Mediastow, the Middle East’s only media intelligence firm has announced the introduction of a new automated media monitoring system that will maximize efficiency and minimize monitoring misses.

The announcement comes after the signing of a deal with Zissor, a Norwegian company whose software and technology is used by media monitoring giants such as Durrants in the UK (the UK’s biggest media monitoring agency) and BurellesLuce (US-based, and the world’s largest media monitoring agency).

“This extensive investment comes as the recognition of a need in the media monitoring industry,” commented Mohamed Elzubeir, CEO Mediastow. “The system will allow Mediastow to automate the reading of English AND Arabic titles through OCR – Optical Character Recognition. The system will then clip and deliver the clippings to the clients in a much faster timeframe,” he further added.

Zissor is a world leading supplier of end-to-end solutions for industrial conversion of newspapers and all other physical documents to electronically searchable information. This signing will allow Mediastow to create an edge in the market and offer an advanced media monitoring and analysing solution that no other company in the Middle East can.

“This system allows Mediastow to spend less time clipping and more time analyzing the data it is archiving. We will be expanding on our media measurements system to bring together a comprehensive set of tools that allows PR professionals to really understand and assess their PR campaigns,” Elzubeir concluded.

The technology is set to be in place and up and running by the start of 2007 and will allow companies to monitor their competitors news and their market trends easily and affordably. The system also allows PR agencies the convenience of having their published news sent directly to their clients at an earlier than they could manage.

The greatest advantage of the technology is the decrease in miss rates in monitoring the news. Even with the most diligent of media monitors, human error means that a percentage of relevant news is always missed. This new automated system will ensure that no articles with the pre-programmed keywords in are missed and that all relevant news is delivered by 8am to the persons email account.