Is Your PR Agency Cheating You? The Real Story Behind ‘PR Value’

This article exposes the common use of Ad Value Equivalency (AVE) as a proxy for PR Value, and why you need to re-examine how your PR agency is reporting its impact on your business. You’ll be interested in this if you want to understand what you’re actually getting from your PR spend.

Imagine this.

You’re at a board meeting with your PR agency. They’re presenting their report for the last campaign.

“You gave us $50,000 to spend last year and we generated over $1,000,000 in PR Value. We completely surpassed your target of $200,000. We’re the best. Pay us more.”

That sounds awesome, doesn’t it? An ROI of over 1,900%! What other marketing activity would generate such a great return-on-investment? Your sales are going to skyrocket this year!

But will they?

There’s always been this nagging voice in your head. What is this ‘PR Value’? Why is the ROI so high? Is there really going to be such a huge impact on our business?

Well, you’re on the right track. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

More often than not, you’ll discover that your PR company is simply using Ad Value Equivalency (AVE) as a proxy for PR Value.

What’s wrong with that?

Oh, lots.

Short version: “PR Value” is almost always Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) — an old metric that estimates what your media coverage would have cost as advertising, then multiplies it by an arbitrary number. The PR industry’s own governing bodies have rejected it, run a decade-long campaign to eradicate it, and in some cases formally banned members from using it. If your agency reports “PR Value,” this is almost certainly what they mean. Here’s why you should push back, and what to ask them to measure instead.

What Is Ad Value Equivalency (AVE) / PR Value?

Ad Value Equivalency is a widely used metric pushed by public relations companies to measure the effectiveness of their efforts by measuring the column inches or coverage generated.

The definition from the Institute for Public Relations’ Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation is “the calculation of space or time used for earned media (publicity or news content) by comparing it to the cost of that same space or time if purchased as advertising.”

With ruler in hand (or some expensive third-party software that they charge clients for), they scour magazines and newspapers and measure the size of the article in which the client’s name appears.

They then multiply those inches by the publication’s rate card and add some sort of multiplier. They add the multiplier because they claim (without basis) that a third-party endorsement from a journalist is worth more than simply taking out an ad.

So the formula is:

AVE = (column inches) × (publication’s rate card price) × (some arbitrary multiplier)

The usual pitch: “This is how much it would have cost you if you’d bought advertising instead. And because editorial content is so much more authoritative than advertising, we’ve slapped on a multiplier of 3x. See, we’re worth the exorbitant amounts you’re paying us. Pay us more.”

Why AVE Is a Bad Way to Measure PR

AVE is largely seen as an outdated (and unethical) way to measure the effectiveness of public relations. Here’s why.

The PR industry itself has denounced AVE

As early as 2010, AMEC (the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication), the IPR (Institute for Public Relations) and the PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) convened in Barcelona to deliberate on the future of public relations as an industry. These organisations help set the direction for the entire profession and are made up of some of the sharpest minds in it.

They produced the Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles. It has been revised more than once since – a 2015 update, and then a full Barcelona Principles 3.0 in 2020. Through every revision, one line has survived untouched: AVEs are not the value of communication.

A special task force created by the IPR looked closely at the issue and concluded:

“AVE is not a proxy for measuring the return-on-investment of public relations… Even more problematic is the use of AVE to represent a public relations outcome, and a meaningful measure to represent a financial return on investment. This obfuscating practice often prevents or misdirects focus from quantifying the more meaningful outcomes of public relations.”

I could stop the article here and still have made my point. PR Value as measured by AVE has no sound basis and has been widely discredited by the PR industry itself.

But I’m not going to, because the view on the ground is quite different. We have first-hand accounts of PR agencies espousing AVE (or some weird variation of it they call ‘PR Value’) as if it’s the bee’s knees.

So let’s really drive that nail into the coffin.

That multiplier they use? It’s nonsense (so says the PR industry)

This argument is primarily based on a report published by the IPR, and you should read it in full if you have the time.

As mentioned, several PR companies go a step further and add a multiplier to the total reported circulation. There is no ‘industry standard’ for the multiplier, and it can range from 2.5 to 8.0.

They attempt to justify the multiplier with the assumptions below:

• “Pass-Along Circulation” – assumes that more than one person will read each publication after it’s purchased.
• “PR Value” – assumes that a third-party endorsement by the journalist and the publication has more authority than an advertisement.
• “All Hits Are Created Equal” – assumes that every section of a publication, and each broadcast airing time, has the same circulation or audience figures.

Each of these justifications has glaring problems that most people would spot if they gave it a little thought.

Pass-along circulation is a very fuzzy number. It’s usually measured by the publication or a third party asking readers how many other people read their copy after purchase. Total circulation is then the sum of primary circulation plus projected pass-along circulation.

