Advertising Value Equivalence

How to get the media on board to end AVE

Neville Hobson 1 Comment Advertising, Business, Communication, Ethics, Journalism, Leadership, Marketing, Professional Development, Public Relations, Reputation, Social Media, Trends
Fearless Girl

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 this quarter was worth $X million in advertising.” Instead, talk about how you achieved your prominence goal, how your coverage gained in prominence over the year, or how you beat out your competitors in terms of the prominence of your […]

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The end of AVE in PR?

Neville Hobson 3 Comments Advertising, Business, Communication, Ethics, Professional Development, Public Relations, Trends

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 activity, one that has been viewed as unethical by some practitioners and professional associations regarding its perceived lack of validity as a metric to measure the value of a public relations activity. You can read this argument in considerable detail […]

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