Competitive media tracking by region: what you learn from competitors in each country
Tracking competitors shows you, country by country, where your own PR should focus, in media coverage and in AI answers.
Sascha KirsteinIn this article
Monitoring that only covers your brand tells you a lot about your own activities. What it leaves out is how much weight you carry compared with your competitors in a market, and what currently matters to the media there.
So add your competitors to your monitoring. In the analysis, you then see in every country which topics they own, which journalists write about them and which outlets cover them. That is valuable input for your own PR.
Only a comparison with competitors shows how present you are in each country
The number of articles alone does not show how well your communication works. 200 pieces in small trade titles can carry less weight than five in the leading media of your market. Only the comparison with your competitors, and a look at the outlets you appear in, shows how present you really are.
The usual metric for the comparison is share of voice: your share of all coverage about you and your competitors. If 100 articles in one country mention one of the brands you compare and 12 of them mention yours, your share of voice there is 12 percent. To reflect presence better, you can scale it up to the estimated number of readers. Each article then counts with the reach of its outlet, so a piece in a large title weighs more than one in a small trade publication. Alternatively, calculate it only for your top media, more on that below.
Also calculate share of voice separately for each country. An example with one brand in three countries shows why: across all countries together, it reaches 32 percent. That is mostly down to Germany: 600 of the 1,000 articles appear there, and the brand reaches 45 percent. In France and the UK it sits at 12 and 14 percent.
| Country | articles | Share of voice |
|---|---|---|
| Germany | 600 | 45% |
| France | 300 | 12% |
| UK | 100 | 14% |
| Total | 1,000 | 32% |
So report share of voice per country, and show the total as an addition at most. Our article on share of voice in PR explains how to decide what counts as a mention and how to weight it.
Your competitors show you which topics the media pick up in each country
Look at which topics your competitors appear with in each country, and which of them are most widespread. That is valuable input for your own topic planning: do you want to cover the same topics too, and from which angle of your own?
Just as important is the question of which topics you deliberately do not want to compete on. A topic a competitor already owns strongly is only worth it if you have a clearly distinct angle. A topic with a lot of coverage but no brand yet acting as a voice, on the other hand, is an opportunity. Sentiment completes the picture: if a competitor gets a lot of coverage but mostly critical, its approach is no model to follow.
Your competitors' journalists and outlets are your next media list
Journalists who regularly write about your competitors know your market. They are often the most obvious contacts for your own PR, especially if they have never covered you. So filter coverage by competitor and country, and look at which authors and outlets it comes from.
To do this, define your top media for each country, often called tier 1: the titles your audience there actually reads. Compare how often each competitor appears in them, and also calculate share of voice across these titles only. That often says more than the raw number of articles. In smaller countries, the trade press is worth a closer look. In Austria or Switzerland, a local player can be present there that easily gets lost in an analysis for the whole DACH region.
AI answers show which competitors get recommended and which outlets that rests on
Anyone who asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude about providers in your industry gets names recommended. In those answers you see which competitors are named, and from the cited sources, why. Because AI assistants answer differently depending on country, language and service, look at this per country and across several services.
From our AI visibility index of PR agencies
Our AI visibility index of PR agencies, published every month, shows how large the differences can be. For the October 2026 edition, we analysed more than 16,000 answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot. A different agency led in each country: fischerAppelt in Germany with 28.2 percent of answers, Martschin & Partner in Austria with 54.9 percent and Team Farner in Switzerland with 54.2 percent. The services differ sharply too: the top 10 of ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot have not a single agency in common.
The sources an answer cites show which outlets bring a competitor into the answer. Those outlets belong on your media list for that country, next to the journalists and outlets from the previous section.
A consistent methodology makes countries and brands comparable
These insights are only as good as the data behind them. Countries and brands only become comparable when you work with the same methodology everywhere:
- Set competitors per country. A competitor that is strong in Germany may not matter in France. Keep the list stable from month to month, because every competitor you add or drop changes share of voice.
- Search every brand the same way. This is the most important point. If the search for one brand or country is set up wrong, articles go missing there systematically, and the comparison tips without anyone noticing. So search for every brand by the same rules: brand name, common spellings and key product names. If a product has a different name in one country, add that name to the search for that country. Our article on multilingual media monitoring explains how to build searches for several languages.
- Monitor the same channels everywhere. If you capture print and online in Germany but only online in France, the numbers are not comparable. Where print is missing in a country, compare online with online. Compare reach only within one country, because it comes from different sources in each country.
- Count wire stories once. If the same dpa or APA story appears on 30 websites, simple monitoring counts 30 articles. Count it once, or report it separately.
- Report monthly, review quarterly. Per country, share of voice, the main topics, presence in top media and one sentence on what moved are enough. Once a quarter, review competitors and searches and note any changes in the report.
If you are looking for a tool for this, three questions decide: Does it store the country and language of every item? Does it compare several brands under the same filter? And does it show which outlets and authors the coverage of each brand comes from? Our comparison of media monitoring tools shows which tools are available.
Where aclipp fits
aclipp is a European PR analytics platform from Germany. Media monitoring, AI visibility and reporting run in one workspace.
- Monitoring for your brand and competitors. aclipp offers global online monitoring across more than 150 million sources in any language. Print is available for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, other countries on request. For aclipp to capture your competitors, you add them to your monitoring searches. aclipp then recognises which brands appear in each item and captures country, language, outlet and author.
- Analysis in conversation. The fastest way to answer the questions in this article is the built-in assistant or MCP, the interface that lets AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT work directly with aclipp, for example: "On which topics, in which outlets and by which authors is competitor A covered in Austria?"
- Filters and dashboards. When setting up the search, you narrow results to countries and languages and exclude domains or channels. In the analysis, you filter by country, outlet, tags, sentiment and more, and compare all brands under the same filter. Dashboards can be pinned to one country.
- AI visibility per country. Every question aclipp asks the AI assistants has a country as its location. You see per country how often you and your competitors are named and which sources the answers cite. Competitors cost nothing extra.
Starting small is enough
You do not need to start with every country and competitor at once. Take two countries and the three competitors that keep you busiest there, and track them for a month. Afterwards you know which topics they own, which journalists you do not know yet, and whether expanding to more countries is worth it.
FAQ
Because only the comparison shows whether your coverage is a lot or a little. You also see which topics your competitors own, which journalists write about them and which outlets cover them. That gives you topics and contacts for your own PR, ideally per country.
It mainly depends on how much coverage about you and your competitors comes together. Large suites such as Meltwater or Cision quote individually. At aclipp, it starts at €99 per month for media monitoring and €49 per month for AI visibility, both billed annually. All plans are on our pricing page, and you can try aclipp free for seven days first.
Yes, if you calculate it separately in each country, with the same search rules and the same channels. Then compare positions and trends, not the absolute number of articles, because media landscapes and sources differ from country to country.
Yes, by country and by service. In the October 2026 edition of our AI visibility index of PR agencies, a different agency led in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot had not a single agency in common in their top 10. Ask the same questions in every country, in the local language and with that country as the location. Then you see where competitors are named instead of you.
Tools that store the country and language of every item, compare several brands under the same country filter, show authors and outlets per brand, detect duplicates and measure AI answers per country. Our overview of media monitoring tools compares a selection.