By the MB and Associates Editorial Team, PR strategists who work daily with executives, journalists, and national media outlets.
Key takeaways:
- Counting placements or “hits” is the easiest metric to report, but it’s the weakest signal of whether a PR campaign actually worked.
- Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) has been discouraged by the industry’s own standard-setting bodies for nearly 20 years, yet it’s still common in reports.
- Real PR measurement looks at outcomes, sentiment, and behavior change, not just volume.
- Knowing how to calculate earned media value gives you a more complete picture than a hit count alone, though it still has limits.
- The strongest PR reporting combines multiple signals: coverage quality, audience relevance, sentiment, and measurable business impact.
It’s the question every client asks. It’s also the question that tells you the least about whether the effort actually worked.
At some point after a campaign wraps, someone is going to ask for the number of placements. “How many hits did we get? How many placements? What’s the reach?” It’s a fair question to ask and an easy one to answer, which is exactly the problem. Easy answers tend to crowd out the harder, more useful ones.
Counting placements tells you that something happened, but it doesn’t tell you whether it mattered.
Why the old scorecard doesn't hold up
For decades, the industry standard was Advertising Value Equivalency: taking a piece of coverage and assigning it to a dollar value based on what the equivalent ad space would have cost. It’s a simple idea. The industry’s own standard body has been telling people to stop using it for almost 20 years, and most PR professionals will admit, if pressed, that it never really held up.
The math doesn’t translate. A media placement and a paid ad aren’t the same thing, built for the same purpose, or trusted by audiences the same way.
And the workaround that followed it, Earned Media Value, which tries to factor in engagement and reach, has the opposite problem. Every agency calculates it differently. A number that looks impressive on one report means something completely different on the next.
Both metrics share the same blind spot. Neither one can tell the difference between coverage that built something and coverage that just took up space.
What counting hits actually misses
A glowing feature in a publication nobody in your target audience reads is still a hit. A mention buried at the bottom of a roundup, with your brand name and nothing else, is still a hit. Even negative coverage, the kind that actively damages a client’s reputation, still counts toward the number if all you’re measuring is volume.
None of that is hypothetical. Viral Negative coverage generates plenty of reach and plenty of engagement. By just counting hits, it would look like a result worth celebrating.
That number was never built to ask whether the coverage was good. It was only ever built to confirm that coverage happened.
A quick comparison of what different metrics actually tell you:
| Metric | What It Actually Tells You |
|---|---|
| Number of placements | That coverage happened, not whether it mattered. |
| AVE (Advertising Value Equivalency) | A dollar estimate no longer endorsed by industry standards bodies. |
| Earned Media Value (EMV) | An engagement-based estimate, though it varies by agency. |
| Sentiment analysis | Whether coverage helped or hurt how the brand is perceived. |
| Branded search or traffic lift | Whether coverage changed real audience behavior. |
What a better question looks like
Did the right people see it? Did it shift how they talk about the brand? Did it show up anywhere near a decision, a purchase, a partnership? These questions are harder to answer, and they don’t fit neatly into a single number on a slideshow. But they’re the questions that actually connect PR to outcomes a business cares about.
“Most pre-2010s measurement focused entirely on outputs — number of placements, total reach, AVE-style monetary translations. Most 2026 measurement spans further down the chain.” Source: PR News, Earned Media Measurement: Beyond AVE, Toward Outcomes
The shift from counting what was produced to tracking what it actually changed is the real measurement gap most PR teams are seeking out. Sentiment, not just volume. Whether coverage led anywhere measurable, like a spike in branded search or traffic that can be traced back to a specific story. None of these are perfect on their own, but together they give you something that a hit count never could.
How Do You Measure PR?
At its core, PR measurement comes down to three layers working together:
- Outputs: what was actually produced (placements, mentions, reach)
- Outcomes: what changed as a result (sentiment shift, share of voice, engagement quality)
- Impact: whether it moved the business (branded search lift, referral traffic, leads tied back to coverage)
Most hit-count reporting stops at layer one. Real PR measurement moves through all three, which is exactly why it takes longer to put together than a placement count.
