The 12 Best AI Media Monitoring Tools to Track Mentions in 2024

AI-powered media monitoring tools are the game-changers of 2024. They can monitor mentions, analyze them, and draw actionable insights. Sounds great, isn’t it? Yet, not every online monitoring software has AI features. Let’s check which tool is worth your money!

Media monitoring tools are software solutions that track and analyze public mentions across various channels and major social media platforms. They collect mentions of specific keywords, phrases, brands, or topics. Recently, some tools offer advanced AI features that automatically analyze data and draw conclusions. 

There are many available tools, but they vary in terms of media coverage and features.

Here’s the list of the best online media monitoring tools.

The 12 Best Media Monitoring Tools: 

01 Brand24

Free 14-day trial.

Brand24 is an AI-powered media monitoring tool that analyzes mentions and presents actionable insights.

The tool monitors over 25k sources, including online news, blogs, review sites, podcasts, newsletters, and forums. Also, it tracks social media mentions across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Telegram, Twitch, Reddit, and Quora.

With Brand24, you can monitor conversations and discover whether they are positive, negative, or neutral.

Furthermore, the tool will show you which topics interest the target audience, what emotions they feel, and recommendations to boost your online presence.

What’s great, the tool summarizes your monitoring project, so you don’t have to analyze media mentions on your own. It’s a huge time saver.

Here’s an example of a summary:

Key features:

• Real-time online media monitoring
• AI sentiment analysis
• Estimated social and non-social reach
• Share of voice
• AI topic analysis
• Emotion and emoji analysis
• AI insights, trends, and recommendation
• Competitor monitoring and comparison
• Geo analysis
• Reputation and presence scores
• Trending hashtags and links
• Influencer discovery
• Advanced filters to sort the data
• Comprehensive reports

What do you like best about Brand24?

” We really like that you can monitor in real-time all the keywords and phrases you are interested in and have multiple projects within your dashboard, as well as the price; it is one of the most competitive solutions for social listening in the market.”

Eduardo V., Marketing Director

02 Awario

Awario is a cheap and basic media monitoring software. It’s a good choice for small companies.

The tool tracks mentions and analyzes mentions across various online platforms, including social media, news sites, blogs, forums, and the web. Unfortunately, it doesn’t monitor Telegram, LinkedIn and TikTok.

The platform allows for setting up customizable alerts for specific keywords or topics. Also, it includes sentiment analysis to categorize mentions as positive, negative, or neutral.

Key features:

• Real-time media monitoring
• Sentiment analysis
• Competitor analysis
• Influencer identification

03 Mention

Mention is a basic and affordable media monitoring software. The tool tracks many sources, like news, blogs, forums, and social media channels. Unfortunately, it doesn’t monitor LinkedIn, Quora, and Twitch.

The tool provides mentions analytics, enabling users to track their reach and engagement. What’s interesting, with Mention, you can schedule and publish social media posts.

Also, you can monitor competitors’ online activity and compare their own performance.

Key features:

• Real-time online monitoring
• Sentiment analysis
• Social media management

04 Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a media monitoring tool for enterprise clients.

This media monitoring tool offers advanced analytics features. Brandwatch will not only collect and analyze the data in real-time.

They developed a social media intelligence platform called Vizia, which will give you actionable insights that will help you bring your company to another level.

Interestingly, Brandwatch includes image recognition technology, enabling users to track visual mentions of their brand or products.

The tool helps identify and track influencers who can significantly impact brand perception and audience engagement.

Key features:

• Consumer intelligence
• Social media management
• Influencer marketing

Check: Brandwatch Alternatives

05 Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a basic and free tool. It allows users to receive notifications about new online content matching their search terms.

These alerts can include mentions in news articles, blog posts, websites, and social media.

Key features:

• Keyword-based alerts
• Source filtering
• Email notifications

However, it’s important to note that Google Alerts has limitations, especially compared to more advanced, AI-powered media monitoring tools. 

These limitations include:

• Limited monitoring depth: Google Alerts may not capture all mentions on social media platforms or specialized industry sources.
• Lack of advanced analytics: The tool provides no analytics or insights beyond notifying users of new mentions.
• No sentiment analysis: Google Alerts does not analyze the sentiment of the mentions.
• Basic interface: The tool has a very basic and limited interface, offering minimal customization or filtering options.

06 BrandMentions

BrandMentions is known for its comprehensive coverage and real-time monitoring capabilities. The tool tracks social media, blogs, news, forums, and review sites.

The tool offers real-time updates on brand mentions and keywords. Also, it includes sentiment to understand the tone of the mentions.

BrandMentions will help you identify influencers and key opinion leaders in specific industries or topics. Also, you’ll be able to monitor competitors’ online presence and compare their media coverage.

Key features:

• Real-time monitoring
• Competitive analysis
• Influencer identification
• Alerts and notifications

07 Talkwalker

Talkwalker is another robust tool that focuses on delivering results to corporate and enterprise-level accounts.

The tool helps brands and agencies track and analyze online conversations, brand mentions, and media coverage. It includes sentiment analysis to gauge public perception and sentiment toward a brand or topic.

Talkwalker covers owned and earned media in 187 languages. The tool can deliver the most important and impactful information using advanced AI.

The tool analyses the data in real-time. You also get access to 2 years of historical data.

It’s a perfect tool for tracking press releases. Your PR professionals will appreciate a robust analytics platform.

