PR Measurement in 2025: Disappointing, Misdirected and Still Divided

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By Katie Delahaye Paine

Measurement and Analytics Consultant at Paine Publishing

February 26, 2025

According to Bard AI, I’m not a great prognosticator so I won’t making any grand predictions this year, but I do want to share my perspective on the industry that has consumed my attention for the past 36 years. Right up front, I’ll admit I’m pretty disheartened about the state of PR measurement. Despite the ubiquity of AI and some advances in technology, it really hasn’t evolved very much in the last few years, despite all my prior more cheerful predictions.

I’m aware that when most people think of PR Measurement, they think of “monitoring” not actual measurement. But whatever you call it, that segment of the measurement market is nowhere near where I thought it would be, given all the AI hype. The reality is that most PR monitoring companies have been using some form of machine intelligence for years and it hasn’t made good PR measurement any easier. Here’s why:

Bad Metrics Just Won’t Go Away

Despite the fact that everyone purports to despise vanity metrics, they are still showing up on most industry platforms. Worse still, despite delivering no value people are still trying to use them to “prove value.”   “Reach” numbers just keep getting bigger, in inverse proportion to their credibility. No one I know trusts them, but they keep showing up on every platform I see.

And then there is this:

Yes, AVEs (Advertising Value Equivalencies) are still with us. This chart showed up on an “Instant Insights” dashboard for a client of mine, last week. Insight? Really? How on earth can you find insight in 2025 from a metric that the industry declared invalid the same year that floppy disks became obsolete.

You Can’t Find Insight in Pretty Charts

The one thing that most communications pros need most is insight, and, ideally, data that can tell the story that leadership needs to hear to convince them to renew your budget. But none of the major platforms are doing that. For example, Cision is finally migrating all its customers to its “integrated” platform called CisionOne that purports to solve all your problems by integrating all of its various services and technologies into a single interface. But what problem does that solve other than making it easier to create press releases which no one reads that get sent to reporters who don’t care, who work for media that your target audience doesn’t trust  – but more on that later.

Most platforms confuse visualizing data with actual insight. Insight requires looking at what happened and providing some data that allows you to move beyond the “what happened” report to actually answer the questions “so what?” and “now what”.

While most of these supposedly integrated platforms may display traditional and social media metrics in the same platform, and occasionally add in “activity metrics”  (i.e. how many presses releases you sent), you still need to download the data, combine it and then run an analysis and try to find some correlation that might reveal a connection between your activities and the results.

Never mind that most platforms make it incredibly difficult to download the data in a useful format. Take SurveySparrow – a good, cheaper alternative to Survey Monkey. They do allow you to download a spreadsheet, but it is incomprehensible unless you happen to be using SPSS. CisionOne requires you to save your dashboard as a PDF and then export that PDF as an Excel sheet if you want to further analyze it. This does not make my life easier!

Few are Measuring the Media that Matters

The biggest irony of all of these platforms is they measure things that may no longer matter to your audience. According to the most recent Pew data, more than half of Americans get at least some news from social media, 50 million Americans regularly receive news from online influencers and only 26% of U.S. adults reported getting news from “traditional” media.

Which means that most people are using their monitoring platforms to track media outlets that will have no influence on, or credibility with, your target audiences. The reality is that individuals only absorb information when they think that it’s worth their time to pay attention to what you have, and they trust the source of the information.

Which poses a significant problem for brands in 2025. The most recent election proved the power of niche podcasts and influencers, most of which are not on anyone’s “Top Tier Media List.”  According to the most recent Edelman Trust Barometer trust in media and corporations has plummeted in recent years. So might I recommend budgeting for a survey of your target audience to find out where they get trusted information these days, before you update your Top Tier Media list and/or sign up for a new monitoring service.

Sadly, silos aren’t going anywhere.

Last year, I fantasized that departmental silos would be crumbling by now. But sadly, the walls are as impenetrable as ever between communications, marketing, PR, Public Affairs, and everyone else in the organization that might influence your audience.

The only good news for earned media side of the fence is that the threats to the effectiveness of paid media are growing by the day. As it turns out, AI is already threatening to invalidate many of the usual paid media metrics.

