This article discusses the development of five major trends in the communication measurement industry. It is a companion to “Katie Paine’s Three Decades of Communication Measurement History,” which traces the modern history of measurement as reflected in Katie’s own career.
To begin, a little of my entrepreneurial measurement history. I’ve run three measurement companies over the last 30 years or so. Each company lasted about a decade, and each company has had its own newsletter dedicated to communication measurement. Bill Paarlberg has been the editor of all of these newsletters. (Yes, that’s a long time for two people to work together, and we toast each other regularly to celebrate our continuing sanity.)
My current company, Paine Publishing, has been publishing the newsletter you are now reading, The Measurement Advisor, for seven years. Before that I ran KDPaine & Partners for about ten years, and our newsletter then was called The Measurement Standard. (The Measurement Standard is now operated by CARMA, and was last published in 2018.) Before that, for about ten years, I ran The Delahaye Group, and our newsletter was called The Gauge.
That brief history is by way of establishing some of my bona fides for the following measurement history insights. Thirty years is about as long as the entire Internet age, and covers just about all of communications measurement as we know it today.
So here is my take on what kind of progress communication measurement has made in the last three decades:
1. Being a Measurement Maven has become cool—and now actually pays off!
In my various newsletters we’ve named hundreds of Measurement Mavens, beginning at least a couple decades ago. In those early days there were very few in this field that could be considered “mavens.” Most of them served with me on the IPR Measurement Commission, or else, like me, were running their own measurement companies.
Slowly but surely, as recessions came and went and the need to prove value grew along with PR budgets, more and more senior communication executives embraced measurement. Today they don’t just supporting it, they put serious resources behind it. And not just in tools and dashboards and platforms but by hiring data analysts and measurement geeks into their departments and agencies. As a result, Measurement Mavens are now much more common, and they have plenty of work.
Note to students and new hires—Get some analytics classes under your belt. Not only will you always have work, you might one day be named as our Measurement Maven of the Month!
2. Every measurement company has either been bought or sold.
If there was one overriding trend in the second decade of this century it was the emergence and disappearance of measurement brands. Out of curiosity I went back to what had been the source list for social media vendors created by social media pioneers J.D. Lassica and Kim Bale.
Of those “Top 20” only six brand names still exist:
Converseon, Salesforce, Webtrends, Attentio, Meltwater, and BrandWatch.
Several simply vanished into the dustbin of startup and acquisition history:
- BuzzLogic was acquired by Twelvefold and closed in 2016.
- Biz360 was purchased by Attensity which closed its doors in 2016.
Others are now part of mega-platforms:
- Lithium bought up Scout, Klout, and Spredfast, and then got folded into Khoros.
- Collective Intellect got consumed by Oracle.
- Crimson Hexagon got consumed by Brandwatch.
- Sysomos was bought by Meltwater.
- DNA13, MediaVantage, Visible, Cymfony, and CustomScoop were all bought by Cision.
- Trackur was sold to Reputation Refinery.
- BuzzCapture became OBI4wan.
- Salesforce bought Radian 6 and in 2018 killed the Radian 6 brand, merging it into it its Social Studio Listening platform.
Note to would-be entrepreneurs—We don’t need more measurement companies, we need more insight. Besides, while building a company is a lot of fun, selling one is the business equivalent of having a colonoscopy, getting divorced, and losing a loved one all at the same time. (Of course, if you have the entrepreneurial spirit in your blood, this advice will not deter you. Good luck.)
3. Measurement became a thing, and then measurement standards became a thing.
Three decades ago in measurement history, few were doing communications measurement, or even convinced it was a good idea. Twenty years ago, we named our newsletter The Measurement Standard because we were as yet one of the few organizations that stood up for the practice. We ran a lot of articles of the general sort: “Why You Should Measure Your Communications.” Back then we were still fighting with people who would say “You can’t measure PR!” Our answer in 2008 was to steal a phrase from the Obama campaign:
Finally (as it seemed then) in 2010 The Barcelona Principles were presented and approved by the industry. After the original shock and awe response, they were generally accepted as being a sensible step forward.
By 2013, when Paine Publishing and The Measurement Advisor were born, people generally understood the need to measure their communications, but were still widely uncertain of any proper, valid way to approach it. We responded with oodles of ebooks with titles like The Barcelona Principles Compliance Tutorial, and The Destination Marketer’s Ticket to Barcelona Principles Compliance, but industry adoption was still minimal.
In the mean time, the issue of measuring social media was dominating discussions everywhere, so in 2011 we convened the first ever Conclave on Social Media Measurement Standards, which released its standards two years later. Those standards have essentially been replaced by the standards put forth by the Media Ratings Council, which has more clout thanks to its relationships with advertisers.
Then in 2015, AMEC updated the Barcelona Principles to include social media and make them more inclusive of non-media-relations activities, but overall awareness was still pretty low. Today, a decade after they were first introduced, only 50% are in compliance.
So clearly, we have a long way still to go before everyone drops advertising value equivalency (AVE) and does everything right. But nevertheless, thanks to IPR, AMEC, and other organizations (including Paine Publishing) that have provided volumes of guidance, examples, and tools, we’ve got at least half the industry paying attention. If not following the rules to a T.
Note to the wise—Don’t wait for standards: just talk to your business leaders and design a measurement program that shows your contribution to their priorities.
4. Technology became useful.
After years of promising that computers would replace humans and do all things measurement better and faster and cheaper, at the end of this decade we finally began to see a little light at the end of the tunnel.
ProofAnalytics.ai showed us that technology could be used to do all the complex correlations necessary to connect the dots between PR and other marketing activities.
AI and machine learning are beginning make automated analysis more accurate. They still have a very long way to go before they replace humans when it comes to identifying messaging and concepts such as trust. But we’re a lot closer than we were just a few years ago.
Note to students and new hires—We don’t need more technology, we need better ways to use it.
5. Communication measurement has evolved from counting data to analysis to insight.
At the beginning of the decade, measurement meant counting clips or clicks or hits or something largely meaningless. Finally, as we start this new decade, and mostly thanks to demands from leadership, more and more measurement programs are actually beginning to produce actual insights about how to improve communication. Increasingly, communications managers are combining different data sets to figure out the relative impact of different programs, and to connect the dots between PR results and amplification of engagement or leads or goal conversions.
About two and half decades ago, my company launched an ad campaign that declared “Data Without Insight Is Just Trivia.” Today it’s marvelous to find that the world agrees. Not only is more and more insight coming out of good measurement programs, but more and more programs are designed from the get-go to provide insight. That’s the sum total of measurement history right there.
Note to the wise—Avoid analysis paralysis: find more insight in your data by connecting your results to your organization’s strategic priorities. ∞
Thanks to hugovk on Flickr for most of the image up top.
