Thanks for letting us know your concerns.
If you like you can email me your details and I can call you to address your individual concerns further.
mm_au@mediamonitors.com.au

Thanks
Deb

Maybe media monitors should concentrate on actually having products that work suitably for those of us that actually work in PR, rather than creating products to fool corporates.

Here’s some examples:
- a media clipping service that actually works, and doesnt require clients to waste their valuable hours doing their own monitoring
- better priced video and audio clippings. Charging a non-profit $350 for a 60 second newsclip is ridiculous. I’ve had CEOs tell me they would rather illegally record their own clips than pay your prices.
- maybe a suitably priced monitoring service for PR agencies, so that they can see the value in using your service?

We’ve also included audio from the evening if you missed it.
http://bit.ly/a7UDix

Thanks!

Thanks for the comments.
Details of our event can be found here: http://asrpanel.eventbrite.com/

Looking forward to the panel and discussion.

Deb

Educating is all well and good but at the end of the day it boils down to demands and dollars.

I’m a new media analyst. Am I missing something? I’ve been following the launch of ASR. I’m wondering, how do you differentiate real substantive news from mere brand mentions? Also, you said that the methodology calculates advertising space rate only and doesn’t include qualitative elements such as tone and message. So, am I right in thinking that this is purely quantitative? Are you treating positive and negative coverage equally? If the bottom line of this metric is only about dollar value, how valuable is this information to the clients?

I’m glad you too don’t think AVE is a suitable measure for PR, but I still struggle with your assertion around this being a tool to compare results across channels. In my mind this is still a poor measure. Like AVE, it relies on the value of advertising as the metric for measurement. It doesn’t take into account audience, message penetration, user reaction/behaviour as a result or indeed if the article is even positive or negative. It is a crude and in my mind a pointless measure.

Of course you wouldn’t have created this tool if there wasn’t demand for it, but in my perhaps too idealistic view, as a leader in this industry you should be taking a stand against this as a measurement device and focusing more on the qualitative measures you mention. Instead you will have your sales teams selling this as a good measure for PR effectiveness and marketing its availability.

Katie, you’re a living legend.

Yes, we all know AVE etc.. is not an accurate representation of the value of PR, but try telling that to a client who has to justify their spend on PR to head honchos who care about $$$$$$$ and nothing else!

The unfortunate reality is that until a better system comes up, we’re stuck with it.

Much agreement with Matthew, Lani, Jye and others.

AVE and any other variant of qualitative measurement is not accurate nor is it representative of true success for a client. It’s a false economy of assumption that because it’s editorial means xx number of people read it and valued the message 3x higher than the same message in paid media.

Even if MM argue it’s not ‘like’ AVE, take the spin away and reveal the theory: it’s false economy and AVE.

Digital PR, MSM PR, social media etc etc have moved beyond this to proving value through direct results. It’s time MM and other providers understood that if you can’t provide a measurement service that attributes outputs with the bottom line, you’re doing a massive disservice to yourself and your client.