The other staple of today’s marketing efforts, Email, which up until now has been somewhat immune from all the other threats to traditional communication methods, now has big problems of its own.  Stricter privacy rules, spam filters, and automatic blocking are making it harder to get into people’s inboxes, never mind having them open your missive. I don’t know about you, but I add about 5 emails a day to my “blocked” list because the senders seem to think that I care about every press release that they put out there. (GlobeNewswire and PRWEB are you listening?)

So, maybe there’s still hope for earned media, but to all my communications colleagues out there, good luck. I started my first measurement company, The Delahaye Group, in 1989. I’ve seen a lot of changes in the intervening years but maybe none as many as disrupting as are on the horizon in 2025.

Setting the Record Straight About the Ethical Practice of Public Relations

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By Teresa Valerio Parrot, Ed. D., APR

There was a time when someone asked what I did for a living, and I would give them a sly smile and say, “Do you watch Scandal?” and tell them I worked in crisis communications. Or if it were more of a policy or academic crowd, I would say, “Well, if you’re a fan of The West Wing, my job is basically an outsourced Toby Ziegler and CJ Cregg role.”

However, I quickly realized that this type of response was a disservice to the public relations profession, my work and my colleagues…

READ MORE HERE

Report from Maine PR Council Annual Conference

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By Robin Schell, APR, Fellow PRSA, Yankee Chapter President

On Friday, Nov. 8th, I had the pleasure of representing Yankee Chapter PRSA at the Maine Public Relations Council annual conference, “Positivity and Progress: Adapting Your PR Strategy For A Changing World.”

Rebecca Emery, APR, Chair of MPRC’s Professional Development committee, and her crew put together an A-plus program of presenters, including a media panel discussion with moderator T.J. Winick, Essex Strategies, Morgan Sturdivant of WABI-TV, Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm of the Maine Monitor/Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting and Megan Gray of the Portland Press Herald.

We also heard words of wisdom from Michael Smart, CEO of MichaelSMARTPR, who gave us an overview of “The Realist’s Guide to AI and Communication” and asked us to think about how we use AI in these categories:  “Training Wheels”, “10-Speed” and “E-Bike.”

Mark McClennan, APR, Fellow PRSA, General Manager of G&C talked about “Training Your Ethical Mind:  Preparing to Survive and Thrive in Our Dynamic AI Environment,” urging us all to include AI in our crisis plans and be clear on our AI policies.  As an added bonus, I had a front-row seat to watch Rebecca Emery receive the Edward L. Bernays Award for her outstanding work on behalf of MPRC.

I really enjoyed the presentation by Felicia Knight, President of The Knight Canney Group, entitled, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love PR”.  After a 20-year career in journalism, Felicia had a successful 27-year career in PR and shared these 8 Life Lessons:

Lesson 1:  Don’t be afraid to change your situation. It was scary to pivot from her broadcast journalism career to serving as Communications Director for Sen. Susan Collins in DC, and then Communications Director for the National Endowment for the Arts.  But she was passionate about being able to make a difference and “be a part of history” and loved that she learned something new every day in these new roles.

Lesson 2:  Recognize and believe in your own success. Tired of being on the road and missing family events, she founded Knight Vision International, strategic media solutions, in 2008.  Not the best timing to launch a new business in a recession, but she succeeded – and at this point in her career she overcame the “imposter syndrome”.  She also joined the PRConsultantsGroup and the peer support and opportunities to collaborate were invaluable.

Lesson #3:  Delegate!  Felicia realized she would rather spend her time working directly with stakeholders, getting clients and offering strategic advice.  She hired her first employee and used contractors to get the rest of it done.

Lesson #4:  It is helpful to have backup.   You never know when life will throw you a curveball, and you’ll be out of commission for health issues or other reasons.  She made the decision to merge with Canney Communications and form The Knight Canney Group.

Lesson #5:  If you’re unhappy, speak up.  Though The Knight Canney Group was a great partnership, the pressure to support employees meant Felicia was taking client assignments just to pay the bills – so she pivoted again, going from an S-Corp model to an LLC.  She was loving PR again!

Lesson #6:  Life Is Short, No Matter How Long You Live.  Felicia suffered traumatic grief when she lost both her father and her brother in 2016.   It was an “aha” moment and she began letting go of the things she didn’t want to do and making more time for the things she DID enjoy.  She got more engaged in her Board roles and did more traveling for fun.

