Press Releases with Multimedia Content Significantly Outperform Traditional, Text-ONLY Releases, PR Newswire Study Confirms

NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- PR Newswire, the global leader of innovative marketing and communications solutions, today announced the findings of an inaugural analysis of its press release data that revealed a stark contrast between the visibility of multimedia press releases compared to that of traditional, text-only releases.

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The findings suggest "the key link" in today's communication chain is multimedia content, revealing that releases that incorporate multimedia elements garner up to 77% more visibility and interaction than text-only releases.  The data also suggests that each added layer of multimedia content, including photos, audio and video, increases the "shelf life" of a release as well as how often it is shared, over a text-only announcement.

"Digital and social media are undoubtedly how companies want to communicate and how consumers prefer to receive information," said Sarah Skerik, vice president, Social Media, PR Newswire. "While we suspected all along that multimedia assets were more effective at building broad awareness for a news announcement, we wanted to confirm this assumption with an in-depth examination of our press release data.  We were excited to learn just how much more impactful multimedia content really is."

The study examined data from PRNewswire.com via Omniture SiteCatalyst, looking at over 10,000 text press releases and 200 multimedia news releases over a four week period from February 28-March 27, 2011. In the study, views are defined as anytime a reader has clicked on a press release headline to view the full release.

In support of this data, PR Newswire continues to develop and evolve its multimedia offerings to help customers distribute and manage multimedia content through all channels and engage opportunity everywhere it exists.

• ARC Engagement Platform: The comprehensive, interactive, multi-channel platform is designed to drive online audience engagement.  Developed as a free-standing, interactive media player and landing page, the ARC (Access, Reach, Connect) offers the ability to combine and distribute an entire catalog of assets- video, multimedia, photos and promotional content.  The media player, which can be modified to showcase up to five individual segments of encoded video or audio content, can easily be shared and embedded anywhere online, including blogs, websites, and social channels.  And, when any content is updated, it is dynamically updated anywhere it's been embedded, the perfect tool for ongoing communications campaigns.
• Multimedia News Release:  PR Newswire's newest MNR makes it easy to share a campaign message in multimedia format by blending text, audio, video, logos, photos and related documents in an interactive HTML platform.  With mobile and tablet compatibility, flash capabilities, embeddable photo galleries and convenient social media features such as tweetable quotes and integration with Facebook, MNRs up the ante on a basic news release.
• Photo Services:  From search engine optimized photo archival services to strategic placement of photos on the billboards in Times Square and Las Vegas, PR Newswire offers a variety of photo distribution services to supplement any piece of content, fostering engagement with both the media and consumers.
• MediaRoom:  PR Newswire's MediaRoom service provides consumers and the media 24/7 access to important organizational content and information, updated in real time.  An online-branded, PR Newswire-hosted newsroom, MediaRoom empowers communications professionals with the tools needed provide continuous content to their key audiences, engage key stakeholders and maximize visibility in social channels, all without enlisting the support of IT professionals.

Click here to learn more about PR Newswire's multimedia service offerings.

About PR Newswire

PR Newswire (www.prnewswire.com) is the premier global provider of multimedia platforms that enable marketers, corporate communicators, sustainability officers, public affairs and investor relations officers to leverage content to engage with all their key audiences. Having pioneered the commercial news distribution industry 57 years ago, PR Newswire today provides end-to-end solutions to produce, optimize and target content – from rich media to online video to multimedia – and then distribute content and measure results across traditional, digital, mobile and social channels. Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimization network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire enables the world's enterprises to engage opportunity everywhere it exists. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, and is a UBM plc company.

Contact:

Meryl Serouya
Marketing and Communications Associate
PR Newswire
+1.201.360.6009
[email protected]

SOURCE PR Newswire Association LLC