AdAge recently published an article about a report from VMS, a news-monitoring service, which claims that Twitter has received nearly three billion impressions in the past month. According to the report, these impressions are worth nearly $48 million.
There has undoubtedly been a lot of hype about Twitter. It has made its appearance on CNN, Entertainment Tonight and countless other broadcast segments, and has also been featured in numerous print publications. In fact, according to the VMS report, the following outlets have contributed to the PR value of these impressions:
Television: 57%
Newspapers: 37%
Magazines: 5%
However, many bloggers such as TechCrunch and Scobliezer have pointed out, these impressions have not made a significant impact on Twitter’s business or proved that Twitter is a “strong business like Google, Microsoft, HP, Yahoo or even Facebook.”
Erica Iacono with PRWeek published a rebuttal to the AdAge article about the PR value of Twitter’s media impressions. Erica questions VMS’ method of coming up with the $48 million figure and opines, “it’s likely VMS used some kind of ad value equivalency model which ultimately compares editorial and advertising, two things that are vastly different from each other.” She concludes, “Applying a dollar value to media coverage doesn’t take into account whether the PR efforts met any of the company’s business goals.”
There are many techniques for measuring the value of PR including measuring media impressions, ad value equivalency, return on media impact, return on influencers and share of voice.
While there is no magic bullet when it comes to evaluating PR results, it’s important to work closely with your client or executive team to determine what success looks like and how it impacts an organization’s business objectives.