Only 13% of press releases contain multimedia content according to research from press release distribution company RealWire. The research was based on all press releases sent from six news release distribution companies on December 2nd (PRNewswire, Businesswire, Marketwire, PRWeb, Sourcewire and RealWire).

Adam Parker, RealWire’s Chief Executive said “From our perspective the barriers to utilising multimedia that seem to exist are the prohibitive costs that some services charge to distribute multimedia content."

However, Dick Bromley, managing director of BusinessWire, denies this is the case. Bromley, who has recently simplified their multimedia pricing structure, claims the figures are misleading owing to the high number of regulatory releases distributed. "Business Wire and PR Newswire send a huge amount of regulatory news to the media which by default contain no multimedia components. This needs to be factored in given the nature of our businesses and our function as a source of breaking news to the global investment community."

Bromley also felt the methodology was misleading "International newswires such as ourselves are sending out up to a 1000 news releases a day whereas RealWire send significantly less.To bunch together Business Wire and RealWire in a survey and claim a percentage advantage when contributing less than 4% of the total survey count seems a little dubious."

Regulatory releases aside, the lack of multimedia does make content provision hard for online news channels, with only 2% of releases including audio and video. Commenting on the findings, RealWire's Giles Shorthouse added “In an online digital world where content can be created in multiple mediums and then shared in social media communities, it is surprising, and a little disappointing, to see such a small proportion of PR stories taking advantage of these opportunities."