PR Industry Must Develop Workable Metrics for Measuring Campaigns

February 23rd, 2010 by Daniel Young | Filed under Public Relations, Social media.

The outdoor advertising industry in Australia today announced Move, the world’s first outdoor advertising measurement system. The system takes Government data sources relating to traffic flow and consumer movements and compares this with a visibility rating for the outdoor media site, whether it be a billboard, bus stop or railway station. 

Each media site has its own visibility rating based on a combination of data points, the site’s physical characteristics (i.e. location, lumination etc.) and eye tracking data, which is charted on Move’s Opportunity To See (OTS) and Likelihood To See (LTS) metric.  

Could such a system be applied to PR measurement online?  What is the Likelihood To See (LTS) of a blog post (a product review for example) or a recommendation on Twitter?  The PR industry is hamstrung by the Advertising Value Equivalence measurement model, which serves it poorly.

There is a need for the PR industry to develop an industry standard for measurement, which isn’t related to advertising spend.  Every campaign has its own set of objectives but there should be some foundation metrics in place for measuring the impact of PR campaigns that result in online coverage and social media activity.    

 

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4 Responses to “PR Industry Must Develop Workable Metrics for Measuring Campaigns”

  1. Lakun says:
    February 23, 2010 at 9:16 pm

    So who’s going to do it?

  2. Daniel Young says:
    February 24, 2010 at 6:53 am

    The obvious answer is the PRIA but I don’t see much activity from them in this area. Alternatively, it would be a collection of agencies and consultants. I think you’d want to establish a cross industry committee of some sort to try and create a system that everyone could buy into.

  3. Lakun says:
    February 24, 2010 at 9:58 am

    I agree. I dont think the PRIA is capable of doing this, which is a shame as it ought to be on the front foot representing the industry.

    I reckon you should take the lead and try and establish a cross-industry taskforce – would be good for your business I think.

  4. Daniel Young says:
    February 24, 2010 at 12:21 pm

    Thanks Lakun. Nice idea – I might try and do that this afternoon!!

    It’s a worthy cause for the PR industry – I wonder if there are any sponsors out there that would like to get involved.

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