Stella Bayles was joined by fellow AMEC members and PRCA Innovation teammate, Andrew Smith to host a special AMEC Measurement month webinar that invited PR practitioners to take a fresh view on ‘reach’ in campaign measurement. Focusing on monthly traffic figures often used in ‘reach’, Andrew shared research and findings on the uncomfortable truth of how many people really view media coverage. Stella shared insight from marketing budget decision makers and marketing attribution analysts that confirmed PR is often left out of marketing evaluation and budget decisions because of inflated, meaningless ‘reach’ or ‘opportunities to see’ figures that include total monthly publisher traffic. Stella and Andrew presented how taking a more realistic approach to coverage views not only gains more trust among report readers, it also puts you in a better position to compete in the comparison game with other lines of marketing which is crucial in budget decision time. Stella shared details on how the ‘Estimated Coverage Views’ metric is calculated in the CoverageBook tool and how one in-house PR team now requests its PR agencies to report with this metric so they can evaluate and compare earned performance with paid, owned and social. For more info on inflated 'reach' numbers and on the CoverageBook Estimated Views metric go to https://coveragebook.com/for/credible-reach-numbers/

1. Find out more at: CoverageBook.com
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@andismit
info@escherman.com
escherman.com
@stellabayles
@coveragebook
CoverageBook.com

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House rules!
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The problem
with media
‘reach’
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“Senior stakeholders at Diageo
used to have a very low opinion of
PR ‘reach’ metrics. When OTS was
presented, they looked straight
through them”
James Alexander,
Head of Culture &
Entertainment, PR &
Influencer Marketing,

8. Find out more at: CoverageBook.com
“PR reach is not taken seriously when it
comes to revenue acquisition as it's typically
considered "non trackable" compared to
other channels such as search or social”
Russell McAthy
Marketing Data
Attribution Specialist.
Forecaster.
CEO/CoFounder
@ringsidedata .

9. Binet & Field’s 60:40 ratio of awareness vs activation
Inflated numbers at the top of the funnel will make
it much harder for PR to show true impact on
outcomes at the bottom of the funnel.
Everyone is expect to show ROI (but too quickly)

10. Why “whole of site” numbers are vanity metrics for media coverage reach

11. Where does The Guardian get traffic from?
85pc comes either directly or via Google Search

12. What about social media driving visits to editorial?

13. Social media CTRs to media editorial content are very low

14. Large media sites get 80% of their pageviews
from only 14% of articles while Tiny sites spread
the same percent of traffic across 35% of articles.
For Small sites, it’s 27%, and Medium sites
average 21%. While larger sites can leverage a
few viral articles for significant traffic, smaller
sites have to rely on a wider breadth of content
to do the same.
https://lp.chartbeat.com/resource-library/80-20-rule-pageviews-engagement
Chartbeat analyzed thousands of media websites from more than 70 countries to
understand what percent of articles drive the majority of pageviews and how the ratio
might vary by factors like site size and subject matter. January to September 2022

15. What does this all mean?
The number of people who fully read an individual online story are
typically a very small proportion of total visitors to a media site.
Using “whole of site” numbers grossly exaggerates actual readership
views to individual articles.
So what can we do?

16. Find out more at: CoverageBook.com
Actual reach of editorial content is a smaller but more
truthful number – tools exist to provide these metrics
Editorial reach can extend over far longer periods than
traditionally imagined (via Google Search results)
If PR industry is serious about demonstrating impact
on real outcomes, more accurate media reach numbers
are mandatory

17. Find out more at: CoverageBook.com
Getting
comfortable with
smaller numbers
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Next time you’re adding a site-wide traffic number, ask yourself…
● Was the mention on every page of the site?
● Homepage? Amazing! Did it remain there for 30 days?
● Is site-wide traffic used in other areas of marketing?
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19. Find out more at: CoverageBook.com
“It's a big gripe of mine seeing PR saying
potential reach is X million or even X billion
people.
As a brand manager and allocator of budget,
you can't take a lot from 'reach data'.
We like using the 'Estimated Coverage Views'
metric in CoverageBook. It's more realistic
which means it's easier for me to compare
PR against other areas of marketing”
James Alexander,
Head of Culture &
Entertainment, PR &
Influencer Marketing,

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So total monthly traffic at all!?
● We include total monthly numbers to give context to the Estimated Views metric.
● Together helps context - Especially when stakeholders are used to seeing just the big
number
● Total numbers / followers / subscribers are useful at the individual coverage / social post
level as a report reader
○ If they have never heard of the publication or influencer; it provides quick sense of
overall influence
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22. Find out more at: CoverageBook.com
How do you predict views? We ask the following…
● How many people follow, subscribe or read that outlet?
● Where on that site did the coverage feature? The homepage? Somewhere else?
● How many people socially engaged with the page or post?
● How could this amplify + help reach more potential readers?
● What is normal for social engagement based on different audience sizes &
platforms?
○ Using our own data + RivalHQ’s annual benchmarks survey s
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‘Visibility’ channel evaluation

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● Paid, Owned & Social reports impressions
● Value: Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM)
○ How much it costs to place your ad 1000 times on a
particular page(s) of a website

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1. Calculate the Estimated views of all your media or social coverage
2. Work out the total cost of all PR inputs into the campaign (or time
period; total salaries/retainers)
3. Once you have that total do this simple calculation…
Cost per 1000 (CPM) metric for PR coverage

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Total Cost to generate coverage = $10,000
Total Estimated views of the coverage = 1,500,000
Divide 1,500,000 estimated views into 1000 chunks = 1,500
Divide $10,000 into 1,500 = $6.66
= Cost per 1000 Impressions (CPM) of $6.66

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Extending
the ‘reach’
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28. Full editorial content most likely to be
discovered via Google Search
Reach of editorial
content via search results AKA
“ranking by proxy”
Editorial content is most likely to rank
highly for non-brand keyword terms
(Visably Research – Q4 2021)
Editorial reach via search can
extend over weeks and months
– or years

29. Find out more at: CoverageBook.com
“PR is often not taken seriously when it comes to revenue acquisition as it's typically
considered "non trackable" compared to other channels such as search or social..
However, PR has a clear correlation to improvements in search. It can really drive an
increase in brand/product awareness.
This is where we can plug data into an advanced attribution model to align these top/mid
funnel metrics and use the "correlation" approach
This allows for revenue to be attributed to PR and this is the only true metric that
marketing owners can trust”
Russell McAthy
Marketing Data
Attribution
Specialist.
Forecaster.
CEO/CoFounder
@ringsidedata .

30. Find out more at: CoverageBook.com
Actual reach of editorial content is a smaller but more
truthful number – tools exist to provide these metrics
Editorial reach can extend over far longer periods than
traditionally imagined (via Google Search results)
If PR industry is serious about demonstrating impact
on real outcomes, more accurate media reach numbers
are mandatory

31. Find out more at: CoverageBook.com
2023 KPI &
measurement
planning
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Questions
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FREE TRIAL: CoverageBook.com

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https://bit.ly/CoverageBookMetrics
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Thanks for joining!
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