Factiva vs. Hitwise (discontinued)

A large part of our work depends on the ability to source quality media content from a breadth of dependable sources globally. This is Factiva's bread and butter: it has a very comprehensive list of 'quality' media sources such as nationals, dailies, business journals and magazines from around the world that are easily mined for the content they hold. If you're thinking about anything other than these 'traditional' media sources then Factiva probably isn't your thing. It doesn't do social media.

Incentivized

Hitwise is best suited for looking at overall traffic behavior or a site or industry. It will help you quickly identify the where and the what when it comes to consumer behavior (i.e. what are they doing before they visit your site, where are they going after). It tells you a lot about who they are and what sparks the initial trigger. Where it isn't super appropriate is when you need to look at a specific term like "are eggs healthy" and you can't identify where that specific term falls in the overall "egg" searches.

Incentivized

• Factiva offers excellent search builders so that I am able to narrow my search to specific companies or topics very easily.
• Factiva combines a large number of credible sources into one place and allows me to search all of these sources.
• Factiva's use of timestamps helps me understand when the news was known by the market which allows me to analyze how (if at all) that particular piece of news impacted the company's stock price.
• Provides an excellent starting place for learning about a company and/or industry.

Incentivized

• Up/down stream traffic
• Search term identification
• Geographic location
• Specific site data for small scale websites

Incentivized

• The UX leaves room to be desired
• There are often repetitive entries
• The functionality can be confusing

Incentivized

• Sometimes the insights seem a little bit basic
• Reporting function is hard to deal with sometimes
• Access to sales/purchase data

Incentivized

At the time, Factiva was already being used by the company I worked for - they had developed procedures specifically for using Factiva, so there wasn't really an option. I've used Lexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg exclusively for legal research, so there wasn't really an overlap with Factiva.

Incentivized

Selected Hitwise because it is much better for insights on small-scale websites

Incentivized

• Media planning
• SEO

Incentivized