Tag: PR measurement

Thought Leadership Alpha Report by Cardinal 40
About the paper

The report examines whether CEO “thought leadership” — voluntary, owned executive communications such as op-eds, speeches, interviews, public statements and shareholder letters — is associated with stock-market value.

It is an associative, observational event-study using 1,034 CEO communications from 357 S&P 500 companies over 26 years, with a narrower 287-event non-shareholder sample for its strongest “canon similarity” finding.

The methodology combines Fama-French three-factor cumulative abnormal return analysis over a one-week window with computational text analysis, including 63 formulaic text features, whole-document embeddings, and semantic comparison against a curated canon of landmark CEO communications.

The geographic scope is U.S. publicly traded companies; the report explicitly says findings may not generalise to private companies or non-U.S. markets.

Length: 24 pages

More information / download:
https://cardinal40.com/2026-alpha-report/

Core Insights

1. What is the report’s central claim about CEO thought leadership and shareholder value?

The report’s central claim is that the quality of CEO thought leadership is associated with measurable differences in short-term stock-market performance. It argues that CEO communications are not merely neutral containers for information already created elsewhere in the business; the way the CEO frames, writes and communicates ideas may itself be associated with value.

The headline number is deliberately attention-grabbing: the report says that the difference between top- and bottom-decile communication quality corresponds to roughly 0.9 percentage points in one-week cumulative abnormal returns. For the median S&P 500 company, it translates this into approximately $367 million in shareholder value; for the average Magnificent Seven company, it says the equivalent would be about $25 billion.

However, the report is careful — at least in several places — to stress that this is not a causal finding. It does not prove that writing a better CEO op-ed, speech or letter will mechanically increase the share price. Rather, it identifies an association between certain kinds of CEO communication and abnormal returns over a short market window. This distinction matters because the report’s own framing sometimes leans rhetorically towards “words create value”, while the research design can only support “words are associated with value”.

2. How does the report define and measure “thought leadership”?

The report defines thought leadership as voluntary public communication authored by, or directly attributed to, a sitting CEO. It includes four categories:
1. bylined op-eds
2. public speeches and testimony
3. interviews and public statements
4. and annual shareholder letters.
The communications had to have a known publication or delivery date, and the authors excluded communications that could not be reliably dated or that coincided with obvious market-moving information such as quarterly earnings.

The main financial outcome is the one-week Fama-French three-factor cumulative abnormal return, or FF3 CAR, measured from the trading day of publication through five trading days afterwards. This controls for broad market return, company size and value factors. In plain English, the report is asking: after adjusting for what the stock might normally have been expected to do, did it outperform or underperform in the week after the CEO communication?

The study then uses two samples. The full universe contains 1,034 communications and is used to show the overall spread of market reactions, to test simple text features, and to test broad embedding-based prediction. The narrower sample contains 287 non-shareholder communications and excludes shareholder letters because these are often published alongside annual reports or other financially material disclosures, making it harder to isolate the communication effect.

Methodologically, this is best described as an original, mixed-methods-style empirical report: it combines original data collection, financial event-study analysis, natural language processing, and a professionally curated qualitative benchmark of “great” CEO communications. It is not an expert survey, not a simple secondary analysis, and not a modelling/data pack alone.

3. What does the report find about ordinary writing advice and formulaic text features?

One of the report’s more interesting findings is negative: simple writing rules do not explain the variation in market outcomes. The authors tested 63 text features, including things such as word count, reading level, sentiment, use of data, and pronoun choices. Only three were statistically significant at the 95% level, and none remained significant after multiple-testing corrections.

This matters because it pushes against much conventional communications advice. The report is effectively saying that the market signal, if there is one, is not captured by easy prescriptions such as “make it shorter”, “use more data”, “sound more positive”, or “avoid jargon”. Those features may still matter for readability, reputation, clarity or persuasion, but in this study they did not reliably predict one-week abnormal returns.

