New IPR paper on Weighted Media Cost as an alternative to AVEs

By: KK / 21.10.10

PR professionals still tend to judge their success criteria more by their ability to place material in the media rather than on the impact such coverage might have on shifting opinion, awareness, or moving markets, although there is evidence that this is changing.

That has been one of the findings of an international survey carried out by Benchpoint for AMEC (the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication), the Institute for Public Relations (IPR) and the German Public Relations Association (DPRG) last year.

Now, the IPR Commission on Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation published a paper dealing with the debate on AVEs: A New Paradigm for Media Analysis: Weighted Media Cost. An Addendum to: "Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE)". By Angela Jeffrey, APR, Bruce Jeffries-Fox, and Brad L. Rawlins, Ph.D. (2010).

AVE is essentially the practice of assigning a "value" to a news story by equating it to advertising costs, with the implication that the news story is somehow "equivalent" to an advertisement in terms of probable audience impact. The IPR's Commission on Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation recently decided to reject AVE as a media measurement concept and practice - but not vocally or publicly abandoning the practice before achieving some consensus around alternative media measures.

The Jeffrey/Jeffries-Fox/Rawlins paper offers the first draft proposal: It describes the shortcomings of the old AVE methodology and introduces an alternative media measure called "Weighted Media Cost" (WMC) which should provide a more holistic approach of media value analysis by e.g.

• including the subtraction of all negative coverage;
• assigning costs to only the space or time occupied by an organization;
• using audited, negotiated media costs to the extent possible.

You can read the full paper here. [Download PDF]

To participate in the discussion follow the link below:

Blog site set up by Bob Grupp on which the debate can go forward.

About IPR

The Institute for Public Relations is an independent nonprofit foundation dedicated to the science beneath the art of public relations. Located at the University of Florida, the Institute supports public relations research and education to bring together the academic and professional communities. The IPR supports PR evaluation by not only having created a Commission on Public Relations Measurement & Evaluation but also honoring once a year excellence in evaluation with the Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award. Since 2004, the award's primary objective has been to identify superb examples of research used to support public relations practice, and to publish these as case studies.

Further information on communicationcontrolling.com:

• An interview with David B. Rockland, Managing Director Ketchum Global Research Network, about the sense or non-sense of AVEs and the question whether these metric are adequate to measure social media.
• Future Trends in Evaluation - Interview with Frank Ovaitt, IPR