Media monitoring and media auditing are often mentioned in the same breath, but they answer different questions.

Monitoring tracks what’s being said about your brand, your industry or your competitors across TV, radio, print, digital and social media — it’s about visibility and reputation. Auditing, on the other hand, verifies that advertising you’ve paid for actually ran as booked — it’s about accountability and cost control.

Most advertisers benefit from both: monitoring to understand the conversation, and auditing to make sure their media spend is delivering what was promised.