Lesson #7:  Let Go of What You Can’t Control.   COVID-19 hit everyone hard, so she did what everyone else did – joined the great baking frenzy!   She also got help from PPP (the Paycheck Protection Program).  Her business was back at full strength 18 months later.

Lesson #8:  Plan for your retirement.  Her message to everyone in the room was, “start now.”  Get a financial planner, put money aside from every paycheck and take advantage of company retirement or pension plans and 401K matches.  Her official retirement date will be Dec. 2024 at which point she will be very selective of the client assignments she will be taking.  “No more phone calls at 11 p.m.!”

We wish Felicia the best in her next chapter.

 

ICYMI: Ethics Month Professional Development Session

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Ethics Month Professional Development Session: Rebuilding Trust, Ethics and Communication In An Era Of Innovation

On Wed. Sept. 25th, the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications and the Yankee Chapter of PRSA partnered to present a virtual “lunch and learn” featuring highlights from Edelman’s 2024 Trust Barometer.  Drake Baer, Senior Vice President, Thought Leadership at the Edelman Trust Institute, led the discussion.  Here are some observations from that session:

Trends

  • Rapid innovation offers the promise of a new era of prosperity, but also risks exacerbating trust issues, leading to further societal instability and political polarization.
  • More people are doing their own research (Googling, etc.) to find information they trust.
  • If you want people to trust you, give them a voice. “Your constituents want you to hear their concerns and let them ask questions.”
  • In a year when half of the world’s population will elect new leaders, our communities are more politically polarized than ever. Only 30% of those surveyed would want to live with, help, or work with people who have different political views than they do.

Trusted Sources

  • Business is seen as ethical and competent, but Government is seen as the least competent and unethical of the sectors studied (there is a 52-point gap between Business and Government in the Trust Barometer).
  • While scientists are trusted sources, there are concerns that the government has too much influence on science. One observation was made that “scientists don’t know how to communicate,” and they need to make info transparent and accessible.
  • Businesses are seen as making sure innovations are safe, ahead of the sectors of government and media. “The switch from NGO’s as trusted sources to Businesses as trusted sources is striking.”
  • But, lack of confidence in government means declining trust in the institutions responsible for steering us through change.
  • Peers are among the most trusted sources of information among those surveyed.

Takeaways for Communicators

  • If more people are seeking their own information rather than relying on sources from sectors they trust, consider how your own organization’s SEO can help share information and drive inquiries to you. Build more online assets for independent research by your publics. How can you be a better, more trusted source of information about your sector?
  • Give your constituents more agency—help them to learn your goals and why they should align with your organization. “Paint the vision,” says Baer.
  • Know that the CEO is not always the best person to put out there, given subject matter expertise and peer influence—think about the best, most trusted messenger.
  • Implementation is as important as innovation. (it’s one thing to invent it and another to anticipate the issues that come along with that innovation).  Think: Issue anticipation.
  • Business must partner for change.  Think: Build collaborations with partners.
  • Science must integrate with society, as they are trusted. Think: Who are your subject matter experts? How do you build trust in these sources?

 

Laura Simoes is a member of Yankee Chapter PRSA and serves as Executive Director of the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communication.  For more information on other professional development workshops available, visit: Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications.

BLOG: The Simone Biles Effect

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Let’s take a brief break for some worthy observations about American gymnast, Simone Biles:

 

Biles was asked about the (GOAT) necklace, and she admitted the goat was a bit of provocative goof, that she knew some people would like it and others would hate it. She said she couldn’t believe she was in the all-time conversation at all. “I still just think I’m Simone Biles from Spring, Texas that loves to flip.

-Jason Gay, Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2024

 

A highlight among highlights of the two-week Olympic extravaganza will certainly be Simone Biles, proof that when you get the “twisties”, as we all do, what matters is that we get back up, and how.

 

From a leadership perspective, The “Simone Biles Effect” spotlights lessons in leadership.

 

In addition to getting back up (resiliency), lessons are:

  • Know ourselves. Know our surroundings. Know our strengths, our weaknesses, the personal and professional, and our threats. Situational awareness is key to emotional intelligence, which in turn is key to sustainable success.

 

  • Teamwork rules, even and especially in solo roles and endeavors. We are better when we get help from others who can help us to see and understand what we can’t see due to our blind spots. In turn, be at the ready to spot—-help—-others. Simone did this with her network of supporters and advisors in the period after Tokyo.

