Just a small warning for any agencies and PR departments out there who rely solely on Advertising Value Equivalents (AVE) to measure the success of their PR efforts: you will need to work harder to maintain the same level of results! No, I am not talking about the struggle for column inches, less journalists who have less time and all of the trends we have been seeing for the last couple of years. No, something else is happening. It´s called inflation. Same as you can buy less for one euro or dollar today than one year ago, the AVE will also suffer from inflation.
Just ask yourself what will happen to the advertising market next year as a lot of companies are cutting in their marketing budgets and will have less job openings. As less advertisements will be sold, prices will most probably drop. Which in turn means that a one page article in the Financial Times will be worth less than one year ago based on AVE.
AVE is definately a usefull metric to use, but to get a balanced insight into PR results, a quantitative analysis should be complementary.
