Institute for Public Relations

August 2006 – Multipliers are often used by public relations professionals to factor circulation or audience figures when calculating impressions. Multipliers are generally rationalized by users to take into account pass-along circulation and/or to assign a higher value to PR impressions than advertising impressions due to a perceived higher level of credibility. The authors argue that the facts do not support the use of multipliers, and their use may actually hurt the credibility of the profession.