 

  • Be ever optimistic, and also realistic. Optimism is a force multiplier. Optimism is the secret sauce for seeing opportunities. After the struggles at the Tokyo Olympics, a lesser person might have thrown in the towel. Simone saw the opportunity of tomorrow.

 

  • ”No deposit, no return”, as Rowdy Gaines, the men’s Olympic swimming medal winner shares this motivational thought that to get a benefit, effort must be made.

 

  • Be grateful. In Simone’s response to her success, she demonstrates humility and gratitude. “I am who I am”. We are all the sum total of our life’s experiences.

 

  • We all have a reputation, and narrative, that is tangible and fungible.

 

  • And,
  • Be flexible and agile.

Pivot to opportunities.

 

See how I did that?!

 

#BeSimone as an inspiration!

🤸🏼‍♂️

 

Clark P. Dumont, APR, Fellow PRSA is a longtime Yankee PRSA member. A journalist turned communications professional and organizational leader with experience in health care, aerospace & defense, travel and hospitality and non profit organization leadership, he is a native Granite Stater.

 

BLOG: Purposeful Partnerships:  Building Trusted Relationships Among Collaborating Organizations

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Purposeful Partnerships:  Building Trusted Relationships Among Collaborating Organizations
by Robin Schell, APR, Fellow PRSA

“Trust is key to having successful collaborations”: that was a major takeaway from the powerful Yankee Chapter PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) Lunch & Learn session on Aug. 15th. Special thanks to moderator Jill Kimball, APR, Marketing Manager at Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital and panelists Kate Luczko, Sr. Director of HealthForce NH and Peter Wright, President & CEO of Northwestern Medical Center, for sharing your insights.

VIEW LUNCH & LEARN SESSION HERE

 

Other Key Takeaways Included:

 

  1. Collaboration works when the participating organizations understand what they are going to get out of the collaboration. It’s very important to listen and not make assumptions – take the time to understand, what are their needs?  What are their concerns?
  2. Trust is the foundation for effective collaboration. Everything comes back to trust – what is the history of trust?  What are the psycho-social dynamics of trust?  How do I build trust?  “The more you are able to ‘let go’ to your partners, the more likely you are to get to that level of trust early in the relationship.”
  3. Define your shared vision and your objectives. “Take a step back and look at the big picture – where are we all trying to get to?”  Define your goals and objectives – start with the low-hanging fruit to get some early wins.  Use those goals and objectives to measure success.
  4. Be clear when you set expectations. This applies when working with all the collaborating organizations, but also when you are reporting back to your own organization – they may be looking for a “return on investment” sooner than is realistically possible.  Communication about that is key.  Sometimes the arrangements are more informal (e.g. feedback from an advisory board) and sometimes more formal (a signed Memorandum of Understanding)
  5. You need both accountability and flexibility. It’s important to have basic systems in place for clarity on how the organizations will share information, communicate between meetings, complete tasks etc.  Meeting minutes will capture who is responsible and what deadlines are involved.  Note: collaborations can start to fall apart when these expectations are not met – but sometimes, it is important to be flexible and “give each other some grace”.  Even with a plan, it’s important to be open to what you don’t expect. “Sometimes we have to fix the plane while it’s moving.”
  6. Not everything will go smoothly – expect that and make time to discuss “lessons learned” as intel for moving forward.
  7. Find the common ground. What will be beneficial for both sides?  Start with what is most easily acceptable and move forward.  “For example, people may not want to give away all their trade secrets when it comes to recruiting … but they can rally behind a goal of, ‘What can we do collectively to make healthcare more attractive’?”
  8. Get the right people in the room for decision-making. It is difficult to control which representatives an organization sends to the meetings of the collaborating partners – and if they don’t have decision-making power, they need to go back to get organization’s blessing and that doesn’t always work well.  “It’s best to define for the representatives what decision-making power they have, so they know that going in.”
  9. Renew and refresh. Specific partnerships may align for a certain period of time and in pursuit of a certain objective or audience. As organizational goals, priorities or circumstances shift, understand that partnerships – even long-serving relationships – may have to shift as well. Accept and embrace the opportunity, because it is a terrific way to align with new ways of thinking and foster additional beneficial relationships in your industry or community.