The implication is that “good” executive communication cannot be reduced to a checklist. The authors’ interpretation is that quality lives in the whole document: the underlying argument, tone, originality, judgement, structure, substance and credibility of the communication as a complete act of leadership. That is a useful point, although it also makes the report less prescriptive than its commercial framing might suggest.

4. What role do embeddings and the “canon” play in the report’s argument?

After simple text features failed, the report turns to whole-document embeddings. These convert each communication into a position in a 384-dimensional semantic space, intended to capture the overall meaning and character of the document rather than isolated attributes. Using five-fold cross-validation, the embedding model produced a statistically significant but modest relationship between predicted and realised one-week abnormal returns. The reported correlation is around r = +0.079 in the main discussion, meaning the model explains less than 1% of the variance.

That result supports the report’s claim that some textual signal exists, but it does not tell communicators what “good” looks like. To make the finding more interpretable, the authors construct a canon of 33 landmark CEO communications, including examples such as Warren Buffett’s annual letters, Steve Jobs’s Stanford commencement speech, Andrew Carnegie’s “The Gospel of Wealth”, and Marc Andreessen’s “Why Software Is Eating the World”. They then measure how semantically similar each CEO communication is to this canon.

The strongest interpretable finding is that communications closer to the canon are associated with stronger abnormal returns in the 287-event non-shareholder sample. The pooled correlation is modest, r = +0.101, with p = 0.087, which does not meet the conventional 5% significance threshold. But top-quartile canon-similar communications averaged +0.469 percentage points in abnormal return, compared with +0.084 percentage points for the full non-shareholder sample.

This is the report’s most distinctive idea: “quality” is not defined as mimicry of one famous CEO, but as semantic proximity to a broad region occupied by communications that experienced practitioners judge to be exemplary. The report’s page 20 chart visualises a permutation test suggesting that the observed canon relationship is unlikely to be just an artefact of one hand-picked canon, though the canon itself still rests on professional judgement.

5. What are the most important limitations and implications of the report?

The most important limitation is that the study is observational. The authors cannot randomly assign different CEO communications to different companies, so the findings are correlational rather than causal. The report explicitly acknowledges that unobserved firm characteristics, strategic timing, concurrent events or CEO quality more broadly could explain some or all of the observed relationship.

A second limitation is statistical modesty. The embedding result is statistically significant but explains less than 1% of variance. The canon similarity result is directionally consistent and economically interesting, but it does not clear the conventional 0.05 significance threshold. The report itself warns that neither result should be treated as a strong predictive tool.

A third limitation is generalisability. The study is based on publicly traded U.S. companies with sufficient trading data, and on communications that could be systematically collected. It may not apply to private firms, non-U.S. markets, internal communication, political communication, social media, podcasts or other executive-visibility formats not covered by the taxonomy.

The practical implication is not “write like Warren Buffett and your stock will rise”. A more defensible takeaway is that CEO communication quality may be financially material, but that quality is holistic, contextual and difficult to reduce to simple writing hacks. For communications leaders, the report strengthens the case for investing in executive thought leadership as a serious strategic discipline — while also warning against overclaiming what the current evidence proves.
8 April 2026
State of PR 2026 by Meltwater

About the paper

The paper is a global survey-based industry report on how PR and communications professionals are navigating resourcing pressure, measurement, AI, media relations, collaboration and future skills.

The report is original survey research based on more than 1,100 international PR professionals, including almost 500 from the United States, 100 from Canada and respondents from across the world, with Europe described as particularly well represented.

The fieldwork method, sampling approach and timeframe are not clearly specified in the report.

Length: 56 pages

More information / download:
https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/state-of-pr

Core Insights

1. What is the central picture the report paints of the PR industry in 2026?

The report presents PR as an industry caught between familiar old pressures and a new wave of technological disruption. On the one hand, many of the profession’s core challenges remain highly recognisable: lack of resources, difficulty measuring impact, managing stakeholders, getting journalists to respond and doing more with less. On the other hand, AI, social media, data and changing audience behaviour are reshaping the environment in which those classic challenges now have to be solved.

