Isentia has announced the launch of Live Alerts, an innovative new broadcast media alert service that combines new and existing technologies to give communications professionals real-time broadcast media updates on important events happening in Australia and New Zealand.

CTO Paul Russellnotes Live Alerts is the result of the companies increased focus on market-centric product innovation: “Live Alerts is an exciting broadcast media monitoring service that creates an entirely new capability, utilising innovative voice-to-text technology and advanced search systems.

“Once set up, clients receive immediate text message alerts about relevant broadcast news, which is a major benefit for anyone in crisis or issues-management environments. The result isn’t just an incremental improvement in speed, it is a significant step change.

“As a world-class media monitoring provider, Isentia understood that traditional notification methods for broadcast media required fresh thinking. Not only did we need to address the changing needs of our growing mobile-first client base, but we have to keep pace with the changing nature of broadcast itself.

“Live Alerts gives clients the information they need to act swiftly, especially during moments of increased media attention. The goal is to get mentions about their organisation or specific selected topics that appear on radio and TV, onto our clients’ phones as quickly as possible.”

The initial release of Live Alerts offers a catalogue of Australia and New Zealand broadcast channels, monitored 24/7 through scheduled automation. The selected content is passed through a voice to text translation service to produce a transcript at speed, allowing Isentia to run the necessary proprietary relevance matching process to then flag important mentions to clients via SMS.

The SMS enables the client to immediately see the context of their alert and watch or listen to the relevant content. The text message format, chosen following client research, quickly delivers the news of any key broadcast media occurrence to clients, which is then supported by Isentia’s acclaimed media monitoring and insights services.

Live Alerts has been built and tested in Australia and New Zealand for three months, with more than 70 clients using the beta service and providing feedback.

“Customer feedback has been extremely positive, and, through the beta test, we have received several suggestions as to how we can further refine Live Alerts. This feedback has since been incorporated, into the product. Our customers want this speed and visibility of broadcast news as a feature within our core platform, Mediaportal, and we are excited to officially launch it in both Australia and New Zealand.

“Isentia continues to be a world-class media intelligence company with an enviable Asia-Pacific footprint. The media landscape is rapidly evolving, and we strongly believe fresh approaches like Live Alerts will drive long-term growth,” Mr Russell says.