The Basic package starts at $6,000, and information about corporate and enterprise plans is available upon request.

Key features:

• Media monitoring
• Social benchmarking
• Audience insights
• Sentiment analysis

08 Keyhole

Keyhole focuses on social media analytics and monitoring, allowing users to track hashtags, keywords, and accounts across various social media platforms.

Users often use Keyhole for campaign tracking, influencer analytics, and tracking social trends.

Keyhole provides sentiment analysis, offering insights into social media conversations’ general tone and sentiment. The tool also helps identify and analyze influencers.

Interestingly, users can compare their social media and brand performance against competitors.

Key features:

• Social listening
• Publishing and scheduling
• Influencer Tracking
• Competitor analysis

09 Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media management software with a social media monitoring component. It helps brands and agencies manage their social media presence, engage with their audience, and gain insights from social media data.

What’s interesting, the platform provides tools for real-time engagement. You will be able to schedule posts on major social media channels.

Moreover, you can track campaign performance, respond to incoming messages, and prepare social media reports. Users can set up keyword and hashtag tracking to monitor specific topics or campaigns.

Key features:

• Social media management
• Social media monitoring
• Real-time Engagement
• Influencer marketing

10 Meltwater

Meltwater monitors various media sources, including online news, print media, broadcast channels, social platforms, news, and podcasts. The platform offers real-time tracking of brand mentions and relevant topics.

The tool offers analytics tracking the volume of mentions, the share of voice, reach, sentiment, trends, top publications, locations, and influencers. With Meltwater you’ll be able to benchmark your performance and track progress.

Also, it helps in identifying key influencers and measuring their impact in discussions relevant to your brand or industry.

Key features:

• Real-time online monitoring
• Broad media and news coverage
• Data analytics and reporting
• AI-powered insights

11 Determ

Determ is a media monitoring software dedicated to PR professionals. The platform monitors news sites, blogs, forums, Instagram, Facebook, X (Twitter), YouTube, and Reddit.

What’s interesting, the tool presents up to 24 months of historical data. You’ll discover how customers feel about your brand thanks to a positive sentiment ratio.

Determ can generate AI-powered summaries that present the most important insights relevant to your monitoring project. Also, you can set up real-time notifications about important topics.

Key features:

• Real-time online monitoring
• Data analytics and reporting
• Sentiment
• AI-powered summary

12 Prowly

Prowly is a platform that offers tools for Public Relations (PR) and media relations. It includes features for media monitoring, which can be helpful for PR agencies in managing their activities.

This platform assists in managing media databases, press release distribution, and media outreach.

Prowly does provide some features to track brand mentions and media coverage, helping users monitor the results of their PR campaigns.

However, it is not a dedicated media monitoring software. So, consider more advanced tools if you care about in-depth mentions tracking and comprehensive media analysis.

Key features:

• Media contact database
• Press release distribution
• Media monitoring

Why use AI-powered online monitoring tools?

AI tools revolutionized digital marketing. They automatize and speed up the work. That’s why more and more companies choose them.

Using an AI-powered media monitoring tool offers numerous advantages:

• AI algorithms can process vast amounts of monitoring data at a speed unmatchable by human efforts, saving time. For example, in the last 30 days, the Reebook brand noted 27,000 mentions. Brand24 efficiently processed the data and selected the most popular topics.

• What’s great is that the tool can analyze the most important metrics, such as the number of mentions, sentiment, reach, and AVE. All you need to do is to copy those insights and paste them into your report.

• AI-powered tools provide real-time insights, allowing you to respond promptly to emerging trends, crises, or opportunities. Here are some in-depth insights:

• Using the power of AI, tools can not only analyze the sentiment of mentions but also detect emotions. Thanks to emotions analysis, I discovered that Reebok mainly stirs up positive emotions, such as admiration and joy, on the Internet:

• With the help of advanced AI media monitoring software, you don’t have to wonder which source is the most effective. The tool will do the job for you. For example, news sites and TikTok are the most reach-efficient for Reebok:

• AI-powered sentiment analysis will help you quickly identify the sources of negative mentions.

• Last but not least, a media monitoring service can deliver you actionable insights. Reebok should consider enhancing social media campaigns focusing on positively received products like the Reebok NANO X2 ADVENTURE and the Eames Office x Reebok collection.

To sum up, AI-powered tools offer deeper insights than basic media monitoring tools. They turn data into user-friendly conclusions. So you spent less time on analysis.

Final thoughts

There are many media monitoring solutions available. Yet, not everyone will meet your expectations and goals.

All-in-one tools such as Sprout Social may seem like a good choice initially, but its media monitoring feature may not be optimized due to its numerous marketing features.

On the other hand, basic tools like Awario and Mention do not track all important sources.

So, which tool to choose? Here are some tips:

• Choose a tool that offers comprehensive coverage across various online channels, including social media, news websites, blogs, forums, podcasts, newsletters, and reviews.
• Opt for a tool that provides real-time monitoring and customizable alerts.
• Check whether the tool is developing AI features that will deliver custom insights, trends, and recommendations for your project.
• A user-friendly interface is essential. The tool should be intuitive and easy to navigate.
• Choose a tool that provides robust analytics that tracks the volume of mentions, sentiment, social and non-social reach, share of voice, influencer score, AVE, reputation, and presence scores.
• Read reviews and testimonials from other users.
• Consider the scalability of the tool as your business grows.

Wan to try advanced media monitoring software for free? Test the Brand24 tool!