The report’s strongest overarching argument is that PR is becoming more strategically important, but still struggles to prove that importance in business terms. It explicitly links this to generative AI: as LLMs increasingly influence how brands are described and discovered, earned media and public narratives may become even more central to brand visibility. In that sense, the report positions PR not as a shrinking discipline, but as one whose relevance could grow if it can modernise its tools, metrics and internal influence.

At the same time, the report is clear that the profession has not fully made the shift from activity-based communication to business-aligned communication. Many teams are still judged by volume and reach of media placements, while challenges around ROI, business KPIs and leadership understanding remain persistent. The conclusion frames the core issue as one of alignment: between PR and leadership on strategy and metrics, between PR and marketing on execution, and between human creativity and AI in daily workflows.

2. What are the main operational challenges facing PR professionals?

The most frequently cited challenge is insufficient resources, named by 24% of respondents. Measurement follows closely, with 21% identifying measuring impact and ROI as a top challenge. Managing stakeholder expectations comes next at 16%, followed by getting responses from journalists at 12% and adopting new technologies at 10%.

This distribution matters because it shows that the profession’s biggest pressures are not only external. The difficult media environment is part of the story, but the larger picture is organisational: PR teams are under-resourced, expected to prove impact, and often dependent on leaders who may not fully understand the value or mechanics of communications work.

The report reinforces this with budget data. A majority expect PR budgets to stay flat, while only 21.3% expect an increase and 17.3% expect a decrease. Budget decisions are also often made outside the PR function: 36.7% say the CEO decides PR spending, while 19.2% say a C-level marketing leader does. Only 32.6% say a C-level PR or communications executive makes these decisions.

Time pressure is another recurring theme. The biggest time sinks are reactive work such as crisis response and urgent requests, cited by 27.9%, and content creation, cited by 27.5%. Measurement and reporting account for another 20.3%. The report’s implied diagnosis is that PR teams are stuck in a reactive operating model, spending too much time on urgent execution and too little on strategic, higher-value work.

3. How mature is the industry’s approach to measurement and business impact?

The report suggests that PR measurement remains stuck between aspiration and reality. Many teams understand that they need to connect communication to business outcomes, but their most common metrics still lean heavily towards activity and visibility.

The most important metrics for evaluating PR success are the number of media placements and reach/impressions, both at 20.9%. Social media engagement follows at 11%, while more business-relevant or interpretive metrics such as website traffic/conversions, message pull-through, share of voice and sentiment analysis rank lower. This supports one of the report’s central criticisms: the industry is still often measuring what is easiest to measure rather than what best demonstrates business value.

The measurement section makes this even clearer. When asked about challenges, 34.7% cite aligning metrics to business KPIs, and 27.8% cite proving PR’s value to leadership. Another 22.4% point to over-reliance on outdated metrics such as impressions and AVE. Although nearly three quarters say they have at least some of the tools needed to connect PR activity to wider business outcomes, only 32.1% say they fully have those tools; 39% say they only partially do.

The report’s perspective is therefore not that measurement is impossible, but that PR measurement is underdeveloped and uneven. It implies that the profession needs more sophisticated reporting, closer linkage to business objectives and better executive-facing narratives about what PR contributes.

4. How is generative AI affecting PR work, and what concerns does it raise?

Generative AI is presented as both a practical tool and a major strategic disruptor. A majority of respondents say AI is already integrated into communication workflows: 13.3% describe it as highly integrated and 42.1% as somewhat integrated. Only 9.8% say it is not integrated at all.

Current use is heavily concentrated around content work. The most common applications are external content creation, content optimisation and review, campaign brainstorming, internal content creation, writing press releases and crafting media pitches. Measurement and reporting are much lower at 2.1%, which suggests that many teams still use AI primarily as a production assistant rather than as a strategic analysis or intelligence tool.

The report also highlights a gap between adoption and governance. While 36.2% say their organisation has a formal AI policy and 26.4% say one is in development, 31.4% say they do not have one. This makes AI governance one of the more practical risks in the report: usage is becoming normal before policies, training and operating models are fully mature.

