More media coverage isn’t the same as better coverage.
But you probably already know this, the problem is proving it to everyone else.
Roxhill helps you find the right contacts, track relevant coverage, and prove the impact of your media outreach – all from one login.
It’s not how much coverage you get, it’s who sees it and what it says.
This comes down to two things: relevance and accuracy.
- Relevance is the right journalists, the right publications, the right coverage.
- Accuracy is contact data that’s up-to-date, media coverage you can rely on, and metrics that demonstrates your impact.
Key takeaway
- An accurate contact list is worth more than a long one. Relevance starts with the relevant journalists, not the most journalists.
- A coverage count tells your board you were busy. Scoring that coverage tells them it worked.
- Salience scoring rates every piece of coverage AAA, AA or A on relevance and prominence, so you can report on what your coverage was worth rather than how much of it there was.
- Smart Folders, Intelli-labels and Custom Metrics turn coverage into measurements you can put in front of your stakeholders.
- A login to Media Database, Media Monitoring and Spokespeople Analytics tools connect your outreach to your PR results using one login.
What quality looks like in a board report
Most PR reports open with a number. Coverage this quarter, set against last quarter.
It goes up. Everyone nods.
But coverage rising is the definition of a vanity metric. It’s compatible with almost anything:
- It goes up in a crisis.
- It goes up when a campaign goes out to a wider audience
- It goes up when your brand lands in a round-up.
It tells your board you were busy. It doesn’t tell them what worked.
So ask different questions:
- How much of your coverage came from the titles your audience trusts?
- Did your key message land, or was it just your brand name?
- Is your share of voice growing against your competitors?
- What did each press release actually deliver?
Those questions turn a report into a discussion. Volume still belongs in your report because a percentage needs a total number behind it. For example, 60% of ten pieces of coverage is a very different metric to 60% of two hundred.
Client story
How Patrizia tracks its coverage across global markets
Patrizia is a global investment manager operating across real estate, infrastructure and capital partnerships, where investor and sector trade titles shape how financial results and transactions get read.
Matthew Richards, Head of International Communications, Patrizia“Roxhill has become a key tool in how we manage media engagement across our global real assets platform.
… having real-time visibility of how we are positioned in investor and sector trade media is critical. It allows us to track the impact of financial results, transactions and strategic initiatives as they happen, and to engage more proactively with priority journalists across our core markets.
The ability to measure both the volume and quality of coverage has also strengthened how we assess performance internally.”
You can build the report yourself, or hand it over.
Inside Roxhill’s Media Monitoring platform, custom metrics let you track, analyse and visualise performance against your own campaign objectives – salience scoring, sentiment, share of voice for your brand, your competitors and your spokespeople, and press release tracking. You can export all of it as branded charts and custom reports, in your colours, ready to present.
For teams who would rather someone else did it, Bespoke Insights is our analyst-led service, covering curated summaries and board-ready reports with clear recommendations.
The difference between outreach and noise
A journalist database can hold two million contacts and still let you down if the fifty you need are out of date.
- Relevance in your contacts comes down to who you reach. The journalists covering your sector, at the titles your audience reads.
- In monitoring, relevance is about what you see first. A mention in the trade title your customers rely on shouldn’t be sitting in the same undifferentiated feed as a passing reference on a website nobody visits.
Twenty five named finance and business journalists with a fintech story will always beat two hundred general contacts. One is outreach and the other is noise.
Accuracy is king.
- For your contacts, that means an email that still works and a beat that is still current.
- For your monitoring, it means insight that holds up in front of your board.
Media intelligence platforms put their weight in different places. Some spread themselves thinly across a lot of markets and channels. It’s worth seeing how the main UK media monitoring tools compare.
Relevance and accuracy run through all three parts of Roxhill’s Media Intelligence platform:
- Media database is where you can build your lists and send your press releases through.
- Media monitoring is where you can sort and analyse your coverage and tracks what each release produced.
