By Kosuke Jimbo
It’s hard to believe how much our standards have changed over time. If you’ve watched the Brad Pitt movie “Moneyball”, you’d know just how much of the data we’ve been using to rate the ability or performance of an individual is not as important as we believed.
This cannot be more true than in the business world. For instance, did you know that only two centuries ago during the industrial revolution, most laborers (factory workers, needless to say) worked from 10 to 16 hours a day? If you thought you were working way too much and considered making an appeal to the labor union for your inhumane work environment, well, let’s see what these people have to say. Oh, and did I mention that many of these “workers” were under age? This is true for many of the numbers we follow on a daily basis today. It is often forgotten, but the term KPI (Key Performance Index) only came to light when it appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 1992.
In the PR industry, we have long rated our performance and effectiveness by the Advertising Value Equivalency, a monetary figure of what the media coverage would typically cost if it were an ad space, to rate the effectiveness of the campaign. However, in recent years, many have been doubting the validity of the figure. It all started when the Barcelona Principles was announced at AMEC (International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication), which stated some major flaws in the calculation of AVE.
So, is it still a relevant metric in Japan? The short answer would be, depends on the media.
Why people believe that AVE is No Longer Relevant
First, let’s just get a brief overview of why the PR industry is suddenly boycotting this metric that we’ve used for a long time. The AVE was proposed as an effort to quantify the effectiveness of a PR campaign, calculating media coverage by how much an ad space of that size or length would cost. This all seemed to make sense, until a certain new technology stepped foot into our lives, and unveiled Pandora’s box. Yes, the internet.
See, until then, PR representatives believed (and many still believe) that exposure was king. As long as the campaign was getting exposure, they knew they were doing their jobs right. If it doesn’t sell, we made sure the client’s knew that there was something wrong with the product, because we’re doing our job, right?
Surprisingly, this all made sense in the pre-internet era because there was no other way to measure the effectiveness of a campaign. But then came along this new technology, which tracks down pretty much every single thing a user does, something we’d only seen in movies, or maybe a socialist country (I’m only guessing).
The emergence of the internet came as an earth shattering shock to the PR industry. Suddenly, it was revealed that we had been doing it all wrong. First, the AVE is calculated under the assumption that the cost of an ad space must equal the value of a content of the same size. That is to say, that those 30 second ads on YouTube that you are forced to watch, have the same value as a 30 second YouTube clip that you chose to watch.
Secondly, the content of an ad is fully under the client’s control, while the content of a media coverage is fully up to the media owner. Coke is fully responsible for their ads, but can’t do anything with a story of a diabetic person who drinks 30 cans of their product a day. The metric does not take into account the content of the coverage, hence a negative article would be considered the same as a positive one.
Lastly and probably the most important, is the very fact that PR agencies have been dodging the true goal, which is to sell. They had long believed that their job was to get exposure, however, with the internet providing a better understanding of how users purchase, there were new metrics to measure the effectiveness of a campaign.
No Place in the Digital PR World
With new metrics available, AVE is no longer a relevant figure, or even reliable by any means in digital PR. There are other metrics far more important such as:
- Traffic
- Inbound leads
- Impression
- Mentions
- Engagement
- Geographical reach
- Tone
- Sentiment
With these figures, PR agencies are able to provide true value to their clients and help them reach their goals. Moreover, with online media gaining even more attention and power, it is the criteria that will probably shape the way we practice public relations for the foreseeable future in other media platforms as well.
Another PR practice you’d probably want to take note of in Japan is Twitter followers. Japan’s obsession with Twitter is well documented, and it seems as if it will remain the king of social networking in Japan for now, it is extremely important to build a strong fanbase which could be transferable to other platforms if the paradigm shifts.
Still Relevant for TV, Radio, and Print– but Not For Long
Au contraire to the web media shifting towards a more practical accurate metric, the old media still seem to stick to the good old Advertising Value Equivalency. Why? Quite simply because they do not have the means to collect these data. Technically, it may be possible, but it simply isn’t as accessible as digital data.
However, there is one thing you definitely want to keep in mind, and that is the fact that many web medias create content based on TV, radio, or print media. In fact, you would find multiple contents about TV shows from the day before and the people’s reactions on social media. Hence, knowing your digital metrics will definitely help you up your game in these media platforms too, and you could even set that as a part of the metrics to measure your campaign in old mass media.
Although the global trend is shifting away from AVE, it is always good to keep in mind that some clients still prefer the old way. You should be fully aware of both sides of the game to provide value to your customers.
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