# Platform-First: Monitoring a Platform as a Whole

> Platform-First follows every entry of one kind on a platform: job boards, tenders, patent and company registers. What it does well, its limits, legal points.

- Author: Dr. Karsten Richter
- Publisher: Picasi GmbH
- Topic: Approaches compared
- Last updated: 2026-09-24
- Canonical URL: https://source-first-intelligence.com/en/platform-first/
- Language: en


Platform-First asks “where?”. Its starting point is neither a search term, as with [Topic-First](https://source-first-intelligence.com/en/topic-first/), nor a list of specific senders, as with Source-First. It is a place. All three logics are compared in [Market Monitoring: Topic-First, Source-First, Platform-First](https://source-first-intelligence.com/en/three-approaches-to-market-monitoring/).

The distinction between platform and channel matters here. A **platform** is a place run by a third party where many senders publish entries of the same kind: a job board, a tender portal, a register. A **channel** belongs to one particular source, such as a company’s careers page or its company page on LinkedIn.

## Typical platforms

**Job boards.** Eurostat defines online job advertisements as [“postings published on the internet by employers”](https://cros.ec.europa.eu/wih/oja) looking for candidates with specific skills. According to Eurostat they provide [detailed information](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/experimental-statistics/labour-market-demand-ict-specialists) on the positions to be filled, the skills sought and the employer, such as location, sector and type of contract.

**Tender portals.** Public contracts above the EU thresholds appear on [TED (Tenders Electronic Daily)](https://ted.europa.eu/en/about-ted), which according to TED publishes over 3 000 procurement notices every weekday. Its [Search API](https://docs.ted.europa.eu/api/latest/search.html) needs no authentication and provides business sector and place of performance as structured fields.

**Patent registers.** Germany’s patent office describes its free DPMAregister as [“suitable for the regular and systematic checking of newly published IP rights as part of a monitoring search”](https://www.dpma.de/english/search/dpmaregister/index.html).

**Company register notices.** In Germany, entries in the commercial register are made public by being retrievable for the first time in the electronic system ([§ 10 HGB](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/hgb/__10.html), in German). The [joint register portal of the German states](https://www.handelsregister.de/rp_web/welcome.xhtml) (in German) contains the registers of all states and the register notices.

## What Platform-First is good for

Platform-First serves questions the other two approaches cover less well: who is hiring, putting work out to tender, filing a patent or founding a company right now. A hypothetical example: a recruitment agency watches job boards to see which companies are looking for staff. A keyword alert would answer that question imprecisely, and a list of sources only for the companies already on it.

Its strength lies in completeness within the platform and in the fixed fields. If you filter by region, sector or category, you need no keywords, and you also see entries from senders you do not know yet. Official statistics rely on exactly this. Cedefop [launched a big data initiative in 2015](https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/projects/skills-online-job-advertisements) to systematically collect and analyse online job ads across Europe. In 2020 Eurostat and Cedefop set up the [Web Intelligence Hub](https://cros.ec.europa.eu/wih/oja), which collects ads from private job portals, public employment service portals and recruitment agencies. Eurostat uses such data to break down job vacancies by occupation and region, aiming [“to inform policy makers, employers, and jobseekers about occupations or regions with comparatively higher or lower labour demand”](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/experimental-statistics/job-vacancy-rate-occupation-region).

## Where the limits are

A platform shows entries, not the whole market. For job ads, official statisticians have described the limits in detail.

- **Representativeness.** According to Eurostat, [IT positions are more frequently posted on the internet](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/experimental-statistics/job-vacancy-rate-occupation-region) than jobs in small shops such as butchers or bakeries, or in the public sector.
- **Duplicates.** The same advertisement [may be counted multiple times](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/experimental-statistics/job-vacancy-rate-occupation-region) if it was posted several times on one portal or on several portals.
- **Ads without an identifiable employer.** In US data from 2007 and 2010 to 2015, the [employer name was missing in 40% of postings](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22762/w22762.pdf), mainly those on recruiting websites that typically do not reveal the employer.
- **An ad is not a hire.** Eurostat stresses that [“OJAs are not equivalent to job vacancies”](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/experimental-statistics/labour-market-demand-ict-specialists): some employers post ads without intending to fill the vacancy soon, and one ad can refer to several vacancies.

Other platforms have their own limits. European patent applications are usually published only 18 months after the filing or priority date ([Article 93 EPC](https://www.epo.org/en/legal/epc/2020/a93.html)).

## Legal limits

> [!CAUTION]
> This is not legal advice. It reports only what courts, laws and the platforms themselves say. Whether a specific project is permitted is a question for your own legal counsel.

There are rules for extracting a platform systematically. [Case C-762/19](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62019CJ0762) before the Court of Justice of the EU concerned a search engine for job ad websites. It copied and indexed the whole or a substantial part of a freely accessible database. According to the Court, that is “extracting” and “re-utilising” the content. The maker of the database may prohibit it where it adversely affects the maker’s investment. [Indeed’s terms](https://www.indeed.com/legal) prohibit using automated systems such as bots and scrapers without Indeed’s express written permission. Inspection of the German commercial register is permitted “for information purposes by individual retrievals” ([§ 9 HGB](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/hgb/__9.html), in German). TED is different: its [Search API](https://docs.ted.europa.eu/api/latest/search.html) is aimed primarily at data reusers and requires no authentication. More detail is in the legal section of the [article on the three approaches](https://source-first-intelligence.com/en/three-approaches-to-market-monitoring/).