It’s obvious that pass-along circulation distorts the figures. The bigger point: if these readers really valued the publication, they’d buy it and become primary circulation themselves. And there’s no guarantee they read the specific article your brand was mentioned in.

If pass-along circulation is already a fuzzy number, how much more inaccurate does it get once you bolt an arbitrary multiplier onto it?

Those using PR value claim editorial content is more authoritative because of the implied endorsement from a seemingly neutral third party. But according to the Institute for Public Relations, there have been no studies to support this. In fact, some studies suggest advertising has more impact on brand awareness and preference.

On top of that, when reporting circulation or broadcast numbers, PR agencies typically take the highest figure of the period without adjusting for variation in readership or viewership. Again, overstated — and a multiplier only makes it worse.

The recurring theme: total circulation numbers are already overstated. Using a multiplier to inflate them further borders on the unethical. As the IPR itself put it, “many reputable researchers believe the use of multipliers may tend toward being unethical and dishonest.”

Other criticisms

There are plenty more:

• No advertiser buys ads at rate card prices. It’s an open secret that rate cards are just for show. If nobody pays them, AVE built on them is inflated from the start.
• PR value isn’t restricted to media relations. There’s far more to PR than blasting press releases and making follow-up calls.
• Different PR companies use different measurements. This makes it almost impossible to compare effectiveness or set benchmarks.
• Advertising and PR are inherently different things. There’s no such thing as “PR equivalency” in advertising. It makes no sense for PR companies to measure themselves against advertising rates.
• No consensus on how much of an article counts. A one-line brand mention in a full-page article? Most PR companies will calculate AVE on the full article length anyway.
• There’s no such thing as negative AVE. Will your agency report a negative number when you get a bad write-up? How would they even measure it? It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and one bad mention to dent it. Ask anyone who remembers the Kryptonite lock episode.

What’s Changed Since 2018? Is AVE Dead Yet?

Since this piece first went up, the PR industry hasn’t exactly rallied to defend AVE. It has spent the years since trying to bury it.

In 2017, AMEC launched a global campaign with a name that leaves little room for interpretation: “Say No to AVEs.” It pulled in the PRCA, ICCO, CIPR and a long list of measurement firms, all pledging to stop selling or reporting AVE. That campaign is still running today, with agencies publicly signing on well into 2025. This isn’t a metric quietly falling out of fashion. It’s one the industry has spent the better part of a decade actively trying to kill.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) went further than a pledge. It banned its members from using AVE outright. Use it, and you’re in breach of the code of conduct of one of the profession’s main bodies. That’s about as close to an official verdict as this industry gets.

And the ground is finally shifting, slowly. One widely used PR reporting platform found AVE in 18% of the reports built with its tool in 2015. By 2021 that had fallen to 6%. Better. Not solved. Six percent of an entire industry still means a great many agencies are, right now, walking into board meetings with a rate-card ruler and a made-up multiplier.

So if your agency is still leading with “PR Value” today, they aren’t merely behind. They’re using a method their own professional bodies have spent years, campaigns and formal bans trying to stamp out. Worth asking why.

If AVE Is So Useless, Why Is It Still Widely Used?

By now you’ve realised it’s an outdated metric, flawed from the start, that’s been rightly disowned by its own industry.

It’s almost impossible to find a reputable PR professional defending AVE in person or in print. Meltwater tried once, and was promptly rebuffed by the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) and the International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO).

What’s confusing is why it’s still so common on the ground here. You’d think that by now credible PR companies would have moved away from such dishonest measurement. Not even close.

I can think of three reasons.

Lack of client education. Some clients simply don’t know better and take AVE at face value. The PR company happily reports inflated PR Values every quarter without pausing to educate them. They’d rather have ignorant clients who pay the bills than educated ones who keep challenging them. If you’re a PR agency that’s read this and still doesn’t raise it with your clients, you’re guilty.

Outdated agency. The agency you’re working with is a laggard. They report AVE because it’s what they’ve always done. They grind through the day, push out press releases, and pat themselves on the back for a sliver of coverage, sincerely believing they’re doing a good job. There’s nothing overtly unethical there, but do you really want a laggard in charge of your communications strategy in a market that moves this fast?

It’s easy to understand. For all its faults, AVE is simple to calculate and simple to grasp. Most clients want a dollar figure on PR, and AVE is the lazy default. So they ask for it. But shouldn’t an agency worth its salt be able to offer something better?

So What Should PR Actually Measure Instead of AVE?

There have been plenty of attempts to replace AVE. Some are worse than the disease.

One popular suggestion is ‘gAVE’, or Google AVE — AVE for the age of Google, as its proponents put it. The idea: the advertising-equivalent value of Google editorial coverage.

gAVE = Cost per Click × Search Volume

Sounds good?

