The Paine of Measurement, September 2022
Given how depressing most of our outrage-fortified news is, you’ll be happy to know that the future of communications measurement is surprisingly bright. Between technological advances, some very cool new tools, and the always-growing need for more and better ways to evaluate communications performance, we all gotta wear shades. Of course we’ll know more once we’ve heard from the great speakers at our upcoming Summit on the Future of Communications Measurement (register now!).
Seven recent developments that bode well for the future of communications measurement
- AVEs down, outcome metrics up. According to a new report compiled by Releasd of the most popular KPIs used in PR, the number of clients using AVEs in their reports has declined 66% in the last 6 years. The discredited metric is (finally!) dying a long slow death. (But see our Measurement Menace for this month, proof that AVEs still linger.) More good news from Releasd is that more people are using outcome metrics, although the numbers are still quite small. The bad news is that activity metrics are up 305%.
- Business results, yes! There are more and more solutions to the challenge of attributing business results to communications efforts. (You’ll hear more about these at the Summit.) Rob Key at Converseon has some great ideas on the topic. As does Mark Stouse.
- Guidelines for measuring influencer marketing… the first ever, were just published by The Association of National Advertisers (ANA).
- Internal communications measurement… is on the rise, at least according to this Populo report that showed that 95% of internal communications professionals believe that measurement is important or very important. This despite them spending the least amount of time on it.
- Measurement expands: The MRC is continuing its efforts to bring measurement and validation of audience numbers to television, gaming, and other cross-channel media.
- The power and number of measurement tools continues to grow. That means that more inexpensive solutions are out there. Platforms like Keyhole and Awario are making it harder for anyone to use cost as an excuse not to measure.
- Search, now more than ever: Finally, Google just made it easier for everyone to search using their cameras. Google Lens allows you to point your phone or camera at something you see and immediately find out what it is. That goes for whether it’s a type of plant, breed of dog, or where you can buy a dress. I’m not sure if this makes our jobs easier or harder. But it’s one more data point that proves the importance of search to today’s communications professionals.
So this issue of The Measurement Advisor is dedicated to helping you get ready for this bright new future of communications measurement. We tell you how to use metrics to put your to-do list into perspective. ∞
Thanks for most of the image up top to StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay.