The biggest concern about AI is that it may reduce the need for human talent, cited by 28.6%. Other concerns include shrinking communications budgets and reducing PR’s seat at the table. Interestingly, concerns about accuracy and content quality appear very low in the report’s results, which may suggest either that respondents are less worried about quality than job security, or that the survey options did not fully surface deeper concerns around misinformation, ethics and brand risk.

Looking ahead, AI dominates the future-facing findings. AI integration is the top skill PR professionals believe they will need over the next five years, and navigating new technologies such as AI is seen as the biggest future challenge. AI as a tool for content creation and data analysis is also identified as the emerging trend likely to have the greatest impact on PR.

5. What are the most important implications for PR leaders and communication teams?

The report’s main implication is that PR teams need to become more strategically aligned, more data-literate and more operationally efficient. The conclusion explicitly argues that success in 2026 and beyond will depend on using powerful new tools without losing the human skills that make PR valuable: storytelling, relationship-building and creativity.

For PR leaders, the most immediate implication is the need to speak more directly in business language. Since resources and budgets are major concerns, and since budget decisions often sit with CEOs or marketing leaders, PR teams need to show clearer links between communication activity and organisational outcomes. The report repeatedly suggests that better reporting and business-aligned metrics are essential not only for measurement, but for influence.

A second implication is that PR needs stronger collaboration across the organisation. Respondents already collaborate most often with executive leadership and marketing, but they want more involvement from leadership, customer experience, marketing and product development in communications strategy. The main barriers are misaligned priorities, departmental politics or silos, and lack of communication. This points to a broader strategic role for PR, but also to the difficulty of securing that role inside complex organisations.

A third implication is that AI cannot simply be treated as a content shortcut. The report encourages teams to operationalise AI, formalise policies, invest in tools and training, and use AI to reduce time spent on repetitive or low-value tasks. The opportunity is not just faster content production, but freeing up capacity for more rewarding and strategic work.

Finally, the report implies that the human fundamentals of PR remain durable. Media relevance, timeliness and reporter relationships are still the most important factors in securing coverage. Individual email remains by far the most effective pitching channel. LinkedIn is the most valuable professional social platform. These findings suggest that while the tools are changing rapidly, the profession’s underlying value still depends on judgement, relationships, relevance and trust.

13 January 2026
State of PR Measurement 2025 by Muck Rack

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.

30 October 2025
State of PR Measurement 2024 by Muck Rack

About the paper

The report examines how PR professionals measure, track and report their work, with a particular focus on which metrics they use, which they trust, the challenges they face, and how reporting is coordinated internally.

It is based on original research: a self-administered online survey fielded from 11 to 21 October 2024, with 472 responses collected and 397 retained after data cleaning; the report gives a conservative margin of error of about ±5%.

The geographic scope is not clearly specified in the report, although respondents were recruited primarily through Muck Rack’s database and email contacts.

Length: 25 pages

More information / download:
https://muckrack.com/blog/2024/11/06/the-state-of-pr-measurement-2024

Core Insights

1. Why does PR measurement matter so much to practitioners, according to the report?

Measurement matters because PR professionals see it as central to demonstrating the value of their work. The report shows that 86% say measuring and reporting PR efforts is either very important or extremely important, and 89% say the main reason they report on their work is to demonstrate impact to leadership or clients.

It is also not a marginal activity within the profession. For 40% of respondents, measurement and reporting account for at least a quarter of their job, making it one of the more time-consuming parts of PR work. The report therefore presents measurement not as an optional add-on, but as a core part of how PR teams justify their contribution and maintain credibility with decision-makers.

A further sign of its importance is that respondents link PR’s perceived value to measurability. The top factors seen as increasing PR’s value among internal stakeholders include producing measurable results and tying PR activities to key business initiatives. That suggests PR measurement is not only about internal reporting discipline, but also about status, influence and budget legitimacy inside organisations.

