AVE definitely needs to go, and has for a long time. The impact on revenue or cost — the actual impact of PR activities on the business — is a quantitative nightmare owing to the relative impact of other factors on those metrics. PR people have been much more comfortable with output metrics such as AVE because execs understand advertising. They learn it in business schools, see it with their own eyes and grasp its impact. They have no such exposure to public relations aside from the “marketing communications,” “publicity” angle.

Even if we posit that all our various communication activities are, in the end, geared toward selling more and spending less, isolating our piece of that puzzle is expensive, complex and difficult. We shape perceptions among a variety of audiences that aren’t customers — that’s one of the most critical differences between PR and marketing.

The extent to which each of those audiences (really, publics) is valued at the executive level determines whether we’ll be funded beyond the most basic of our capabilities (reactive, defensive).

But what’s easier to grasp than “we sold more widgets because they read about our product in X publication/website/etc.”? It’s all about making sure you are clear about the desired end result. You can throw the AVE in as additional metrics, but emphasize the end business goal being advanced.

I am still a bit conflicted on the AVE topic, in that there are some forms of editorial that for all purposes are similar to advertising. The example I use is a 2.5 column story on a new tire that appears in Road and Track — it’s functionally about the features, benefits and performance of the tire, and in the specific case, it was highly complimentary, with not a negative word in the whole thing. Most of the two columns was taken up by a photo from our staff shooter of the tire itself, showing the name, the unique tread design, etc., and was quite a beauty shot. The photog noted that two pages later, there was an ad for that tire, called the media buyer and determined how much the company had spent on the ad, sized accordingly, and came up with a dollar figure for how much the equivalent space would have cost, net of his time to shoot and edit the photo. His internal client had asked for it.

Was that wrong? Bad science? I don’t know, it seemed quite reasonable at the time.

So, are there instances (product publicity, e.g.) where this method would be valuable?

Gack, I’m violating my own rules!

Thanks again for stopping by!

With that said, I actually believe this is an important inflection point for public relations measurement. Not just due to the post-AVE transition, but also the embrace of digital and social media metrics, the renewed inspection of long-held advertising and audience impression metrics, and the renewed focus on integrated measurement across disciplines.

Instead of skipping past this debate, I say let’s get deep into it and use it as an inflection point to end up somewhere better. Too many PR people know too little about the valuable measurement techniques that have emerged over the past decade. If the “end of AVEs” becomes a forcing function for people to learn about other measurement options, I say let’s embrace the debate — and use it to educate and elevate.