Why is PR value five times the advertising value?

I was going through my blogs search keyword report and came across this nice little search term which I thought I would have a go at trying to answer:

Quick answer is “It isn’t. It can be anything you want it to be”.

During my client days as a Marketer, our agency used 2.5 as the advertising value.

I attended a Digital Marketing conference back in 2010 and a guy presenting on PR stated that the AEV was 20!!

So why is it 5 you ask? Well it isn’t, go pick a number…..a really big number.

Also see my post on AEV – What is it actually measuring and who cares?

4 thoughts on “Why is PR value five times the advertising value?

  1. Gary Robinson

    Dammit Pritesh! That was going to be my answer when I saw your question in a tweet. Absolutely anything you want it to be 🙂

    The last figure used by a PR agency with us was x3. Not sure how anyone would have the gall to say 20!

    In a way you have to feel sorry for any student studying PR at Uni, as if they’re like most Marketing courses in colleges, they’re going to be at least 5 years behind the times and ignoring the impact of digital on their industry.

    Reply
  2. Katie Paine

    There actually is research that says that any multiplier is BS. http://www.instituteforpr.org/topics/dispelling-myth-pr-multipliers/
    The silliest thing I’ve seen ever was the media monitoring company that attributed 850 million impressions to every Facebook post (that was the number of total subsribers to Facebook at that time) and then they muliplied it times three! — so every comment on Facebook made “3 billion impresssions.” Needless to say the provider was fired.

    Reply
    1. Pritesh Patel Post author

      Thanks for sharing Katie. I’ve been admiring your work in this area for years. Even though I’m not a PR pro I still find this measurement metric fascinating.

      Reply

Leave a Reply to Liz Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *