FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Email: hello@novusgroup.co.za

* This email is picked up by our CRM Helpdesk and distributed to the relevant person within the Novus Group team. You will receive an automated reply that your ticket has been logged, followed by a reply from the relevant service specialist once the request has been resolved.

Phone: +27 11 568 3337

* Even though the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic fast tracked Novus Group to operate from virtual offices, we still man a centralised phone number, should you require to speak to a dedicated person at Novus Group.

To stay up to date with Novus Group developments also make use of the following platforms: 

Website: www.novusgroup.co.za

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/novus-group-pty-ltd/

Twitter: @NovusLtd

For emergencies outside our working hours phone or WhatsApp:

Novus Group Founder – Joe Hamman @ 083 607 4109 / joe@novusgroup.co.za

Novus Group CEO – Michael Arvanitis @ 083 391 7170 / michael@novusgroup.co.za

Novus Head of Client Relations – Lucy Manamela @ 083 698 2863 / lucy@novusgroup.co.za

Weekdays: 

05:00am to 09:00pm

Although our telephone line operates from 8:00am to 04:00pm daily, our operations teams start early in the mornings and finish late at night to ensure that all your media items are processed timeously.

Weekends:

Client Relations / hello@novusgroup.co.za

Saturday 08:00am to 10:00am

Sunday 08:00am to 10:00am

Print Department:

Saturday 05:00am to 10:00am

Sunday 06:00am to 11:00am

Broadcast:

With less priority timeslots on Saturdays our Broadcast team works a full shift on Sundays.

Sunday 07:00am to 04:00pm (with some members starting earlier and some ending later)

Novus Group monitors media across all traditional media platforms (i.e. Print, Radio and Television) as well as new media platforms including Online, Social Media (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). Novus Group also recently added YouTube, TripAdvisor and Reddit as new media platforms.

Novus Group frequently updates the source lists we monitor across print, broadcast, and online media. Novus Group makes these lists available at the time of inception of new contracts. Prospecting clients can send a list of key publications/stations/channels they need monitored for Novus Group to confirm that we are tracking the sources or whether we are able to add these sources the monitoring list.

* Although adding print and online sources are immediate and simple, adding broadcast stations will have to be approved based on the listenership/viewership or geographical placement of the station.

Novus Group includes African print and online sources as part of our media monitoring services, requiring aspiring clients to mention this requirement when requesting quotes and setup of services. The list also includes limited broadcast radio stations on the continent.

Our Online monitoring also includes the option to subscribe to international online sources and social media tracking that can be customized according to countries that should be included in your media monitoring brief.

Opting for Novus Group’s extensive media monitoring services across all media platforms allows your company to stay informed of breaking news on broadcast media as traditional media source. Studies also show that luxury brands remain invested in print media to remain competitive with regards to printed media.

Tracking both traditional and new media (i.e. online, social media and Youtube) also allows your media strategists to compare share of voice across all media platforms to inform future strategies and allows you to target specific niche markets that are still widely published across all the mentioned platforms.

Novus Group keeps your archive data active for the duration of your contract with the group. Our capable account management team will also provide you with full exports of your archive data, should a campaign period or contract draw to a close.

Novus Group always ensures that the most up to date media source lists are available on hosted client dashboards. You can also request these lists or send specific queries regarding the sources we monitor to hello@novusgroup.co.za at any time.

You can subscribe to our YouTube tracking as part of our international sources monitoring, which will provide you with a link to the items that can be distributed among colleagues and other interested parties from our interactive client dashboards.

Novus Group will deliver the above services in the following ways:

Email Alerts

1. We will send the coverage we find via email alerts

2. The list of recipients can be chosen by the client so that “Person A” can choose a list of keywords/topics (from the list of keywords we are monitoring) which they would like to receive news around and we will set up their own “unique” email alert – whereas “Person B” could choose a completely different list of keywords/topics (from the list of keywords we are monitoring) which they would like to receive news around and we will setup their own “unique” email alert. In other words, no staff member needs to receive new coverage around topics they are not interested in.

Dashboard

Every news article we find is automatically uploaded to an online dashboard which the client can access at any time and from anywhere (via the internet). The dashboard includes the following features:

1. Exporting (PDF, Excel, Word and CSV)

2. Charting

3. Advanced Search

4. Responsive Design

Newsfeeds

We can deliver the news articles we find via XML/RSS to your website, intranet or extranet.

SMS Alerts

Alerts to four designated recipients.

There is no limit to the amount of contacts a company wants to add to the newsletter distribution list and can even be customized to send certain categories of coverage to colleagues working in those business areas. There is also a single item forwarding function for each media item that allows you to send specific items to contacts as once-offs.

Yes, the single item forwarding function for each media item allows you to send specific items to contacts as once-offs. Every media item uploaded has its own link that remains live and can be viewed from any device that is compatible with access to the world wide web.

When you look at print media titles and print media monitoring you will always find that a media monitoring company makes use of two types of dates:

1. Published date

2. Captured / Created date

The difference between these 2 dates:

1. Published date: The published date refers to the actual date printed on the newspaper, magazine, journal etc. In print media monitoring we have 8 different frequencies in which we categorise print news publications:

1. Daily: This refers to a newspaper / magazine that is published every working day of the week (Monday to Friday). An example would be Business Day or Beeld.

2. Weekly: This refers to a newspaper / magazine that is published one day a week, including weekends. An example would be Sunday Times.

3. Bi-Weekly: At Novus Group, Bi-weekly means once every 2 weeks or half monthly. This refers to a newspaper or magazine that is published every second week. An example would be Finweek, which changed from a weekly to a bi-weekly in 2017.

4. Monthly: This refers to a newspaper / magazine that is published once a month. An example would be Sarie or Rooi Rose.

5. Bi-Monthly: At Novus Group, Bi-monthly means once every 2 months or 6 times a year. An example would be Agri SA.

6. Annual: This refers to a newspaper / magazine that is published once a year. An example would be SA Building Review

7. Bi-Annual: At Novus Group, Bi-Annual means twice a year or every 6 months. An example would be GQ Style (twice a year)

8. Quarterly: This refers to a newspaper / magazine that is published 4 times a year or once a quarter. An example would be SA Banker

2. Captured / Created date: This date refers to the actual date on which our print team captured an article into our system.

We often get questions from clients asking why, when they open the PDF copy of the print article, we are sending them “old” coverage or “future dated” coverage. The truth is we are not sending them either “old” or “future dated” coverage – unless we have been asked to conduct a back search. The date you see when you open the actual PDF is the “published date”, meaning the date on the actual publication.

For daily newspaper or magazines this is (almost) never a problem, seeing as we (almost) always capture a daily newspaper on the day it was published, but we do sometimes experience a backlog.

Where it becomes confusing is with the rest of the frequencies mentioned above.

For example, we often receive a monthly publication – which could be dated April 2018 – at the end of March 2018. Now, seeing as we received it in the last week of March, it would have a captured / created date of 27 March, but the date on the publication is 1 April 2018 – so now the clients think we are sending them “future dated” coverage – when the truth is that we did not future date it, it simply means the publisher makes their publications available before the actual published date.

The opposite is also true, some publishers release their magazines at the end of the published date period. For example, it often happens that we receive quarterly magazines at the end of the quarter. In this instance, the publication date could be 1 January 2018 (referring to it being the Q1 version of the publication), but we only received it at the end of March, so the created date will be 27 March 2018. In this instance the client would think we are sending them “old coverage”.

The global industry standard requires us to always display the published dates within the PDF documents, and not the date on which we created it.

In the ever-changing world of information, we find ourselves moving away from the actual scanning of publications to the uploading of digital copies. Client keywords are set up in the Novus Group backend, which enables us to pick up relevant mentions according to client specifications. These are run across text that is identified by optical character recognition (OCR) technology in order to electronically cut and paste specific articles from pages in publications.

Daily print publications are processed as priority with our operations teams starting at 5:00 in the morning to ensure that you receive your daily breaking news items in print fresh from the press. All daily newspapers are processed by no later than 9:00 in the morning.

The remainder of our print source list publications are processed once the daily newspapers are complete and include community/weekly newspapers, magazines, bi-weeklies, monthlies, bi-monthlies, quarterlies, bi-annuals as well as annual publications that are due at the time.

Novus Group is the first South African based media monitoring company that developed its own Speech-to-Text (STT) technology. Novus Group has dedicated specialists that works continuously to add updates to our STT dictionaries (Afrikaans, English and Afrikaans/English) ensuring effective pickup of English stations.

This technology allows Novus Group to do blanket broadcast monitoring, without the limitations of being guided by broadcast schedules and frequent changes to the same. STT also allows us to provide transcripts of broadcast items more effectively.

Due to Novus Group applying blanket monitoring across 109 broadcast stations, it is necessary to prioritize news, talk and actuality stations in priority queues to ensure the most on-time delivery of high impact media coverage and in most instances, breaking news. As broadcast is cyclical and never-ending you will appreciate the value of queues enabling us to ensure that the most important news is processed the fastest.

To illustrate this, you might find that if you had a mention on Priority 1 station and timeslots like Talk Radio 702’s Early Breakfast (5:00) as well as on their talk show at 9:00, these items will be processed first, after which the queue will call up a mention from OFM’s Big Breakfast (at 6:00) for processing as OFM is a regional station and on our Priority 3 list.

When there are less relevant media items aired on Priority 1 stations and timeslots on the said day, the processing time of the next queue (Q3) will move up, meaning that even Priority 2 can be processed within 2 hours from broadcast.

