Institute for Public Relations

The use of Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) as media measurement and a tool to value media placements is one of the most contentious topics in our business; the topic seems to emerge at nearly every professional conference. As you undoubtedly know, AVE is essentially the practice of assigning a “value”to a news story by equating it to advertising costs, with the implication that the news story is somehow “equivalent”to an advertisement in terms of probable audience impact. The debate about AVE is healthy because it tends to move public relations practitioners beyond simple quantitative measures to more meaningful types of analysis ...

Well, here we are. Still just days into the New Year. Time to turn over a new leaf. Start a new chapter in our personal or professional lives. Pick your metaphor; it feels good. Enter 2010 refreshed and re-energized. Apparently what characterizes our optimism at the Foundation for Public Relations Research and Education – the Institute – is not necessarily mainstream. The lead in the weekend Wall Street Journal claimed: “Few decades have been as resolutely dismal as this past one, which is thankfully all over.” There have been many similar pronouncements about the times in which we live. Instead, I draw ...