AVEs – Steak or just a lot of sizzle?
As usual in any community, debates are standard fare. In the PR measurement community, two ongoing discussions centre around the use of advertising value equivalencies (AVEs) and the term ROI. (More on the latter at a later date.)
Where AVEs are concerned, there seem to be two extreme views – they’re useless as effective measurement tools or they serve as a valuable evaluation methodology.
I, like many others I’m sure, tend to fall in the middle.
I believe AVEs can be very useful if they’re used to measure outputs, i.e., to evaluate the practitioner’s abilities and capabilities in attracting media attention. The information gathered also can help direct subsequent campaigns.
More importantly, perhaps, is that high AVEs can help justify publicity expenditures to organizational bean counters. In other words, they produce a figure that can help budget holders see the value in spending money to garner media publicity.
One example of this is the space trip Guy Laliberté (Cirque de Soleil) launched (literally) in 2009, partially I’m sure for his own enjoyment but also to promote his One Drop Foundation, a nonprofit organization he created to increase awareness of the millions of people who don’t have access to clean water.
Was it worth the $35 million he spent on his own personal star trek?
He and many others, I believe, would say “yes.”
According to Montreal’s Influence Communication, the media coverage (television, Internet, radio, and newspaper) generated by his space visit reached a media audience of 878.8 million people in 71 countries. Computed with no weighting or factoring, the AVE was valued at more than $592 million. Where the foundation is concerned, 92 per cent of the coverage was earned between Sept. 30 and Oct. 14 when his Poetic Social Mission in Space show was broadcast.
To a bean counter, this is the equivalent of a juicy porterhouse steak! .
However, and here’s what puts me in the middle, while the measurement of the outputs show great value, what about the outcomes with target audiences?
Was there an increase in awareness of the foundation among key publics and stakeholders? If so, did this awareness generate positive perceptions? Did more potential donors and key opinion leaders engage with the foundation? Did donations to the foundation increase?
If nothing happened back here on earth to benefit the foundation, the trip and that wonderful AVE add up to a lot of sizzle – but no steak.
Claudine Wilson is a senior associate with MediaMiser. This post was re-posted from her own blog, PRHunter, with permission.
Claudine, I’m so sorry to disagree! You wrote:
“According to Montreal’s Influence Communication, the media coverage (television, Internet, radio, and newspaper) generated by his space visit reached a media audience of 878.8 million people in 71 countries. Computed with no weighting or factoring, the AVE was valued at more than $592 million.”
There are a couple of questions unanswered in your figures.
First, the “audience of 878.8 million people” is merely the circulation of print publications and the estimated online potential audience, as well as the TV and radio ratings for outlets during the period, not viewers/listeners/ readers. Without additional data, this figure has no context. Online articles may only be visible for a few minutes, but the advertising totals don’t take that into account.
Second, are the AVE figures actual cost data, or book rates? Have the costs of producing the coverage been removed from the total AVE? These two adjustments are the most frequently left out of the calculations, but they are critical. The book rate for an ad may be $2,000, but the actual might be much less, even a quarter of the book rate. We don’t know. The staff at Cirque may have done all the PR work themselves, or they may have had the help of an agency. These costs must be accounted for.
Finally, what is the cost of an ad on the front page of the Globe and Mail, Wall Street Journal, New York Times — and are the articles truly equivalent to ads?
I’m delighted you close with the admonition that AVEs don’t tell us anything about outcomes — there are far too many PR pros who believe that the media attention IS an outcome.
Sean Williams
@CommAMMO
(Member, Institute for PR Measurement Commission)
My basic argument against AVE as a measure is a simple one – advertisers don’t give the “bean counters” their spend as justification for their activities. Imagine: why should we spend money on advertising? Because it costs xyz to do so!
AVE is not an advertising value equivalent in any shape or form. If PRs want some simple output measures, then they can certainly list the media in which coverage was achieved and that media’s reach in terms of people (although that doesn’t tell you if the same people were reached multiple times or if they were different people – and which of those is “right” depends on what your objectives are).
All of that would be great if PR folk undertook research into those they wish to communicate with and which media they consume (which in my experience, few do).
The only justification for focusing on spend, is to compare the effectiveness of different approaches. So given a certain budget, where am I best to spend it to achieve my defined objectives. Then you can compare the cost of creating and placing advertising, with the cost of creating and placing media articles – but you would do this in terms of what both achieved.
PR may well produce more column inches for the money spent than buying the equivalent volume as advertising. Whether the nature of that coverage achieves the required outcome is what is important as you say.
Simply providing the “beancounters” with a measure rather than engaging them, along with those responsible for other communications, in the nature of influence is not a healpful approach.
BTW, “awareness” is also rather fluffy as an outcome measure – why do you want someone to be aware? What did this charity really want beyond people knowing of its existence? That should be the real driver of activity, not the lazy post-rationalisation that often seems to occur.