In Muck Rack’s 2024 State of PR Measurement report, published last November, approximately half of those surveyed said they were only “somewhat confident” in the metrics they track and report to stakeholders. And yet, most understand that demonstrating the value of their work requires adequate measurement—and accurate data to support it.
To address this disconnect and explore the current state of PR measurement—from industry challenges to the role of AI to implementing frameworks as a best practice—we spoke to PRNEWS Measurement Hall of Fame honoree Johna Burke, CEO and Global Managing Director at the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC).
PRNEWS: What is the state of PR measurement in your view?
Johna Burke, CEO and Global Managing Director at AMEC: In general, there is a larger demand for PR measurement, because with budgets being tightened with industry and market consolidation, all of those things are in question. As organizations, brands, agencies—all of the above—are looking for the value of their work and to do some evaluation, from profitability of accounts to employee valuation, they're looking for metrics to be in place so that they can understand what's working and what's not working.
The savvy ones know that that ROI piece is increasingly important, even though they're working with smaller budgets … Instead of looking for just the output, they're looking to transition their work to that outcome and impact value for their clients and brands.
It's obviously different for everyone, and some of them are doing it on a smaller activation level, but I think more and more, people—especially the not-for-profit and in the governmental space—have increasing pressure. And they see that measurement is one of those ways that they can respond to those calls for accountability.
PRNEWS: What are the greatest challenges within the space?
Johna Burke: One of the big challenges in North America is this divide: Some comms people are leaning into honoring the organizational objective and then seeing comms as a tactic within that organizational objective. And then we have some comms pros who are very focused on their comms goals, and they're heavily measuring against those comms goals as opposed to what is the outcome or the impact for the organization … There's always good reasons behind it, but that's where I see probably the biggest gap. Is comms part of that overall strategy, or are they having it sit out to the side and trying to beef up what impressions mean?
As I’ve said for years, an impression does not mean anyone was impressed. And so when you think about it that way, it gives you a different attitude about why are you reporting on these numbers … It's understanding, is there a correlation or causation piece to those other vanity metrics that are impacting and tipping the scales inside of the organization for what they're doing? … I think it still depends on the organization and the data culture that they have there, as far as how comms pros are able to navigate that.
PRNEWS: How does AI fit into PR measurement and data?
Johna Burke: Everybody wants to talk about AI, but AI has been around for years. All of the monitoring and evaluation services have been using AI in large language models for years. Now that it's ChatGPT and now that everybody is hands on with it, they're hyper-focused on the AI piece. And because of that proliferation, now organizations are saying, okay, well then, how are you building efficiency? What are you doing differently?
Whereas, from a comms-specific way, in order to keep their own copyright in place, in order to have data integrity and not have any data leakage for the organization, for comms, they might only be able to use a very small sliver of AI. They aren't necessarily going to create any efficiency or value by using that.
It’s about validating: Is the data ethically acquired? Do we know that it isn't going out and scraping sources from other things? Are we being ethically responsible how we're sharing our own internal information with GPT to come up with strategies, to come up with press releases, or whatever they're doing in those iterative processes? ... I think it's always about those guardrails.
And then depending upon the industry, depending upon the culture of the organization, that's what's going to drive how people are using data and what KPIs they're really focused on, where they're getting that truer attribution for comms ... And that's really a structural piece that's organization to organization.
PRNEWS: Specific KPIs and metrics vary widely, but are there any best practices?
Johna Burke: The real best practice is using frameworks, whether it's the AMEC IEF, whether it's the MEL model that Jim Mcnamara has put together, which are used by a lot of NGOs and government organizations, and adapting those to their needs. It isn't a single metric, but it's each of these agreed-upon metrics and their methodology, how they bring in that data, and where they know that tipping point is against the objective that they're trying to accomplish.
Understanding and being able to interpret the data that you're looking at to know more about what it means is really that critical piece ... Because more organizations are moving away from just using media coverage … A lot of AI data will be based on media coverage, but media coverage alone isn't the only data point that you want to use for reputation, for trust, for value, for a lot of those other pieces.
PRNEWS: For those professionals whose organizations aren't sophisticated from a PR measurement standpoint, where can they start? How should they think about improving measurement—which would in turn, of course, aid in proving PR's value?
Johna Burke: They need to take a step away from their day-to-day work, whatever their initial team is doing, and go to other partners in their organization—the C-suite, the CFO, human resources, customer service—and say, what is really important for you? What do you think that our stakeholders or customers are doing? How can we help influence and impact those stakeholders to make your job easier? Or to make our brand stronger, to help people trust us?
And then take that back and then whiteboard on this: How do we now lay out a strategy where we can help support each of these different business units and those stakeholders? So that we can take our benchmark now for where we are, and then look in on a monthly, on a quarterly basis and say, okay, incrementally, here's where we're making improvements ... or here are these other industry things that are going on, why we weren't able to break through and penetrate.
They need to be able to understand the why. And the why is going to take some internal research on their own to understand why the organization exists, and why and how can comms support that.
PRNEWS: Despite the importance of measurement, much of the industry is not confident in their metrics, nor their application of data. What are your thoughts on that disconnect?
Johna Burke: It's not fast, it's not cheap, and it's not easy ... It's none of those things because it takes the work to really understand the objective that you're working against. And then it takes validating and creating a methodology that has ethical and valid data, so that if you are presenting a data-led option to your executive team, that data has credibility.
Probably one of the biggest challenges: A lot of comms people are limited on their budget, and they're trying to do things fast. They're trying to look for those trends, so they're segmenting a very specific niche of sources and of datasets. But those datasets are inherently biased. And so by not factoring a broader scope into data that they're looking to be actionable, they have a lot of blind spots—which reduces the reliability and the credibility of their data.
PRNEWS: Any final thoughts for measurement folks to take from this?
Johna Burke: It is evolving, but there's still this baseline: PR people need to be comfortable with numbers. They need to be able to rely on the datasets that they're bringing in. And that means having a really tight methodology. So if their data is questioned, they can be accountable for where some of that bias exists, where some of those gaps are of why they are reporting something differently, and to be a really good advocate internally of the "why" within their own organization so that they can focus on the work that's really going to matter to the stakeholders that they're trying to affect.
PRNEWS: What are some recommended ways for assessing and evaluating the data they're using?
Johna Burke: They need to ask their partners and providers: Where are you getting this data? Are you paying copyright for this data? Is this data vulnerable to change? Am I setting up a benchmark for a channel that might be gone? [For example,] every report that's gone out since December should have an asterisk if they're including TikTok, because technically in the U.S. that is a forbidden channel to be able to use. So if they have been using a lot of their history on it, it should have an asterisk with "this is pending litigation.” Once you know those things that are taking place, then you can go back, revert that report with that data earmarked differently to normal, and level-set that so that it isn't always this ebb and flow of what's going on.
Know those channels, know some of those risks, know which AI models their teams are using—because OpenAI is still in a lawsuit with the New York Times. We're all very curious how that's going to go. What's going to happen with their dataset now, if they've been using ChatGPT for a lot of their crisis preparedness, and that model changes with what it can access now? What do they do now? So, even the root of understanding what datasets go into this, how much of it is academic research, how much of it is new content, how much of it is stuff that has some type of an embargo on it—it’s really critical for them to drill down before they would have the confidence presenting data as actionable.
Kaylee Hultgren is Content Director at PRNEWS.