Public Relations trade journal PR Daily had an onslaught of negative feedback to a story it ran earlier this week about measuring publicity coverage in terms of advertising equivalency. Ad value equivalency (AVE) assigns a dollar value to publicity results based on how much the space or time would cost to purchase as advertising.
Most PR people I know are against AVE, saying it doesn’t truly reflect the value of credibility and implied editorial endorsement of a story that is part of the media’s content. Some in PR may balk at having a dollar value affixed to the results of their work, perhaps out of fear the number won’t be impressive enough to the client.
The PR Daily story tried to explain some of the common AVE measurement criteria, but the writer's attempt was overly simplistic and, in some cases, inaccurate or misleading. The story says editorial content is generally rated at three times what it 
would cost for the space or time as paid advertising. The 3x factor is supposed to take into consideration the heightened credibility of editorial versus an ad. The articles explains how other criteria come into play, such as page rank (Page One, the second front, inside, etc.) and placement on the page (left, right, above the fold, below the fold).
The writer, seeming to have run out of steam after only ten very short paragraphs, then offers two bits of off-base advice. If you’re promoting an event, she writes, put more budget into advertising, “because the call to action needs to be instantaneous and short-lived.” Then she advises that “if you want to increase general awareness of your brand…editorial would be the preferred method, as you want your message to have a much stronger and longer lasting impact through third-party opinion and strategic messaging.”
When I looked at the writer’s bio, I began to understand why this is so simplistic and wrong. She “has worked in the field of public relations for nearly a decade.” Wow, a seasoned vet!
I’m a bit surprised and disappointed that the editors at PR Daily accepted this piece. I suppose they were short on material that day, but I’d rather see one less story than waste my time on stuff like this. Worse yet, it can misinform readers who aren’t experienced in PR and lead them to make bad decisions.
Among the responses was one that PR Daily ran as a feature, headlined “PR Industry must consign AVE to the graveyard.” Author Shonali Burke rips into the original piece and exposes its writer’s lack of knowledge and professionalism. She says she’d like to see AVE “consigned to the graveyard so it can’t unleash its antiquated havoc on 21st century public relations.”
I don’t totally agree that equivalency measurement should be dumped. I’m not at all a fan of it; in fact I fought hard against it the first time I came across it. Some 25 years ago, a client asked its ad agency to put an ad equivalency to the results of a major PR program I had been directing for them. On principle, I argued the case, saying they were trying to measure apples and oranges. I gave all the rationale that included stronger editorial credibility and even things like how can you place an ad value on a Page One story and photo, when you can’t even buy an ad on Page One of most newspapers. (Remember, this was some 25 years ago.)
The client, the marketing vp at L’eggs Products, took me aside after one of my passionate pleas in a meeting and explained it simply. “We’re not judging the work of your agency with this exercise, nor are we thinking of dropping the program we’re evaluating,” he assured me. “My bosses, who look at ROI in everything they do, need to see some value placed on it, more than simply an impressive book of clippings and TV newsclip videos.”
So I reluctantly went with the flow. I convinced the ad agency folks to place a higher value on editorial – they agreed to a 1.5 multiplier. They also put a premium on things like Page One stories – I think those got a multiplier of 6 or 7, based on the cost differential of the tiny classified ads The NY Times used to run at the bottom of its front page.
The agency’s ad equivalency report, flawed as it may have been, told the client that a program costing them less than $100,000 had brought them publicity worth more than $2 million, not to mention the loyalty of thousands of women who had been personally sampled and impacted by the client’s involvement in the program. And, partly based on that valuation, the client expanded the program nationwide, which resulted in a major bump in our agency’s billings.
Despite my own experience with AVE, which proved quite positive in the end, it’s not for everyone. First of all, it can be quite costly to do. These days, there are several companies that do equivalency valuations and they are much more sophisticated and consider more fairly the real value of publicity vs. advertising. But such measurement is totally wrong for small and mid-size clients, since the cost of measurement could easily outweigh the cost of actually implementing the p.r. initiative. For a p.r. budget of $100,000, wouldn’t the client be better served by putting an extra $25,000 into programming instead of spending that much or more on measurement?
For giant organizations spending really big bucks on PR, measurement such as AVE can be a useful tool for top management, helping them justify their expenditure and helping determine the return on investment against other marketing expenditures. But for smaller companies, it just doesn’t make economic sense.
The value of PR is often hard to quantify, and if more people in management – especially those with marketing responsibility – had a better understanding of PR thanks to a PR component in their education in college or grad school, the need to quantify might not be as strong. (But better PR education is a whole other discussion for another time.)
So if you ask me, I wouldn’t put AVE in the graveyard. I’d just tuck it into a closet someplace, where the giant players can pull it out if they feel they need it to justify their giant PR spend. For the rest of us, leave it in the closet.
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