Nope.

Where to start. First, they still want to apply a multiplier of four to estimate total AVE. Again, the multiplier makes no sense — if it did, every SEO on earth would use it to measure their own work. Second, they’re essentially describing search engine optimisation: ranking on the first page of Google. If you go this route, you’ll quickly find it’s a much harder job than it looks. Just because an online publication ran your article doesn’t mean you’ll rank for it. Authoritative links help rankings, sure, but they’re not the only factor. What if the site was built on something search engines can’t read, or blocked crawlers in robots.txt, or got hit by an algorithm penalty because of what a previous SEO or PR company did?

Third, every SEO knows the top three results take the lion’s share of clicks, and position one is a different planet from position ten. Then there’s the constant churn of the SERPs — results shift daily, so do you report a healthy gAVE one month and a negative one the next? Good luck pinning down search volume for long-tail terms while you’re at it.

Honestly, if this is the road you want to take, why not just measure website visits? No competent digital marketer cares about SERP impressions in the first place. gAVE is what you get when a traditional PR firm dips a toe into digital. It’s good that they see the problem. It’s just not the answer.

The framework the industry actually settled on

Back when this article first appeared, AMEC had just released an alternative that we said looked well thought out and wanted to examine properly. It has since matured into the clearest answer the industry has to the “then what do we measure?” question. So let’s close that loop.

AMEC’s Integrated Evaluation Framework does something AVE never could. It starts with your objectives and works forward, instead of starting with column inches and working backward to a dollar sign. It maps a campaign across a chain: inputs, activities, outputs, outtakes, outcomes and, finally, impact.

The words matter, so quickly:

• Outputs — what you put into the world. Releases sent, articles placed, coverage volume. This is roughly the only thing AVE ever measured, and it sits at the shallow end.
• Outtakes — what the audience did with it. Did they notice, read, remember, react?
• Outcomes — what changed as a result. Attitudes, preference, intent, behaviour.
• Impact — the business result. Sales, market share, reputation. The things your CFO actually asked about.

AVE lives entirely at the “outputs” step, then dresses it up as impact by bolting on a dollar sign. That’s the whole trick: take the least meaningful layer and paint it to look like the most meaningful one.

You don’t need to adopt an entire framework to report honestly, though. Concrete, defensible things you can ask your agency to measure instead:

• Key message pull-through — did the coverage carry your actual message, or just your name?
• Quality-weighted share of voice — how much of the relevant conversation you own versus competitors, in outlets that matter.
• Sentiment — positive, neutral or negative, tracked over time. AVE counts a hit piece as a win. Sentiment doesn’t.
• Referral traffic and branded search lift — did coverage send real people to you, and did more of them start searching for your name afterwards?
• Earned links and domain authority — genuine editorial links that improve your search visibility. Measurable, and durable.
• Conversions and business outcomes — leads, sign-ups and sales attributable to earned coverage. Harder to nail down. Also the only number that ends the argument.

None of these fit on a rate-card ruler. That’s precisely the point.

What to Do If Your PR Company Uses AVE

So, now that you know the dirty little secret behind Ad Value Equivalency, what should you do? Fire your PR agency on the spot?

Of course not. You don’t want the tail wagging the dog.

Their PR activity might still have real value. It’s the measurement of it that’s left wanting — and the attitude of agencies trying to hoodwink clients with ‘PR Value’.

The next time they turn up with a performance report, ask them:

• How exactly do you measure this ‘PR Value’?
• Are you using a multiplier? If so, which one, and why — when your own industry has discredited the practice?
• If we drop AVE entirely, how else can you show the value of your work?

How they answer tells you most of what you need to know.

Moving Forward

Do digital marketing companies have the same measurement headaches? Of course, especially for activities like social media and content marketing. (For lead generation it’s more straightforward — we measure how much money we’re putting into your bank account.)

The difference is attitude. Our industry openly acknowledges the gaps and keeps experimenting with better measurement frameworks. That mindset is exactly what has driven real progress in proving effectiveness. The leaders of the PR industry are clearly trying to drag their practitioners away from AVE, but the view from the ground says they’ve still got a long way to go.

Too often we’ve met PR companies reciting their ‘PR Value’ with as much conviction as they can muster, hoping the client won’t dig deeper.

Here’s the thing we keep coming back to. How an agency measures its work tells you how it thinks about your business. An agency that reaches for AVE has decided, somewhere along the line, that looking valuable matters more than being useful. An agency that can sit across from you and say “here’s what we set out to change, here’s whether it moved, and here’s what it didn’t” is doing something harder and rarer. It’s thinking. That’s the actual job. The reporting is just where it shows.

But that’s not going to be you anymore, is it?

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