Measuring value of Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) on PR scale

Ever since AVE technique started equipping PR executives with scales and calculators, the debate around this fancy phenomena got louder and louder. On simple view, it looks appealing and takes account of many important value factors like size of company visibility and the reach of publication. But naysayers found it amateurish in many ways.

Before we discuss it any further, lets understand how AVEs are principally defined- ‘AVEs are calculated by measuring size of news (in case of print media) and length of news clip (in case of electronic media) and then multiplying these figures with the advertising rate of that channel’. E.g. XYZ company is reported in 24 square inches on ABC publication whose ad rate is Rs100 per square inch, then primary AVE of XYZ company stands for Rs2400. This is understood by PR guys as measuring value that their PR efforts have created, that too free of cost in indirect sense. Generally this figure turns much higher than PR budget, which makes PR guys feel good. On development stages AVEs assimilated few more assessment factors and named the resultant as ‘PR value’ (in their wildest dreams). While PR industry is no closer to ensure the reliability of the technique, some of the basic questions are still remained un-answered-

• Very first, PR is not advertisement and the technique takes account of advertisement as key rationale to measure PR impact. So, fundamentals are not correct.
• Some media vehicles do not permit advertising in their news slice/or they do not publish advertisement on front page/special pages. How can one assume what would be the value of that section?
• Advertisements and news articles cannot be compared as their content may differ big time. Advertisements are sometimes common and similar to previous appearances (in terms of content & looks) but news-article’s body varies a lot.
• Credibility issue; Readers view news article as more credible source of information than advertisements. Ads are commonly considered as boastful representation of a company whose content is modified and drafted with goody-goody words. This one-for-one rule is full of peccadilloes.
• There is no clarity on equivalent for unfavourable or neutral stories. Weighing them on the same favourability scale is utter nonsense.
• Sometimes mentions of company appear passing/minor, in this case how do we measure them? Measure entire article or only that portion where company got mentioned?

These are not just half a dozen limitations that we face when AVE comes into discussion, there are several other mounting issues already in radar of PR professional and the debate is still alive.  Institute of Public Relations never endorsed AVE as measurement tool but the practise was still adopted by some PR agencies and clients.

AVE is practically and fundamentally crude method--measures something which is an old school fallacy that people measure with rulers and scales in their bags. No offense. It is dangerous to rely too much on AVE when we really know the limitations and irregularities. It may be useful in some sense but definitely not a comprehensive measurement tool.