When asked what HealthForce is most proud of, Luczko talked about identifying barriers for hiring more respiratory therapists in NH.  “Instead of playing the middleman, we got practicing respiratory therapists in a room together with members of NH OPLC (Office of Professional Licensure and Certification), the NH Hospital Association, and River Valley Community College (who offers the Respiratory Therapy program) and facilitated a discussion on how to solve the problem – while an informal collaboration for now, this felt like a big win.”

According to Wright, the New England Collaborative is working well, with some early group purchasing wins and they have established themselves as a legal entity, hired an Executive Director and reached agreement on how they would be funded.  They are well-positioned for future progress. “Relationships are a marathon, not a sprint,” he said.

 

Robin Schell, APR, Fellow PRSA is Senior Counsel and Partner at Jackson Jackson & Wagner, a behavioral public relations and management consulting firm in the Seacoast of NH.  She is currently serving as President of the Yankee Chapter of PRSA.

Tracy Sweet

Making a Statement On Societal Issues: When It Is (And Is Not) Warranted

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Making a Statement On Societal Issues:

Andover’s Principles Clarify When A Response To World Events Is (And Is Not) Warranted

By Tracy M. Sweet, Chief Communications Officer, Phillips Academy

Yankee Chapter PRSA member

Reprinted with permission from Currents magazine (May/June 2024), published by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Phillips Academy is an independent co-educational boarding school. As its CCO, Tracy Sweet takes to heart her role in providing communications that enrich, inform, and protect the school community. When pressures to respond to an increasing number of political and societal events began taking her away from that mission, she, and the school’s leadership team, took action by developing guidelines for responding to world events.

What prompted the need for guidelines that establish when to address societal issues?

In the span of two years, we issued eight statements on societal events, such as the war in Ukraine, the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The process was reactive and, further, it felt presumptuous to think that a school statement would have some profound effect. We questioned whether putting out such statements aligned with our mission. We took a moment to pause and really think about that.

The guidelines start by asking what the campus community needs from Andover. This includes things like informational resources and support, a place for fellowship, or an educational forum.

Once our campus community is taken care of, we address the need for a public statement by asking: Is the matter relevant to education? Does it directly impact our mission? Does Andover have expertise to advance a deeper understanding of the issue?

If we answer “yes” to any of those questions, the guidelines lead us through a discussion that helps us consider the potential effects of issuing a statement such as, “Would some students, faculty, or staff feel ignored or silenced, their opinions unwelcome?”

How do the guidelines for societal issues differ from those that guide communication surrounding a crisis directly affecting your campus community?

The guidelines are an addendum to our crisis communication plan. The fundamental question no matter the issue is: “How are we responding to the needs of our campus community?”  That’s the start for both; then the processes are entirely different. We recently revamped our crisis communications plan in the form of scenarios. We’ve designed 10 different possible scenarios, which we’ll keep adding to; they include a cyber-attack, a student tragedy, an environmental disaster, an active shooter—all the things that keep us up at night.

You revisited the new guidelines last fall. Why?

When war broke out in the Middle East, Andover’s response did not include a statement. It did include immediate support and resources as the crisis escalated. Our Head of School addressed a campus-wide assembly, and education programming came a few weeks later when a guest scholar explored the history of the conflict and the current political and religious climate. Our challenge, from a communications stance, was that students recalled previous global events when Andover did speak out and wanted to know why we did not issue a statement this time.

We quickly realized we had not done a good enough job to broadly share that our approach to statements had evolved. To increase awareness, we emailed our “Andover Principles” campus-wide and posted them online.

For instance, one of the principles states:

Andover’s mission is to educate high school students. We teach students how to think, not what to think. And we teach them to analyze societal issues through a wide range of perspectives. We are not policymakers or experts in global affairs. Therefore, it is rare that Andover will issue a statement on societal events that do not directly impact the school’s mission.

Why are these guidelines so important?

Having guiding principles helps to create clarity when emotions are running high. Without a framework, you risk making an unanchored ethical decision by weighing the importance of one tragedy against another. In some cases, you are placing value on one group’s needs over another. That’s not sustainable, and it’s certainly not a best practice.

If you develop a pattern of issuing performative statements, you could erode your institution’s reputation. As a strategic communications professional, I see that as an affront to the profession. We are not vending machines for generic quotes. We must offer substance. It is not the statement, but the action that signals care and empathy and compassion.