Despite the explosive growth in cable channels - not to mention the digital lurch - the overwhelming majority of corporate PR managers continue to place the most importance on
print placements, according to an exclusive PR News/BurrellesLuce survey on how PR pros track media coverage.
More than 280 PR News subscribers responded to the survey, which was conducted in October and November. With media outlets proliferating at a furious pace, media
monitoring is shaping up as one of the biggest challenges facing senior PR execs in 2005 and beyond. However, bombarded by other media choices, many PR execs prefer to stay in the
comfort zone of counting clips, according to the survey. Dusting other media, 75% of respondents said print is the most important media to monitor (see tables).
"The problem is there's so much to monitor," says Shelley Buckingham, project manager at the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), who participated in
the survey. "And I can't say the media monitoring companies for radio and TV are doing the best job. [But] there's so much to gain in those areas, and we're hoping that they get
more sophisticated and accountable."
Perhaps it's a chicken-or-the-egg question. If corporate PR execs are reluctant to get their feet wet in other areas of media monitoring (aside from print), vendors have
little incentive to bulk up alternative monitoring programs. Just 3% of the respondents chose radio as the most important to monitor, while 13% chose TV and 9% chose the
internet, even though it's easier to track customers online.
"I don't know how many people go to the Web for news," Buckingham says. "Unless you're a news junkie, you're not going to the Web" aside from getting the headlines. Yet Sue
Ross, vp/marketing at BurrellesLuce, disagrees. "I read so much about how more and more people are using the internet as their source for news," she says.
"News coverage is handled differently in print than it is on the Web, and if you want to get a good view of what people are saying about your company, you should be tracking both
mediums."
Although print still is perceived as the major game in town, less than half of the respondents have figured out a way to match their media hits with business outcomes (See
PR News, Oct. 20, 2004). This suggests that many PR pros still are behind the eight ball when it comes to simply developing (effective) scoring systems. The main problem is
money, or lack thereof; nearly 60% of respondents spend less than $500 a month to monitor the media. About a quarter spend between $500 and $1,000 a month while just 8% spend more
than $2,000 a month.
Asked why measurement budgets are so paltry, Ross says a similar survey in the future would yield different results not just for budget allocations but for measurement
activity overall. But even as measurement is fast morphing into the "Holy Grail" for corporate America, nearly a third of respondents plan to spend the same amount on media
monitoring in 2005 as they did in 2004, which is to say: not very much.
Contacts: Sue Ross, 973.992.6600, [email protected]; Shelley Buckingham, 202.443.2593, [email protected]