Measuring PR in Real Time
Measurement isn’t only useful after a campaign wraps. In this conversation with Rutgers Continuing and Professional Studies (CPS) Public Relations Certificate students, measurement expert Katie Paine explains how PR measurement can guide decisions in real time, including in complex situations like crisis communications, where defining the goal clearly is often the first step toward managing the situation well: How PR Measurement Guides Real-Time Decisions
What Does PR Measurement Look Like in Practice?
In practice, strong PR measurement usually shows up as a short narrative attached to the numbers, not just a spreadsheet. A useful report answers: where did the coverage run, who actually saw it, what did they take away from it, and did anything happen afterward that ties back to the business. If a report can’t answer those four questions, it’s still just a hit count with better formatting.
How to Calculate Earned Media Value
Knowing how to calculate earned media value gives you a more complete picture than a placement count alone, even with its limitations. The most common approach, outlined by Sprout Social, comes down to three steps:
Knowing how to calculate earned media value gives you a more complete picture than a placement count alone, even with its limitations. To understand why EMV numbers vary so much from agency to agency, it helps to see how the calculation actually works. The most common approach, outlined by Sprout Social, comes down to three steps:
- Determine your average cost-per-engagement (CPE) for paid social, as a baseline.
- Assign weights to different types of engagement (for example, a share might be weighted more heavily than a like).
- Multiply the number of engagements by their respective weights and your CPE.
For example, if your CPE is $0.50, and a post gets 100 likes (weight of 1), 50 comments (weight of 2), and 20 shares (weight of 3), the earned media value works out to $50 + $50 + $30, or $130 total. It’s a simplified example, and more complex calculations often factor in reach, content type, and other variables, but it gives you a real number to anchor a conversation instead of a hit count.
This is also exactly why EMV numbers vary so much between agencies: the weighting choices in step two are subjective, which is the same inconsistency the blog raised earlier.
PR Measurement with MB and Associates
Look at the last report you saw. If the headline number was a hit count, ask what information sits underneath it. Was the coverage in the right places, with the right audience, saying the right thing? Did anything happen afterward that you can actually point to?
Answering these questions takes longer than pulling a number off a media monitoring dashboard, but it’s worth the extra work. The clients who keep asking “how many hits” usually stop asking once they’re shown what actually moved.
This is exactly the kind of measurable, results-first approach we bring to every client. From New Jersey to New York and all other major cities across the East Coast, PR still runs on relationships and real outcomes, not just placement counts. New Jersey is home to one of the highest concentrations of corporate headquarters in the country, and Philadelphia, one of the core media markets our team works in every day, is consistently recognized as the fourth or fifth largest designated market area (DMA) in the United States, serving over 3.15 million TV households across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.
That same standard applies to every public relations campaign MB and Associates runs. You can see that outcomes-first approach in action in our SR Plastic Surgery case study, and the same measurement principles apply whether you’re a national brand or exploring PR for a small business.
Ready to move past hit counts? Contact MB and Associates today, and let’s talk about PR measurement that actually means something.
FAQs About PR Measurement and Earned Media Value
What is the formula for calculating EMV?
The most common approach multiplies the number of engagements on a piece of content by a weighted value assigned to each engagement type, based on an average cost-per-engagement benchmark. It’s a simplified model, and different agencies apply their own weighting, which is part of why EMV numbers vary so much across reports.
How do you value earned media?
Earned media is typically valued by comparing engagement (likes, comments, shares) against what that same engagement would cost through paid promotion, then applying a weighting system since not all engagement types carry equal value.
Why is Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) no longer considered reliable?
AVE assigns a dollar figure to coverage based on equivalent ad space costs, but earned coverage and paid ads aren’t trusted by audiences the same way. Industry standards bodies have recommended against using AVE for close to two decades.
What's the difference between PR measurement and PR reporting?
PR measurement is the process of evaluating whether coverage actually worked, looking at outcomes and impact. PR reporting is how that measurement gets communicated to a client or stakeholder, ideally as a narrative supported by data rather than a placement count alone.
How often should PR measurement be reviewed?
Most PR teams review measurement at the end of a campaign and again on a quarterly basis, so short-term coverage spikes and longer-term sentiment or traffic trends can both be accounted for.