identrics’ solution employs AI and Machine Learning.

However, there are certain difficulties in creating a new text. One such issue is that abstractive summarisation algorithms can sometimes produce erroneous data. For this reason, Identrics uses a fact-checking method to address this issue.

How will abstractive summarisation affect copyright, and do you see any challenge in relation to copyright owners?

Abstractive summarisation approaches provide outlines that are easily understood and short. They reduce the length of sentences, resulting in reduced recurrence of tasks.

Because abstractive summaries are wholly new texts, they can assist firms to avoid copywriting challenges. This helps save money and time.

Have you recently, or do you plan to, release any new technology-based solutions in 2022 that will add to or improve the services you offer your clients?

We are planning to launch various solutions this year, starting with entity-based abstractive summarisation.

A project we have been working on in the past months is our Enterprise Knowledge Graph, which will allow us to solve complex problems such as entity resolution and entity linking. It will help Identrics create deep reports and include non-obvious knowledge.

Another development is our model for fake news and hate speech detection. These types of solutions are essential in a world where everyone has the freedom to share their own or another person’s opinion, and the information is spreading at a fast speed.

When it comes to the actual data behind media intelligence, what kind of data or media not currently used can be interesting in the future?

There is always room for additional development and improvement.

Social media is a game-changer for sure, but there are also other emerging communication channels. A lot of podcasts are generating content that could be of interest to business decision-makers and PR experts.

Also, we all know that content is king, but video content is God. There are more and more videos spreading across the internet that carry a variety of information with them. Communicational experts need additional instruments to better explore the information in all types of media.

Can the entire process of media intelligence be automated in the future?

Many tasks can be automated with the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning models. The truth is, though, that technology is still not mature enough to replace people. In my opinion, there will not be full automation in any industry in the following decades.

Automation is not everything when it comes to media monitoring. While automation saves the analyst a great deal of time, it cannot handle everything. Analysts that track media must also consider their opinion, or whether an article’s or a social media post’s tone is good, neutral, or pessimistic.

What excites you the most when it comes to automation in the media intelligence industry in the future?

The emergence of new communication channels brings the need for fast development in the media intelligence industry. Think about it: 10 years ago not so many people owned a smartphone, social media didn’t control our world and nobody had even thought of podcasts.

Now we have to deal with new copywriting issues, and the boom of fake news and hate speech. Addressing all of these problems and looking for a way to solve them is something that I am really passionate about.

How do you think the media intelligence industry will change in the next 5-10 years, and what are the greatest challenges ahead?

The media intelligence industry needs to change with the pace that media in general is doing. The term “media” has transformed dramatically in the past several years. Today, everybody can be media, and everybody can spread the news around its network.

I think we will have to invest even more in R&D initiatives and find new ways to monitor all the conversations that are happening around the net, around the globe.

By Peter Appleby

“You need to be on top of new technologies to make your business as efficient and valuable as possible”

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Thomas Vejlemand

Interview with Thomas Vejlemand, President of FIBEP and CEO of Infomedia, a media intelligence company from Denmark.

Hi Thomas, what is your background and what is included in your current role at Infomedia?

I joined Infomedia seven years ago. Back in 2015 Infomedia had its activities only in Denmark. Today, Infomedia has 250 employees in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, and London. In 2018 Infomedia acquired Opoint, a technology platform for crawling of global online news content.

I am Infomedia Group CEO and chairman of Opoint. I have a background as an engineer with a good sense of business and technology. In the last 20 years I have had CEO roles in digital agencies and information management companies combined with roles as a board member in tech startups. In November 2021 I became president for FIBEP, an industry organisation for media intelligence companies.

What differentiates Infomedia from other media intelligence companies?

We are one of the leading media intelligence companies in the Nordic region. We serve major brands and organizations with global communication insights. Our strong integrated global media coverage across print, web, broadcast and social is a big asset. The ownership of Opoint also gives us business opportunities serving industries with aggregated online news content. We are unique as we are owned by the two largest publishers in Scandinavia that require that we are at the forefront of copyright and re-distribution. We strongly believe that this enables Infomedia, Opoint and clients to put their focus elsewhere. We focus on value selling rather than product selling, and we believe in strong partnerships and networking with our clients. It’s a lot about culture and people skills as well.

What are your greatest challenges ahead at Infomedia when it comes to serving your customers and developing your offer?

Digital transformation of our business has been a major focus for several years and will still be. The media intelligence industry is changing and you need to be on top of new technologies to make your business as efficient and valuable as possible. It’s about serving your customers with communication insights and pinpointing business impact. During my time with Infomedia, I’ve focused on breaking down communication silos, thus equalising blogs, social media with traditional media. We are now closing in on this narrative. It’s becoming a data driven industry where you need to afford investments in technology, data science and analytical competencies.

In 2019 Infomedia acquired M-Brains activities in Sweden and Norway. In hindsight, how has that acquisition affected the Infomedia offering?

The acquisition of M-Brain brought us into new markets. We got critical mass and scale in our business and thereby the ability to further invest in products, services, technology and in our people. We now have a more client segmented offering with clear value propositions supporting needs for real time insights for crisis management, brand and reputation insights, market and competitor insights and communication efficiency insights.

What is the focus for Infomedia in 2022 and how will you get there?

We want to further consolidate and develop our position in the Nordic region within media intelligence and communication insights. We want to position Infomedia and Opoint for new buying centers. PR/Communication is our target customer group but we believe media and communication insights are of value for marketing, business development and sales as well. It’s about the retargeting of insights and our new product platform suits this. We would very much like to contribute with analytical services enlightening the climate and sustainability agenda as well.

When it comes to the actual data behind media intelligence, what kind of data or media not currently used can be interesting in the future?

The answer, as always, lies with the client. We have seen a shift in behaviour of media consumption, ensuring more focus on metadata and raw data rather than focusing on data types or media silos. Media data is recognised as being a leading indicator in many industries and our clients benefit from that. We work with multiple data sources: panel data, CRM, and market data to name a few. So the overall trend is related to how we enable client behaviour and ensure that we can correlate data to give them business critical insights across their data and needs.

You were recently elected President of FIBEP, The Media Intelligence Association. What are the greatest challenges for FIBEP as an organisation when it comes to supporting its members?

The greatest challenge is to become even more relevant for media intelligence companies across continents. We have to face a more differentiated need from members including global, regional and local companies as well as we have to welcome a broader number of new data and technology companies with the opportunity for networking and partnerships. FIBEP was founded around a very strong networking community. Clearly COVID-19 impacted the way of networking and interacting. We have to innovate and develop a hybrid model for a global industry organization.

How do you think the media intelligence industry will change in the next five years, and what are the greatest challenges ahead?

I’m optimistic and believe our industry will have further growth opportunities. Delivering media analytics and communication insights is of strategic importance in a world with a more complex media landscape – not to mention a world being impacted by fake news and manipulation. The flipside of this is of course the ability to access media content, both editorial and social content. Understanding copyright legislation and dealing with media, platforms and influencers is key.

How would you like to see FIBEP develop over the next five years?

I would like to see a more diversified list of media intelligence companies from across continents. I would like as well to see FIBEP develop its ecosystem and network with selected universities and research organizations in order to position our industry supported by new innovation and science. We need to embrace networking with other industry organizations as well, within PR/communication, marketing and technology.

By Peter Appleby