- Spokespeople analytics shows where your experts are landing.
A database is only as good as its last update
A long media list feels like an asset. A media list full of dead addresses is a liability.
Journalists move constantly. A list that was accurate eighteen months ago describes a media landscape that doesn’t exist any more.
Getting it wrong costs you. Pitch the wrong journalist, at the wrong title, with a story that doesn’t match their beat, and you haven’t done outreach. You’ve made your next approach harder.
We cover over 250,000 verified contacts across global media markets. But size isn’t the number to ask about. Our in-house team is based across the UK, US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and updates journalist moves every day – that’s what’s worth asking any monitoring provider.
What you end up with is a smaller, sharper list. Not five thousand contacts to blast, but closer to fifty that are genuinely right for the story.
Client story
How Animo PR keeps its media lists accurate
Animo PR is an award-winning strategic communications agency based in Yorkshire.
Before Roxhill, the team spent a significant amount of time looking at mastheads, cross-referencing social profiles and verifying journalists’ beats before pitching. Every time.
Now that research is already done for them, and journalist moves alerts tell them when someone changes role or outlet, so their media lists stay up to date without the manual checks.
“Having everything in one place with the media profiles is really beneficial to us in terms of time saving. It also gives a lot more background to each of the journalists, so that’s been a real game changer for us.”
How do you find and research the right journalists?
A relevant list starts with how you search.
Our community topics search lets you search by subject, not just by name or publication, this means you get to find journalists who cover the themes, sectors and stories that are most important to your clients.
If your story is about sustainable finance, health technology or supply chain resilience, you build the list on what people actually write about, not what their job title says.
Then comes the research. Most journalists get more pitches than they can read. The ones that get read make it obvious in a few sentences that you understand what they cover and why this story fits.
Getting there takes time. Recent bylines, preferred angles, what the publication is focused on right now. It’s the first thing to go when you’re under pressure to send.
Our Journalist Assistant does that reading for you. It uses AI to work across a journalist’s recent work and their Roxhill profile – the themes they return to, the tone they write in, the angles likely to resonate, and turns it into something you can act on. The angle most likely to land, the detail worth leading with and the approach to avoid.
Two minutes, not an afternoon. The same analysis becomes a briefing note for your spokesperson before an interview.
What you get is fewer pitches to send but better aimed. One that lands with a national outlet is worth more than twenty that never reach the right desk.
Media coverage that sorts itself
Media monitoring is the tracking and analysis of coverage across print, online, broadcast and social. Most tools capture everything and leave the sorting to you.
We capture what is relevant to you in the first place.
You don’t have to build Boolean strings to get there. Our Smart Folders organise what comes in, sorting by brand, campaign, spokesperson or theme as coverage arrives:
- You get default folders for all articles, competitors and press releases.
- You build your own around whatever you’re accountable for – ESG coverage, CEO mentions, crisis and reputation.
- Each folder is its own workspace with its own metrics tab, so the measurement sits with the coverage rather than in a separate report.
- Salience score, sentiment, prominence of coverage and journalist engagement come as standard, and you can add custom metrics for whatever your campaign is being judged on.
That matters more than it sounds. A folder for one campaign, scored on its own terms, tells you something a single all coverage number never will.
Our Intelli-labels add the context. Standard sentiment gives you positive, neutral or negative – useful, but blunt. Intelli-labels track the categories you define:
- The key messages you’re trying to land.
- The strategic themes you’re known for.
- The reputation drivers that matter to your brand.
Automatically, across every mention, which means no manual tagging of your coverage.
Social works the same way.
Switch social media monitoring on inside our Media Monitoring platform and run it yourself – self-service dashboards, sentiment, and mentions sorted by campaign, spokesperson or story into the same folders as your press coverage.
For teams who would rather have the analysis done for them, Bespoke Insights adds analyst-led social research and reporting on top.
