Role names age well. Whatever the technology underneath changes to, somebody is still keeping watch. A watchkeeper is the officer on duty, responsible while everyone else sleeps. It’s a maritime term with legal weight, since watchkeeping standards are internationally regulated for ships’ officers. That seriousness carries into other domains: monitoring, security operations, compliance, and any service whose value is continuous vigilance. A SOC provider, an uptime monitoring product, a fleet tracking service, or a maritime training and certification business all fit.

Media monitoring reports are literally lists of instances, which makes the plural form unusually apt for the business it describes. Organisations pay to know every time they, their competitors or their subjects appear in print, broadcast and online. It’s a real business with institutional buyers and recurring contracts. The name suits a monitoring service, a clipping product, a press coverage database, or a media analytics platform. It also carries the technical reading, where instances means provisioned services, suiting a white-label newsroom infrastructure business.

Broadcasters, sports organisations and brands all need the good bits extracted quickly, and doing it automatically is now feasible. Highlights is the commercially strong reading. Media instants are the moments that matter: the clip that circulates, the quote that gets pulled, the frame that becomes the story. Coverage increasingly reduces to a handful of these rather than to whole articles or broadcasts. The name suits a clipping and highlights product, a social video tool, a monitoring service surfacing moments rather than volume, or a media analytics platform.