Gauging the success of Public Relations (PR) campaigns is a process that continues to evolve. In our blog post from last month, “PR Campaigns: Key Insights for Success,” we covered strategies and metrics that PR professionals use today to more concretely measure success. But, what were the strategies of old, and where are we heading as even the Unique Visitors per Month (UVM) measurement becomes less widely used?

Advertising Value Equivalency

Originally developed in the 1940s, Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) is a calculation that estimates the value of a PR mention by comparing it to the cost of a similarly sized advertisement in a magazine or other medium. As this article, “What is Advertising Value Equivalency in PR? (+ AVE Alternatives),” by Prowly explains, AVE was created in response to early demands faced by PR professionals from clients who may or may not have understood the value of earned media.

The most basic AVE formula is article size multiplied by the single-placement ad rate; a concept borrowed from traditional newspaper advertising. This basic formula is flawed however, because it ties the value of a PR campaign to advertising costs, and doesn’t fully capture the success of PR efforts. For instance, it’s widely recognized that audiences place more trust and value on editorial content compared to advertisements. Moreover, this metric no longer suits the modern PR landscape as it has become increasingly digital. As a result, Many PR agencies have abandoned AVE altogether, and organizations like the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) declared AVE an invalid measure in 2017.

Despite this, AVE can still offer a rough initial estimate of press mention value. Some PR reports still in fact include it due to the lack of a strong replacement metric, but newer alternatives such as UVM have gained traction. While AVE was used for decades so that the PR industry could compete with large sales and marketing teams, AVE is widely recognized as a relic of the past.

Unique Visitors Per Month

UVM was briefly mentioned in our previous blog post and is still used by many PR professionals. This article, “What is UVM in PR? Everything You Need to Know,” from Rephonic explains what UVM is as “a metric used to show the number of distinct individuals who visit a website or digital platform every month.” As the name of the metric implies, while a person or bot may visit a site multiple times, UVM only counts the first time.

UVM is often mistaken for being the same as impressions, which are the total number of times a piece of content is displayed to users and includes repeated visits. The article further explains that this metric is still useful for PR professionals due to the following reasons:

  • It gives a general idea of a piece of content’s popularity and serves as an indicator of what gets people’s attention.
  • It helps in understanding visitor patterns such as when people tend to look at your site and which parts of your content are popular.
  • It can be used as a point of comparison relative to the UVM of your competitors when looking at tools such as Google Analytics.

However, UVM is a surface-level metric; it lacks depth, measures quantity rather than quality, and does not directly correlate to results. For these reasons, UVM has largely become a basic metric that professionals look at, but do not necessarily use to measure a campaign’s success.

PR Metrics Evolved: AVE and UVM Making Way for KPIs

As PR measurements continue to evolve and become more sophisticated, it’s clear that metrics such as AVE and UVM will eventually fade away. While AVE provided a foundation for valuing earned media in the past, it fails to capture the nuanced impact of PR campaigns today. Similarly, metrics like UVM offer useful insights but lack the depth required for a comprehensive evaluation.

To more accurately measure the effectiveness of PR efforts, professionals are focusing on more sophisticated Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), such as audience engagement, sentiment analysis, and conversion rates, which offer a clearer picture of both quantitative and qualitative outcomes (more details on KPIs from our previous blog post can be found here). As the industry continues to refine its approaches, PR practitioners must embrace KPIs that not only track visibility but also align with broader organizational goals.

For more information about our agency and how we can help you create content and publicize your products or services, contact us at St. Conti Communications.

#PR #Publicrelations #Metrics #Success #Campaigns #AVE #UVM #KPI