Alerts can be set up to land in Slack, WhatsApp or both.
Connect a Smart Folder to a Slack channel and the right coverage reaches the right people while the story is still live or take it straight to your phone when you’re out of the office.
Newsletters work the same way, pull the coverage that matters into a branded digest and send it to as many stakeholders as you need.
How do you measure the quality of coverage?
Quick answer
Every piece of coverage gets a salience score of AAA, AA or A, based on how relevant it is to your brand and how prominently you feature in it. Standard monitoring tells you how much coverage you got. Salience tells you what it was worth.
A passing mention in a low-authority outlet your audience doesn’t read is not the same as a feature in the trade title they rely on.
Treat the two as equal and your numbers will flatter you. That’s how volume metrics mislead, and it’s one of the mistakes that quietly cost campaigns their credibility.
AAA coverage moves the needle. A-rated coverage is background. That distinction is what makes real evaluation possible.
Not just did coverage go up, but was the coverage you gained the kind you were aiming for.
Is this just AVE with a new name?
Fair question, and one worth asking in an industry that spent years unwinding Advertising Value Equivalence.
Two things separate them.
Salience puts no monetary value on coverage – it is a ranking, not a valuation.
It also measures what AVE ignores: relevance and prominence, with sentiment scored per article and per mention, so a positive quote inside a critical piece is recorded as exactly that rather than disappearing into the article’s tone.
There is more in our complete guide to PR measurement, including the metrics worth putting in its place.
Keyword penetration tracking, part of custom metrics, answers two more questions a volume count can’t:
- Are your key messages appearing in coverage, or just your brand name?
- Which publications are carrying them, and how does that compare with your target list?
Coverage that mentions your brand without carrying your message isn’t doing its job.
What happens after you hit send
You write it, you send it, you wait!
Most distribution reporting stops at who opened it. The question that actually matters is what it produced – which titles picked it up, how they framed it, and which journalists are worth a follow-up.
That’s what tracking the impact of every release is for. Pickup, sentiment and journalist follow-up flags, with no manual tagging.
Our Press Release Tracker changes what a win looks like.
Forty well-targeted journalists producing a dozen pieces in the right titles beats eight hundred producing sixty pieces of mixed quality in publications your buyers never open. The second version wins on volume. It’s still the worse result.
It changes your Monday morning too. Knowing a national opened your release three times in ten minutes is the green light to pick up the phone, while the story is still live.
Which of your experts are quoted, where, and how that compares
Mention volume matters, but not on its own. What matters is where those mentions land, and if that is in the publications your audience reads and trusts.
A CEO quoted twice a quarter in a national broadsheet, your sector’s leading trade title and on national radio is worth more to you than a broader team appearing more often in outlets nobody rates.
For thought leadership and B2B brands, spokesperson credibility is a commercial asset, not a soft one.
Spokespeople data lets you prove it, including share of voice against your competitors, here’s a useful guide to benchmarking share of voice against competitor coverage.
Media suggestions will then show you which journalists are already covering your experts’ topics, so you can reach out to them in the too.
One journalist, chosen carefully
Client story
How Battenhall reached one journalist and changed a campaign
NHS West London needed to raise awareness of a text service for parents struggling with perinatal mental health, including those who have lost a baby. A sensitive subject, where going wide would have done more harm than a small audience.
PR agency Battenhall used Roxhill’s Media Database to find Tolu Adeoye at BBC London, known for her authoritative coverage of maternal and baby health, and pitched her the story. It ran on BBC London and as a featured article on the BBC News homepage.
Within the first week, 66% of sign-ups came directly from the BBC coverage.
The measure that mattered was not how many journalists were contacted, but what the coverage caused.
