The Forrester Wave™: Brand Monitoring, Q3 2006

The power shift from media institutions to consumer communities means that marketers must track a diverse and growing range of influential voices. To find out how the emerging technology solutions that address this challenge stack up, Forrester evaluated leading brand monitoring vendors across 56 criteria. The results? 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.