Analytics and measurement on the Web are all the rage and—from a traditional PR point of view—the number of square inches of print media coverage still matter as well. For television, this has always been a bit more complicated. You’d have to know and even then, you’ll need to acquire the tape. But what if you could monitor your brand’s mentions on TV in real-time?

While waiting in line for the Microsoft Techset party at SXSW, my buddy Jeff Mello and I met Patrick Riley and Matt Thomson from Livedash who built a great tool just for that.

What Does Livedash Do?

Livedash offers marketing analytics for televison by indexing US TV recordings to make them text-searchable. Just enter a term in the search box and it will return the mentions of the term on TV.

Here’s an example of what I got when I searched for “toyota” (click to enlarge):

Immediately you see how detailed the indexing is. Not only are the mentions displayed in a neat timeline, it allows you to filter per TV channel or per day. Per result, you can drill down to see a show’s transcript or find results from similar shows. In Google Alerts-esque fashion, you can also sign up to receive updates whenever there’s a mention of your search term(s).

If all that wasn’t enough, Livedash offers a video archive and API services to business users.

Impressions

I was intrigued when they told me about Livedash, but now I’m blown away. This is a wonderful piece of technology that’s going to give us more marketing intelligence on media mentions.

The service is still “basic” in terms of the analytics, but the guys are definitely working hard on extending and improving the service.

If you haven’t tried out Livedash, give it a shot. Let me hear it in the comments what you think!

However, the need for real-time discovery has opened up the marketplace for new players who can specialize in this field. The best will be able to provide search feedback, keyword monitoring and intelligent recommendations.

• Search feedback will give you the real-time results for a certain query, which is particularly useful with current events or trending topics.
• Keyword monitoring allows you to monitor real-time activity on the words that are relevant to you. This will also be helpful in your search engine optimization efforts. This could also be a premium option that service providers can monetize on.
• Intelligent recommendations help you filter out the clutter by bringing you only the best and most relevant search results. This increases usability by decreasing overload. Furthermore, it’s a monetization opportunity for service providers to offer premium advertising space.

The key will be to find a tool that works for your search needs but prevents you from becoming overloaded.