Research into the usage of multimedia in news releases – December 2009.

Multimedia research

Foreword

The research is based on data collected between 9th-14th December 2009 looking at releases issued from 1st - 8th December 2009 from 6 newswire services. The primary sample day was Wednesday December 2nd 2009.

Details for 2,847 releases were collected for the 2nd December, for smaller services where the sample size on that day was deemed insufficient this was extended to 1st- 8th of December to give a larger sample size of 3,028 in total.

Research was done via viewing releases on each service’s homepage for the selected date range.

Sample sizes are quoted under each graph.

Terms are explained at foot of each slide.

* Term ‘True Multimedia Release’ refers to a release with more multimedia content than just a corporate logo

Only 356 of 2847 releases in the sample on December 2nd 2010 are True Multimedia Releases. 34% of releases just have

a corporate logo.

Key findings

Only 68 of 2847 releases had multimedia content other than an image.

Key findings

From the total sample of 3028 releases

Key findings

Just using images is the most common practice

81.8%

The term ‘other files’ is something other than an image, video or audio file. Example a PDF

Only 52 of 3028 releases have social media content*social media doesn’t include releases having in-built social bookmarking facilities. It includes Photography and art sharing, Video sharing, Livecasting, Music and Audio sharing and Presentation sharing.

Key findings

These are the two most used services for multimedia content from the research. The next best service came in at 16% and

the worst at 5%.

RealWire sample size 95 releases; PRWeb sample size 432 releases

Key findings

Areas for further study

•Extension to include other senders of press releases including software platforms

•Research into what multimedia content is being made available on corporate websites.

•Research into what multimedia content media recipients of PR content use

•Research into whether releases with multimedia achieve more coverage than releases without