A One-Stop PR Shop

Last week, United Business Media increased the breadth of its offerings with the acquisition of Vintage Filings LLC. Companies of all sizes use Vintage's EDGAR filing services to disclose their Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. United Business Media will now use Vintage to help it provide an even more complete slate of services to its customers.

In a company statement, United Business Media outlined exactly how this acquisition will accomplish that goal. Its subsidiary PR Newswire will now be able to offer public companies a way in which to meet all SEC disclosure demands. PR Newswire can continue to help companies distribute their news releases and host web casts as well as file their SEC documents in a timely manner.

Companies can now consider PR Newswire a one-stop shop for their publicity needs. This deal was definitely a smart move by the United Business Media brass. It's vital to understand the everyday demands of your customers and find solutions that help them ease those pressures and get their jobs done. By adding the capabilities of Vintage Filings to its portfolio, United Business Media can help its customers check another task off their to-do list. If you can help customers accomplish multiple goals, they're going to remember that. And being top of mind with customers should be top of mind for all content providers.

Measure for Measure

The Internet is "the most measurable medium," so perhaps not surprisingly, it's also the most measured medium, too. The problem is nobody's measurements ever seem to match, and sometimes they are not even in the same ballpark.

There are a number of reasons online measurement is such a mess. First, even at this late date, we're not all speaking the same language. Just last week, I heard one publisher proudly touting the number of "unique visits" (think about that one for a second!) they had achieved last month. And I still frequently hear about the number of "unique hits" this site or the other is experiencing. Until we get the language right, we have no hope of getting the measurement right.

Then there's the measurement process itself. A newly released study by Comscore suggests that so many users are now clearing the cookies on their computers that many sites are vastly over-reporting their unique visitors. Also this week is a report in the Wall Street Journal that Neilsen is dropping good old dependable pageviews as a reporting metric. Why? New Web 2.0 technologies such as Ajax deliver content in ways that the traditional pageview metric doesn't measure, meaning that sites will increasingly be under-counting pageviews while over-counting unique visitors.

Even more scary, this is just this week's news. There's been a steady drumbeat of reports pointing up the weaknesses of existing web analytics.

In short, Web technology is changing faster than measurement technology. This suggests that in the coming years, publishers that can describe their audience (through online registration or even companion print publications) will start to have a real competitive advantage over those who only quantify their audience in web-centric terms.

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Labels: analytics, comscore, wall street journal

A Real Time Launch for CSB

The CUSIP Service Bureau (CSB) this week launched its CSB-ISIN Look-up Service, a new offering that provides unique CUSIP-based International Securities Identification Number (ISIN) identifiers for more than 3.6 million securities and their issuers. The CSB launched the new service in response to clients who need to access these identifiers in real time. (Standard & Poor’s, a unit of McGraw-Hill runs the CSB for the American Bankers Association).

Users can now search the CUSIP-ISIN database to validate these ISINs after accepting a one-time click-through agreement. They can also use the service for free—at least for now. The cost-recovery fee is being waived for the rest of 2007 as the company gauges user interest.

This was a necessary next step for the CSB. Users' demand for access to real-time information continues to grow. In order to remain relevant to customers, service providers must provide content in real time and make it easily accessible. This new look-up service is designed to accomplish these goals. While the CSB doesn’t seem absolutely convinced (since they're letting users test drive it for free), it's more than likely they will be soon. Users should enjoy the free access while they can.

MuniNet Expands into Vertical Search

Through a partnership with the National Federation of Municipal Analysts (NFMA), MuniNet Guide has launched a new Web site. The Municipal Bond Research Gateway is essentially a database of Web sites for individuals seeking access to municipal bond issuer Web sites, disclosure and public finance materials.

The Gateway can be used like a traditional search engine: users can enter a keyword or geographical location to locate a link to a specific issuer. They can also search listings in a particular credit sector or company. Those sectors and categories each include specific issuers and links to other relevant organizations. They also contain additional news and MuniNet content.

The new site can be characterized as the combination of a vertical search engine and an online database product--it's really a blend of the two. The MuniNet folks have taken their traditional online database product and increased its functionality with the addition of vertical search capabilities with this new site. MuniNet, a directory of municipal-based content, has been serving this industry for 10 years, evolving from a print newsletter that launched in 1997 to the MuniNetGuide.com site in 2000. Now, the company is taking advantage the latest technology--vertical search--to improve the functionality of its offerings even more. MuniNet has built its reputation on helping users find what theyre looking for quickly. The Gateway launch will just help the company further solidify its position in the marketplace.

Acquisition is Interactive Data's Response to Customer Needs

Earlier this month, Interactive Data Corp. announced plans to acquire the market data unit of Xcitek LLC. Xcitek's market data is comprised of a wealth of information, including North American corporate actions data, reorganization information and cost basis and class action data. More than 2,000 financial institutions use Xcitek's data and receive it through several delivery platforms, including electronic datafeeds, proprietary Web-based services and various redistributors.

Interactive Data Corp. and Xcitek aren't strangers. The two organizations have collaborated for several years, redistributing each other’s data to their own clients. Once this deal is finalized, the shared data will become part of the Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data unit.

This is yet another case in which an acquisition is precipitated by customer need. Interactive Data officials recognized a need for more reference data services and they acted quickly to answer that call. Because the company had worked with Xcitek for many years, Interactive Data knew exactly where to find this valuable data. This particular deal is certainly a win-win situation for everyone involved. Customers get what they want and Interactive Data and Xcitek maintain (and even increase) their relevance in the marketplace.