Exploring Industry Trends with Jon Anders Tangnes from Opoint

Tell us about your role and your company’s focus – what sets you apart in the media intelligence space today?

Since I started at Opoint in 2007, sales and network building have been my responsibility. As Opoint grew, more resources were needed in sales. We now have more than six people in sales, and my responsibilities changed in 2024. I am now responsible for all relations between Opoint and CMOs, publishers, news agencies and rights owners and administrators. I negotiate copyright agreements, keep the team up to date on everything related to copyright and content use, serve as a copyright resource for customers and prospects, and participate in FIBEP working groups. In addition, I am responsible for sales of solutions to CMOs and publishers: Opoint Tracking, Opoint Quality Control and HUB solutions.

Opoint has always worked closely with its customers, or partners as we also call them. We focus heavily on fast response times, close follow-up and being good consultants for our partners. We have flexible IT solutions, and we want those who sign an agreement with us to have a solution that is best for their use. And with high-quality products and deliveries, we have satisfied partners. Very few have terminated the agreement they have signed. 

Jon Anders Tangnes, Opoint

What are the top challenges you see your clients facing today — and how are you helping them overcome these?

Today, there is information overload, and it is easy to end up in a situation where you receive too much content. We can help with this by filtering the delivery. It is not necessary to receive 3.2 million articles per day if you only want country- or language-specific deliveries. We can also filter out the 1,000 largest sources from a country. We then use Opoint Readership and the ranking we have made per source. 

Another major challenge is content that is placed behind a paywall or sources that actively block crawlers. Paywalls can be solved if our customer signs an agreement with a publisher stating that we can crawl behind the paywall on their behalf. Or if a CMO has included this in their terms and conditions. Opoint has many agreements with publishers and CMOs and has several paywall deliveries to partners.

Blocking is a challenge and Opoint is now actively working with CMOs, FIBEP, AMEC and PDLN to find good solutions for all parties; both MMOs and publishers.

What trends or disruptions do you think will shape the media intelligence industry in the next five years?

AI! AI-driven insight will dominate. Generative AI will transform how content is monitored and analyzed.  You will get tools that can give you insights and even generate strategies from raw data.

Platforms! Content will be shared in private groups, encrypted messaging apps. Not available for a MMO or a crawler. New ethical methods and technologies needs to be available to capture content from these “hard-to-monitor” channels

Fake news and AI-generated misinformation! Good and trustworthy systems and tools will be needed. The credibility and trustworthiness of sources will be a crucial factor

Media Intelligence integrates with BI tools! From reporting on historical data to being a strategic advisory role. Defining reputation risk, market-and PR strategies. From passive monitors to be a strategic consultant.

Data privacy! GDPR, AI regulation, EU-directives etc. will affect how data is gathered, distributed and analyzed. More focus on ethical AI use will be more important

Copyright! There needs to be better interaction between CMOs, publishers and the MMO industry. A shared understanding of each other's importance to one another.

What does success look like for your company in the next 12 months?

Fewer restrictions on access to source content

Access to content that can be used by all industries and is not restricted by contract terms

Further strengthen our market position; become a leading supplier in all markets that need access to news data from all parts of the world. More new satisfied customers cross industries!

In your view, what new skills or mindsets will be essential for media intelligence professionals going forward?

The ability to collect and analyze large datasets from different channels; traditional, social media, new platforms, TV etc.

To use AI and ML models requires an understanding how these models work. You need to understand to explain end-user!

Fake news, disinformation and deepfakes needs to be understood to protect brands and being able to deliver quality consultancy and analysis

Media Intelligence is evolving rapidly; new technologies, change in consumer behavior, new platforms and an explosion of data sources. You can't sleep in class. The train is going fast, and even faster tomorrow!

What role does FIBEP play for your company’s goals or strategy?

FIBEP do play a role when we discuss goals and strategies. Many of the members are an Opoint partner and we need of course to take that into consideration.

For us is FIBEP a meeting place for exchanging experiences and opinions; a place to make new contacts for knowledge learning. FIBEP is now not just about PDF quality, newspaper segmentation or portal design!  FIBEP is a knowledge environment where common challenges can be discussed and we, alone or together with other organizations (e.g. AMEC, PDLN), hopefully can solve some of the challenges we all face.