We can therefore provide you with guidelines of our turnaround times but remind our clients that the timing can never be an exact science, as the breaking news and topics discussed in the media will not be the same for every day.

Our software specialists have therefore set up the following queues to receive priority in our processing.

Queue 1 = This is the queue used for real-time upload access to our Broadcast Manager in order to skip the queues in any instance that a client contacts Novus Group at hello@novusgroup.co.za to upload an item immediately regardless of where it would be processed in the broadcast queues.

Queue 2 = Provides for Priority 1 items from selected stations and timeslots according to Novus Group’s carefully selected list including items such as CNBC Africa’s Power Lunch and Closing Bell, Newzroom Africa’s Prime Time, SAfm’s Market Update with Moneyweb, Talk Radio 702’s The Money Show and many more selected as part of the top10% of coverage tracked. These items are usually processed within two hours of broadcast, if not sooner.

Queue 3 = Priority 2 timeslots mostly includes the rest of the priority stations’ timeslots that are not included in Priority 1. This will for example include any items from the previous night that was not processed, as these carries over to the front of the queue on the next day to follow all processing of Priority 1 in Queue 2.

Stations included in no particular order are 5FM, 94.7 Highveld Stereo, Business Day TV, Classic FM, eNews Channel Africa, Jacaranda FM, Metro FM, Newzroom Africa, Power FM, RSG, SABC News, SAfm and Talk Radio 702 adding to 50% of the coverage Novus Group monitors as Priority 2. These items will be processed within 4 hours of broadcast, if not sooner.

Queue 4 = This queue carries everything else (remaining 40% of coverage tracked) from oldest to newest with the processing queue and should still be processed within the same day as per most of our tests, leaving the surplus for that day to be processed the next day once Priority 1 and 2 has been completed. At this stage Q4 should never fall more than two days behind looking at time in motion studies of our processing time. In the event we can see this happening, by monitoring our backlogs meticulously, we will apply emergency measures such as additional resources or overtime to clear up any looming backlogs.

Note that while we have first class technology in STT, Novus Group still depends on human intervention in the form of broadcast capturers that verifies the relevance of broadcast items, as well as indicating the start and end time of every item.

To effectively track social media coverage generated by the general population, Novus Group will require specific hashtags and handles that will be relevant to each client to ensure that targeted social media items are picked up effectively and accurately.

Although AVE has been replaced and even prohibited in some countries for use as an effective measurement tool for Key Performance Indicators and/or PR Awards, South Africa still recognizes AVE as one of the preferred measurement tools. AVE is not an indicator of sentiment, reputational impact or Return on Investment (ROI). In most instances it is the only standardized figure available to indicate performance over time and/or to compare the success of one media placement with another.

For more detailed information on our AVE methodology please feel free to contact hello@novusgroup.co.za.

Our user-friendly web-hosted dashboard carries all media items for our clients. There is a range of search and export functions that allows our clients to extract information by specific category or search and even their own AVE reports. Your Key Account Manager is always available to do training for any number of users or new appointments that need to make use of the dashboard.

Although the following information showcases the endless possibilities with our analysis services, Novus Group prefers to consult with clients on their specific requirements to build a fit for purpose custom analysis report.

1. Statistical Reports (volumes, AVE, reach, journalist, publications)

2. Statistical Sentiment Reports (volumes, AVE, reach, journalist, publications, sentiment)

3. Standard Content Analysis* (volumes, AVE, reach, journalist, publications, sentiment, sources/spokespeople, business area/area of interest**, topics**)

4. Premium Content Analysis* (volumes, AVE, reach, journalist, publications, sentiment, sources/spokespeople, business area/area of interest**, topics**)

5. Social Media Listening Reports (Reporting on social media by tracking keywords that are mentioned)

6. Social Media Page Analytics Reports (Reporting on an social media accounts and the account’s and the audience’s interactions)

Premium Content Analysis is Novus Group’s most comprehensive media analysis product. The difference between the Standard and Premium product is the methodology used to analyse the content. For Premium Content Analysis the Novus Group Analysts analyses each mention of a subject/multiple subjects in an article, where in the Standard products the article is analyzed once, ignoring the nuance of various mentions in the content. The Premium Content Analysis product also allows for unlimited and customizable topics as provided by the client. The following metrics are covered:

1. Operational Areas (customizable)

2. Source of coverage

3. Subject of coverage

4. Topic being covered

5. Scale tonality

6. Source of tonality (inherent/explicit)

7. Prominence of mentions

8. Past, present, or future mention

9. People/spokespeople quoted

10. Visuals in content

11. AVE per metric

12. Journalists covering content

The Premium analysis reports on number of statements instead of number of articles (each statement is analyzed for the above metrics).** Topics and business are/area of interest can be customized to suit the client’s needs.