2. Which metrics do PR professionals rely on most, and which do they trust least?

The most commonly used metrics are number of stories placed, reach/impressions and website impact. Specifically, 85% track number of stories placed, 76% track reach/impressions, and 46% track website impact. On average, respondents say they track five metrics.

However, the metrics that are most used are not always the same as those seen as most accurate. The three metrics considered most trustworthy are number of stories placed, reach/impressions and key message pull-through. Number of stories placed is the standout: 63% say it most accurately measures their efforts. Reach/impressions comes next at 42%, followed by key message pull-through at 35%.

By contrast, respondents are notably sceptical about several metrics often associated with more sophisticated or business-oriented measurement. Pitch performance is seen as the least accurate by 32%, while sentiment and revenue impact are each named by 24%. Reach/impressions also appears on the “least accurate” list for 23%, showing that some widely used measures are also contested. In other words, PR professionals continue to rely heavily on familiar output and exposure metrics, while remaining uncertain about the validity of several commonly discussed alternatives.

3. What does the report reveal about confidence and difficulty in PR measurement?

The report reveals a profession that sees measurement as necessary, but not fully settled or secure in how it does it. Only 7% say they are extremely confident in the metrics they report, while 31% are very confident and 49% are only somewhat confident. That means roughly half of respondents occupy a middle ground: they are not without confidence, but neither are they fully convinced that their reporting tells the whole story well.

The difficulty of the work reinforces that picture. Just 25% say tracking their efforts is easy or very easy, while 40% say it is neither easy nor difficult and 35% say it is difficult or very difficult. So although most teams do measure their work, many do so with uncertainty and friction.

Time pressure appears to be part of the explanation. Most respondents spend relatively little time on measurement and reporting: 56% spend one to four hours per week, and 32% spend less than one hour. Altogether, 88% spend under four hours weekly. The report implies that PR measurement is treated as important, but often carried out under practical constraints that limit how rigorous or comprehensive it can be.

4. What are the biggest obstacles preventing stronger PR measurement?

The biggest obstacle is linking PR metrics to business goals. This is selected by 61% of respondents, making it the top challenge in the study. That is significant because it points to a structural problem: PR teams may be able to report activity and outputs, but struggle to connect those outputs to wider organisational priorities and outcomes.

The next major challenge is managing stakeholder expectations, cited by 53%. This suggests measurement is not just a technical problem of data collection, but also a political and communicative one. PR professionals are operating in environments where different stakeholders may want different kinds of proof, at different levels of sophistication, and with different assumptions about what PR should be able to deliver.

Other important barriers include unclear goals or success metrics, named by 38%, and not having the right goals or success metrics, cited by 23%. The report also notes that open-ended responses mentioned data quality, access to resources and maintaining consistency year over year. Taken together, these findings suggest the core weakness is not merely lack of tools, but a broader lack of alignment around what success looks like and how PR contribution should be evaluated.

5. What broader picture does the report paint of the current state of PR measurement?

The report paints a picture of a profession that is committed to measurement, but still in a transitional stage of maturity. Most PR professionals measure their work, most consider measurement highly important, and many recognise that metrics are essential for proving PR’s value. But this commitment sits alongside only moderate confidence, persistent methodological disagreement and fairly limited time investment.

It also shows that measurement remains unevenly integrated inside organisations. Responsibility for reporting is spread across roles, with 32% saying the whole team collaborates equally, while others assign it to managers, coordinators, directors or others. Coordination with marketing is mixed: 31% say reporting is handled separately with no coordination, 30% share reports for alignment, and only 13% hold joint meetings to discuss combined metrics. This suggests PR measurement is still often siloed rather than fully embedded in a broader business-performance framework.

The report’s underlying perspective is clear: PR needs better ways to demonstrate impact, especially to leadership. But the findings also suggest that the field has not fully resolved the tension between easy-to-report output metrics and more meaningful business-linked measures. The consequence is a measurement culture that is active and valued, yet still searching for stronger credibility, clearer standards and better organisational integration.

5 November 2024