@dvocable

This is the second part of the series on PR Measurement by Deepak Aneja,  communications research professional at a leading global media analytics company and a reader of the India PR Blog. The views here are his. Read on…

Before I get straight into the technicalities of Impressions, let me explain what these metrics are meant for. Media Impressions – the number of people who might have had the opportunity to be exposed to a story that has appeared in the media – usually refers to the total audited circulation of a publication or the audience reach of a broadcast vehicle. I am considering the multipliers such as PR or readership factors here; we can have a separate discussion on multipliers ;)

Identify the media, first.

All media publications are not equal in value for delivering your message, nor are the media publications with the biggest circulations necessarily the best. It depends on your message type and the target audiences. The credibility of the publication needs to be assessed, as does its ability to reach your target audiences. For instance, if a company wants to tell its customers about the benefits of herbal diet supplement meant for low middle class people, it will not like to have its coverage in mainline or business publications that have the largest circulations in the target region. For its herbal diet supplement product, which is meant for low middle class people, the right media would perhaps be the regional / local / language newspaper that might not have the largest circulation but is being read by middle class families.

Beyond Impressions

Does it make any sense for a communicator or a company to know the numbers or the reach of their message? – No. Only Impression number won’t help gauge the effectiveness of a communication. You have to consider the overall positioning of the story or the key message, which takes following factors into account:

1. Placement *
2. Dominance *
3. Headlines mentions *
4. Extent of Mention *
5. Visual Presence *
6. Tonality *
7. Spokesperson quotes * 

* Impact Score can be positive or negative

Where is the key message?

It takes a lot to develop key messages for brands or products, but what if media doesn’t carry the key message, then it becomes a wasted effort.

To measure the effectiveness of your communication, it is essential to set up an assessment method. If one is constantly communicating the correct messages but it is not being reflected in media, it could indicate there are some issues or discrepancies in the media’s perception of the company or its products or services.

Key message: A proposition – in the form of a statement or phrase – that a company wishes to communicate to its target audience via media coverage. There is no tone associated with key messages.

Key Message Penetration – It represents the percentage of total news items including one or more Key Messages.

Key Message Reach: It represents the total potential audience – measured by Impressions – produced by each Key Message appearing in a news item.

Note: If there is no key message in coverage there is no impact.

Let’s simplify it:

Considering, a well written piece on major cola brand in leading business newspaper, say Business Line, has these values on measurement metrics –

Summary: +78.3% or +65353 of Business Line’s readers have been positively exposed by this article, and are likely to recall the details of the story.

Normally, we only consider exact impressions numbers in PR Measurement reports, which is not the right measure as it will only give you a reach. Multiplying Impact score with audited circulation figure will give an exact figure of people exposed to the key message positively or negatively.

Let’s consider this table for a particular story:

You can easily notice only the story has generated 53,00,160 impressions but only 61.65 % of total audiences have been exposed positively.

Media Content Analysis is a important measure to gauge to overall reputation of the company and to know the factors those are contributing to the reputation, negatively or positively.

It would be important to consider Reputation Audit or On-ground research to actually know the change in behavior. This will help company to associate On-ground research results with Media Measurement outcomes. This will definitely prove that PR, influences and has a major role to play.