This year here at Paine Publishing we featured both Brand24 and Agility PR Solutions in our annual Best Vendor List. They have now been removed. The reason is that I recently stumbled across this pro-AVE post on Brand 24’s website. And then Agility PR thought it was a good idea to send me an email bragging about how they can now translate AVEs into different currencies. (Another reason you need to make sure to customize emails to your audiences.)
To be included on our Best Vendor List, a company needs to adhere to the Barcelona Principles. That means eschewing the long-discredited technique of AVE (Advertising Value Equivalency). And, really, it’s one thing for a company to mention AVEs on their website, it’s another thing to brag about using them.
When vendors make it easy to use bad data…
When vendors make it so easy to use bad data — guess what? — clients use it. That means AVEs. And that means the years of heroic efforts that my colleagues and I at IPR and AMEC have made to cleanse the industry of bad data and metrics are flushed down the proverbial crapper.
Brand 24″s particular example of AVE use is even more reprehensible because Brand24’s discussion doesn’t even make much sense. Their explanation of how AVEs are calculated is based on column inches, and who uses them anymore? They then go on to say that you need different arithmetic for digital media. True, but then they provide no good explanation of how digital AVEs are calculated. This is a particular problem for Brand24 because they only provide digital monitoring.
AgilityPR seems to think that it is worth bragging about the fact that they now provide AVEs in multiple languages and currencies. WTF?
Therefore, for promoting AVEs we name Brand24 and AgilityPR our Measurement Menaces of the Month. Congrats! ∞
[We name a new Measurement Menace of the Month in every issue. See them all here.]
Thanks for the grumpy cat image up above to Manfred Richter on Pixabay.