Which of these matters most to you?
| If you’re… | What matters most |
|---|---|
| In-house comms teams | You report to a board that cares about impact, not just activity. Scoring your coverage gives you something to defend. |
| PR agencies | You’re reporting across several clients and sectors. Accurate lists and verified publication figures go straight into client reports without a rebuild. |
| B2B and thought leadership | Your visibility lives in trade press and named experts. UK trade depth and spokesperson analytics are where the value sits. |
| Consumer PR teams | You still need reach figures for awareness campaigns. Quality measures show you which of that reach was worth having. |
Relevance and accuracy across your workflow
Wherever you sit in that list, the same thinking applies at every stage of the work – from the list you build to the report you present.
| Stage | What quality looks like |
|---|---|
| Researching journalists | Community topics search and the Journalist Assistant: found by what they write about, briefed before you pitch |
| Building your list | Contacts kept current by our research team, not a long list left to go stale |
| Sending releases | Targeted distribution to the journalists you actually want, not the biggest list you can build |
| Tracking releases | Press Release Tracker: who opened it, which titles picked it up, how they framed it, who to follow up |
| Monitoring coverage | Smart Folders: what matters surfaces, the noise doesn’t |
| Understanding context | Intelli-labels: tone, key messages, strategic themes and reputation drivers |
| Tracking spokespeople | Named expert mentions in the right titles, benchmarked against competitors |
| Tracking social | Self-service social monitoring in the same platform, with analyst-led research through Bespoke Insights |
| Measuring impact | Salience scoring and keyword penetration: was the coverage worth having, and did your message land? |
| Sharing your results | Branded newsletters to your stakeholders, and charts and reports you can export in your own colours |
None of this makes volume worthless. It just means the number at the top of your report should be the one that answers the question your board is actually asking.
Frequently asked questions
Why does coverage quality matter more than coverage volume?
Is salience scoring just AVE with a new name?
No. AVE prices your coverage as if it had been bought as advertising, which is why the Barcelona Principles reject it outright – it counts column inches and ignores sentiment, message, audience relevance and credibility. Salience puts no monetary value on anything. It scores how relevant a piece of coverage is to your brand and how prominently you feature in it, as AAA, AA or A. A ranking, not a price.
Can you lawfully hold journalist contact data?
Roxhill processes journalist contact data on a legitimate interests basis for professional media relations, in line with UK GDPR. Journalists can view, correct or ask us to remove their records.
How long does set-up take?
We configure your monitoring sources, build Smart Folders around your brands and competitors, and define the Intelli-labels categories that matter to you. How long depends on how many sources you need and how complex your reporting is.
Do you monitor social as well as press?
Yes. Social media monitoring is built into Roxhill’s Media Monitoring as a self-service feature – switch it on and you get dashboards, sentiment, and social mentions organised by campaign, spokesperson or story in the same platform. If you want the research and analysis handled for you rather than doing it yourself, Bespoke Insights adds analyst-led social reporting on top.
Why use one platform instead of three separate tools?
Three tools can work. A database from one supplier, monitoring from another, measurement pulled together in a spreadsheet. The catch is that every join is manual. Nothing connects the release you sent to the coverage it produced, and reporting turns into reconciliation. Roxhill’s Media Database, Media Monitoring and Spokespeople sit under one login, which is what lets the Press Release Tracker close the loop without anyone tagging coverage by hand.
Which publications should we be monitoring?
The ones your audience reads and trusts. The nationals relevant to your sector, the trade and specialist titles your buyers rely on, and any broadcast they follow. Build your monitoring around those specifically, let Smart Folders surface them as they land, and use keyword penetration to check your message is turning up in them – not just your brand name.
MEDIA INTELLIGENCE YOU CAN TRUST
We’re with you, every step of the way
One login. Multiple solutions.
Roxhill’s all-in-one media intelligence platform will save you time, highlight your impact, and drive your business forward.
MEDIA INTELLIGENCE YOU CAN TRUST
We’re with you, every step of the way
One login. Multiple solutions.
Roxhill’s all-in-one media intelligence platform will save you time, highlight your impact, and drive your business forward.
Click a product to explore its features.