About the paper
The report examines how PR professionals measure their work, what metrics and frameworks they use, and how AI is beginning to reshape measurement practice.
It is based on an original self-administered online survey fielded from 1–29 September 2025; 912 PR professionals responded, with 832 retained after data cleaning, and the report notes a conservative margin of error of +/- 3.4%.
The respondent source is described as primarily Muck Rack’s database and email contacts, but the geographic scope of the survey is not clearly specified in the report.
Length: 33 pages
More information / download:
https://muckrack.com/resources/research/state-of-pr-measurement
Core Insights
1) What does the report say about the current status and perceived importance of PR measurement?
The report’s first major point is that PR measurement is now broadly normalised. 81% of PR professionals say they measure their work, and nearly all regard measurement as at least somewhat important; 50% call it extremely important and 32% very important. Reporting is therefore not a niche activity or an optional extra. It has become part of the standard operating logic of PR teams.
The report also shows why teams measure. The strongest reason is to demonstrate impact to leadership or clients, cited by 90%. That matters because it suggests measurement is still heavily shaped by accountability and justification. It is not only about learning; it is also about proving value upward. At the same time, 65% say they use reporting to inform and adjust strategy, and 60% use it to track internal performance and benchmarks. So the report presents measurement as serving both political and managerial purposes: securing legitimacy externally while helping steer work internally.
Operationally, measurement appears widespread but not especially deep. Most respondents spend relatively little time on it, with the report stating that nine out of ten spend less than four hours per week on measurement and reporting. Monthly reporting is the most common cadence, both for general reporting and for sharing results with executive teams. That pattern suggests measurement is routine, but often light-touch rather than highly intensive or embedded in continuous decision-making.
So the report’s overall message here is not that PR lacks interest in measurement. Quite the opposite. The field values measurement highly and practises it widely. But the form that measurement takes is often constrained, periodic and pragmatic rather than fully strategic or methodologically sophisticated.
2) Which metrics and frameworks dominate PR measurement today, and how credible do practitioners find them?
The report shows a striking gap between widespread measurement activity and the limited use of formal frameworks. 61% say they do not follow any industry framework, while 29% use a proprietary or internal framework. Only 7% cite the Barcelona Principles and 4% the AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework. That means the profession is measuring a great deal, but mostly without adopting shared formal standards.
In terms of metrics, the field remains anchored in familiar outputs. The most-used measures are number of stories placed at 86% and reach/impressions at 79%. Other commonly used metrics include sentiment, website impact, share of voice, key-message pull-through, and various social or pitch-performance indicators. Revenue impact is used by only 17%, and LLM visibility is still relatively new. The report says PR teams use about five metrics on average.
A particularly important insight is that practitioners continue to rely on metrics they do not fully trust. Stories placed and reach/impressions are not only widely used; they are also among the most commonly seen as accurate. But the confidence is uneven. The report explicitly notes that only about half believe reach/impressions accurately reflects their work despite nearly 80% using it. Key-message pull-through, meanwhile, is used by fewer people than stories placed or impressions, yet ranks comparatively better on perceived accuracy.
That tells us something important about the profession’s habits. PR practitioners appear to use certain metrics partly because they are easy, standardised, familiar, and expected by stakeholders, not purely because they best capture communication effects. The report therefore depicts a field still dominated by countable coverage-oriented measures even while many practitioners recognise their limitations.
3) How closely is PR measurement tied to business outcomes, and where does the linkage still break down?
The report presents a mixed picture. On one hand, 75% say their PR measurement efforts are at least somewhat tied to broader business KPIs such as sales, brand awareness or talent recruitment. That is a notable majority, and it suggests that the aspiration to align PR with organisational outcomes is now mainstream rather than marginal.
On the other hand, the report makes clear that this linkage remains fragile. One of the two biggest challenges named by respondents is linking PR metrics to business goals, also cited by 54%. The other equally large challenge is managing stakeholder expectations. In addition, 45% say they lack the right measurement tools or technology, and 40% say they do not have clear goals or success metrics. Together, those findings suggest that the profession may increasingly speak the language of business impact without always having the infrastructure, clarity or internal agreement needed to prove it convincingly.
The report reinforces this interpretation through confidence levels. 44% say they feel only somewhat confident in the metrics they report to stakeholders. Just under half say budgets are affected by whether they reach their goals, while a slight majority say budgets are not tied to performance. In other words, performance measurement matters rhetorically and operationally, but it is not yet consistently decisive in resource allocation.
The deeper implication is that PR measurement has moved beyond vanity metrics in principle, but not fully in practice. The report suggests the field is in a transitional state: business alignment is widely desired and partly present, yet still difficult to operationalise in robust, defensible ways.
4) How is AI changing PR measurement, especially around LLM visibility and AI-generated mentions?
The report treats AI as the biggest near-term change agent in PR measurement. At present, adoption is still modest: 28% say they are currently using AI or AI-powered tools in measurement or reporting, while 16% plan to adopt them within the next year. So AI is not yet dominant in day-to-day practice.
However, expectations are much bigger than current usage. 93% believe AI will have either a major or moderate impact on PR measurement within two years. Respondents see the strongest potential in AI search visibility, automation, coverage categorisation and predictive analytics. The report therefore frames AI not as a fringe add-on but as a major incoming force.
The most distinctive AI-related theme is LLM visibility: whether brands, executives or clients appear in answers generated by tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. 61% say they are either already tracking this or planning to do so. 78% say it is important to understand whether they are mentioned in AI-generated answers. And 67% believe LLM visibility will become a standard PR metric in the next two to three years. The report explicitly links this to GEO, or generative engine optimisation, positioning LLM visibility as a new frontier metric for earned visibility in AI-mediated information environments.
At the same time, the report shows caution. The biggest concern about AI in measurement is accuracy, cited by 75%, followed by ethical risks such as bias or misinformation at 55%. Concerns about transparency, proving ROI and lacking the right tools also feature strongly. So the report’s stance is not techno-utopian. It suggests the profession expects AI to matter profoundly, but also worries that the tools may be opaque, unreliable, or difficult to justify to stakeholders.
5) What do the findings imply about the maturity, weaknesses, and likely direction of PR measurement as a discipline?
The report paints PR measurement as a field that is mature in adoption but uneven in sophistication. Measurement itself is now standard. Teams report regularly, use multiple metrics, and see measurement as central to their work. In that sense, the discipline has advanced beyond the older era in which measurement could be dismissed or ignored.
Yet the report also suggests that methodological maturity lags behind cultural acceptance. The low uptake of formal frameworks, reliance on output-heavy metrics, moderate confidence in reported results, and difficulty linking PR outcomes to business goals all point to a profession that has embraced measurement without fully solving the harder questions of meaning, causality and value demonstration.
A second implication is that PR measurement remains shaped by stakeholder pressure. Teams measure above all to demonstrate impact to leadership or clients. That helps explain why familiar metrics survive even when practitioners question their adequacy: those metrics are legible, expected, and easy to communicate. The report therefore implies that the evolution of PR measurement is not just a technical matter; it is also organisational and political. Metrics persist partly because they satisfy audiences, not only because they best represent reality.
Finally, the likely direction is clear. The next stage of PR measurement will probably be defined by two parallel moves: a continued push to connect communications data to business KPIs, and a rapid expansion of AI-related measurement, especially around LLM visibility and AI-generated mentions. But the report also implies that this future will be credible only if the profession addresses accuracy, transparency, and framework quality more seriously than it has so far. In that sense, the report is both optimistic and cautionary: PR measurement is expanding and modernising, but its legitimacy will depend on whether it can become not just more digital, but more disciplined.