eMedia Monitor wins second straight AMEC Award for Saudi Hajj work

eMedia Monitor won silver at the 2026 AMEC Awards for its work with Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Tourism and Ways Marketing Solutions during the Hajj season. The project gave the ministry real-time broadcast intelligence across 80+ countries and helped it build its first earned media baseline for Hajj communications.

Why it matters: - The Saudi Ministry of Tourism used the project to monitor Hajj coverage in real time for the first time while supervising pilgrim accommodation directly. - The work gave the ministry a faster way to detect issues, rank them by urgency and separate immediate response needs from items that only required monitoring. - The program also created the ministry’s first earned media baseline for Hajj communications, which now informs planning for 2027.

What happened: - eMedia Monitor won silver at the AMEC Awards 2026 in the Most Effective Planning, Research and Evaluation: Middle East and Africa category. - The award recognized a three-way collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Ways Marketing Solutions during the 2026 Hajj season. - The AMEC Awards ceremony took place in London on Nov. 5, 2026. - eMedia Monitor also extended its ongoing monitoring across the ministry’s wider communications activity.

The details: - eMedia Monitor delivered real-time broadcast and media intelligence across more than 80 countries and more than 30 languages. - AI-powered translation and auto-summary tools turned international coverage into concise Arabic updates within minutes. - The system identified and ranked 55 emerging narratives by severity, topic and urgency. - The monitoring connected media coverage with data from the Unified Tourism Centre, which handled more than 35,000 pilgrim enquiries. - Seeing reported issues alongside pilgrim enquiries moved the work from media measurement toward decision intelligence. - The ministry evaluated earned media alongside owned media performance and public sentiment. - eMedia Monitor is a Vienna-based broadcast intelligence platform founded in 2007. - The company says its platform offers 24/7 monitoring across 94 countries in 42 languages, covering more than 4,500 broadcast channels and 130,000+ podcasts. - eMedia Monitor also received Gold at the DataComms Awards 2026 and Gold at the AMEC Awards 2025.

Between the lines: - The award shows how broadcast intelligence is increasingly being used as an operational tool, not just a reporting layer. - The ministry’s lack of a prior Hajj baseline made real-time media monitoring more valuable because teams had to build context while the season was underway. - The collaboration suggests government communications teams are combining media intelligence with service data to make faster response decisions. - Youssef Hamad, sales director for MENA at eMedia Monitor, said broadcast is where stories break first and move fastest, and called the recognition a proud moment for the team.

What's next: - The ministry will use the Hajj findings to shape communications planning for 2027. - The ministry has extended monitoring across its broader communications work. - eMedia Monitor is likely to use the award as added proof of its broadcast intelligence platform for government and agency clients.

The bottom line: - eMedia Monitor turned live broadcast coverage into actionable Hajj intelligence, and the AMEC recognition gives the company a second straight win for the same category of work.