This piece originally appeared as a free article in the Early October edition of The Measurement Advisor.

The measurement industry is collapsing into itself… and other shocking developments that could derail your measurement plans.

Listen up because these four updates could affect you:

1. The Empire is expanding

In the latest move by the PR industry’s equivalent of Genghis Khan, Cision is likely to gobble up PR Newswire from UBS. Presumably it will combine it with PRWeb, the press release distribution service it acquired when it bought Vocus last summer, to offer clients more contacts. Of course, by the time the dust settles press releases will be even more irrelevant to what target audiences actually read. But then again there will always be enough troglodytes out there who believe that “Send out a press release on this!” is a useful exercise.

2. You can add desirable photos to your list of “good clips”

In news that’s a bit more more useful and relevant, here are two exciting developments in the quest to track and identify images among the gazillions of them out there. First, there’s a new technology called Ditto that promises to identify your images. Secondly, Sysomos just released Gaze, which promises to “find images of your brand across social channels and bring them together in one place.”  This is an important requirement for anyone measuring results, given the rapidly growing use of Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest.

3. Don’t count on counting that data

Facebook is restricting access to its data. While the implications are worse for start-ups and academic researchers, you ought to confirm that your social analytics vendor can still get all those cool metrics that are now on your dashboard.

4. Wouldn’t it be awful if you paid for an ad and people paid not to see it?

Guess what? It’s happening already. NPR’s Marketplace reports that the number of people who see your ads is probably a lot lower than you think. According to Apptopia, 35,000 people have downloaded iOS ad blocker Purify since it launched on September 16th. It’s one of many new ad blockers entering the arena since Apple enabled the technology. At $3.99 a pop, Purify has earned over $150,000 in revenue, but that’s not the only way to make money blocking ads. Advertisers can get past the filter with “acceptable” non-intrusive ads—and a fee. ∞