One of the hurdles along the road of seeing an end to the “advertising value equivalence” (AVE) measurement metric that’s decried by many in the PR and measurement communities is persuading organisations to stop using it. The issue with AVE is well summarised in a white paper published by The Institute for Public Relations in 2003, in which this succinct text appears: We urge you to move away as quickly as possible from statements of the nature, “Our news coverage …
Category: Ethics
If there’s one phrase guaranteed to generate debate in the PR business, it’s ‘advertising value equivalence,’ AVE for short. In simple terms, AVE looks at the volume of space an editorial article takes in a print publication, or the amount of time an editorial audio or video segment plays, and equates its value to the price you’d have paid if you had bought the equivalent-size space or time as advertising. For decades the use of AVE has been a controversial …
The recent rise and spread of so-called fake news is a topic that’s generating a great deal of opinion on what to do about it. I’ve weighed in, too, in a recent episode of the Small Data Forum podcast. Now, on the 28th anniversary of the founding of the World Wide Web, its creator Tim Berners-Lee offers compelling perspectives on this contemporary phenomenon, outlining three challenges for the web and, as he puts it, what we must do to ensure it …
The anthropologist explains why being scared about AI has more to do with our fear of each other than killer robots
Chatbots are all the rage at the moment. These clever computer programs (algorithms, to be more precise) are popping up everywhere online to help you with mundane tasks from getting a weather forecast or currency exchange rate to travel planning to online shopping. Organizations everywhere are experimenting with these useful bits of technology, with varying degrees of success as part of the learning process (remember what happened to Microsoft’s Tay earlier this year?). If you use Siri on your iPhone, …
One of the most credible research efforts into trust in organizations is the Edelman Trust Barometer, a report published annually since 2000 by the Edelman PR firm. The 2016 report, published in January, surveyed 33,000 people in 28 countries worldwide and provides rich insights from the analysis of respondents’ opinions on a wide range of topics under the broad umbrella term ‘trust.’ You can read the report for detailed information. I referenced this report in a presentation I gave last …
Artificial intelligence can only go so far. The future of technology will lie in the interplay of software and capable humans
The revelations from the mega-leak of data about the financial shenanigans of the wealthy and powerful, dubbed the #PanamaPapers, continue to roll out globally since the eruption last weekend opened up a Pandora’s Box (what some would call an Aladdin’s Cave) of consequences. At the heart of this scandal is 2.6 terabytes of data representing some 11 million individual documents about the business and financial affairs of clients of the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca stretching from end-2015 back to …
The global #dieselgate crisis engulfing German car maker Volkswagen may well produce significant and disruptive change in the governance and regulation of the auto industry and publicly-listed companies in that industry (likelier in Germany than anywhere else, I’d say), although it’s far from clear what the consequences and outcomes will actually be. What’s extraordinary – except, maybe it isn’t anymore – is, on the one hand, the speed with which the unravelling of VW’s reputation is happening; and on the …