## How it relates to Source-First

Platform-First and Source-First complement each other. The platform shows who is hiring, tendering or filing. You then follow that company as a source. Writing in [Harvard Business Review](https://hbr.org/2026/08/what-you-can-learn-from-a-competitors-job-postings), Wei Shi calls the jobs a competitor is trying to fill “one of the clearest and most accessible signals of strategic intent”.

The German IAB job vacancy survey lists [a vacancy on the company’s own website and one on internet job boards](https://doku.iab.de/fragebogen/IABSE_Papier-Fragebogen_IV_2025.pdf) as separate recruitment methods (question 43, in German). This site builds an assessment on that, one that none of the sources puts in these words: the careers page is a channel of the source; the job board is a platform of many senders. If you follow a company as a source, you read its careers page. If you want to know who is hiring at all, you start with the job board.

Why Source-First is the right logic for the question of what specific market players say themselves is set out in the [Source-First Manifesto](https://source-first-intelligence.com/en/manifest/) and the comparison [Sources, not keywords](https://source-first-intelligence.com/en/sources-vs-keywords/). How Platform-First and Source-First differ in detail for job boards, tenders and registers is shown in the comparison [Source or Platform?](https://source-first-intelligence.com/en/source-or-platform/). How to build a list of sources is covered in [Source-First in practice](https://source-first-intelligence.com/en/source-first-in-practice/).

## References

1. Eurostat: WIH – OJA Data. Eurostat CROS, undated. [https://cros.ec.europa.eu/wih/oja](https://cros.ec.europa.eu/wih/oja) (accessed 24 September 2026)
2. Eurostat: Labour market demand for ICT specialists in online job advertisements. Experimental statistics, undated. [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/experimental-statistics/labour-market-demand-ict-specialists](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/experimental-statistics/labour-market-demand-ict-specialists) (accessed 24 September 2026)
3. Publications Office of the European Union: About TED. Undated. [https://ted.europa.eu/en/about-ted](https://ted.europa.eu/en/about-ted) (accessed 24 September 2026)
4. TED Developer Docs: Search API. Undated. [https://docs.ted.europa.eu/api/latest/search.html](https://docs.ted.europa.eu/api/latest/search.html) (accessed 24 September 2026)
5. German Patent and Trade Mark Office: DPMAregister. Undated. [https://www.dpma.de/english/search/dpmaregister/index.html](https://www.dpma.de/english/search/dpmaregister/index.html) (accessed 24 September 2026)
6. German Commercial Code (HGB), § 10. Gesetze im Internet, in German. [https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/hgb/__10.html](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/hgb/__10.html) (accessed 24 September 2026)
7. Ministry of Justice of North Rhine-Westphalia: Registerportal der Länder, home page. In German, undated. [https://www.handelsregister.de/rp_web/welcome.xhtml](https://www.handelsregister.de/rp_web/welcome.xhtml) (accessed 24 September 2026)
8. Cedefop: Skills in online job advertisements. Undated. [https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/projects/skills-online-job-advertisements](https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/projects/skills-online-job-advertisements) (accessed 24 September 2026)
9. Eurostat: Job vacancy rate by occupation and region. Experimental statistics, undated. [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/experimental-statistics/job-vacancy-rate-occupation-region](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/experimental-statistics/job-vacancy-rate-occupation-region) (accessed 24 September 2026)
10. Hershbein, Brad; Kahn, Lisa B.: Do Recessions Accelerate Routine-Biased Technological Change? Evidence from Vacancy Postings. NBER Working Paper 22762, October 2016, revised September 2017 (peer-reviewed version: American Economic Review 108 (7), 2018, DOI 10.1257/aer.20161570). [https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22762/w22762.pdf](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22762/w22762.pdf) (accessed 24 September 2026)
11. European Patent Convention, Article 93. European Patent Office, 17th edition, November 2020. [https://www.epo.org/en/legal/epc/2020/a93.html](https://www.epo.org/en/legal/epc/2020/a93.html) (accessed 24 September 2026)
12. Court of Justice of the European Union: Judgment of 3 June 2021, Case C-762/19, CV-Online Latvia, operative part. EUR-Lex. [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62019CJ0762](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62019CJ0762) (accessed 24 September 2026)
13. Indeed: Terms of Service, section D, 21. Site Rules. Last updated 17 July 2026. [https://www.indeed.com/legal](https://www.indeed.com/legal) (accessed 24 September 2026)
14. German Commercial Code (HGB), § 9. Gesetze im Internet, in German. [https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/hgb/__9.html](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/hgb/__9.html) (accessed 24 September 2026)
15. Shi, Wei: What You Can Learn from a Competitor’s Job Postings. Harvard Business Review, 10 August 2026. [https://hbr.org/2026/08/what-you-can-learn-from-a-competitors-job-postings](https://hbr.org/2026/08/what-you-can-learn-from-a-competitors-job-postings) (accessed 23 September 2026)
16. IAB: IAB job vacancy survey questionnaire, fourth quarter 2025 (paper version), p. 4, question 43. In German. [https://doku.iab.de/fragebogen/IABSE_Papier-Fragebogen_IV_2025.pdf](https://doku.iab.de/fragebogen/IABSE_Papier-Fragebogen_IV_2025.pdf) (accessed 24 September 2026)