Every discovery call reaches the same moment. Somewhere between the pleasantries and the pricing, the prospect asks a version of the same question.
How do you actually know if your PR is working?
How is it proven?
Research conducted by the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) suggests that the communications measurement gap is less about whether practitioners recognise the importance of proving impact, and more about how measurement is embedded into daily practice.
A 2024 industry survey conducted on behalf of AMEC found that while practitioners report aligning PR metrics with broader business goals 80 per cent of the time, only half say measurement and evaluation get a dedicated budget line, and just 51 per cent say clients scope one into the RFP or SOW in the first place. The intent is there. The funding and follow-through often aren't.
And client demand for proof is rising faster than the industry's ability to supply it.
The same survey found seven in 10 practitioners say most or all their clients now require measurement, evaluation, and reporting to demonstrate effectiveness, and three-quarters say they're actively testing or adopting new measurement tools to keep pace.
The demand side of the equation has clearly shifted. Whether the supply side, proof that actually holds up, has kept pace is a different question.
The next blind spot, AI
In May, AMEC launched its GEO Principles for AI-led measurement, and one thread runs through them: visibility in an AI-generated answer is not, by itself, an outcome.
The principles ask practitioners to distinguish being surfaced by an AI system from actually shifting awareness, trust, behaviour, or impact.
They also call for practitioners to document the tools, prompts, platforms, dates, and other assumptions behind AI-visibility claims, and to treat observed AI outputs as directional evidence rather than definitive proof.
That matters because AI visibility risks becoming PR's next version of AVE: a number that looks precise, is easy to report, and tells you much less than it appears to.
The channel has changed. The measurement problem hasn't.
The relic everyone still leans on
The frustrating thing is that this isn't a new problem the industry hasn't had time to solve. It's an old problem the industry agreed to solve, then largely didn't.
Sixteen years ago, AMEC's Barcelona Principles formally rejected Advertising Value Equivalency, the practice of pricing a story's column inches or airtime as if it had been bought as advertising.
Principle five is blunt about it: invalid measures such as AVEs should not be used, and the contribution of communication should be measured by outcomes and impact. PRSA, the PRCA, CIPR, and the Global Alliance all endorsed the same position.
For more on AVEs, read Kate Midttun's recent column.
What is actually being asked
Increasingly, prospects aren't asking whether we'll get coverage. They're asking what the coverage is supposed to change.
That's the biggest shift in the conversations I'm having. The strongest prospects have stopped asking, "Will you get us coverage?" They're asking what should happen because of the coverage, and they want that outcome named before any activity starts, not narrated afterwards.
One recent prospect made the point particularly clearly. They didn't want visibility built around one spokesperson. They wanted enough independent evidence, practice-level data, real accounts of impact, and multiple credible sources, to make a sector issue impossible for decision-makers to ignore.
The output they cared about wasn't hits. It was whether the issue moved from invisible to part of the public conversation.
That distinction, between output and outcome, is exactly what the Barcelona Principles have been arguing for since 2010: measure what communication is intended to change, not simply the space coverage occupies.
It's also one of the fastest ways to tell, in a first meeting, whether a prospect has a realistic view of what earned media can do, and whether an agency is offering a genuine plan or a highlights reel.
The honesty problem, not the measurement problem
PR's ROI problem was never really about the absence of good measurement frameworks. We've had one, publicly, since 2010.
It's an incentive problem: AVE-style theatre is easier to sell and easier to buy than an honest account of what's provable and what isn't. Clients who accept a big scary number without asking how it was calculated are complicit in that too.
Good measurement requires agreement before the first pitch goes out.
That is what is this campaign intended to change, what evidence would demonstrate that change, and what can earned media alone not prove?
That is the standard the industry has had in front of it for 16 years.
The problem isn't that we don't know how to measure PR better.
It's that, too often, we still choose not to.
Jasmin Hyde is the founder of Hyde & Seek Communications, a Melbourne-based strategic communications consultancy advising founders, executives, and organisations where reputation has real commercial consequences. The firm focuses on earned media, executive positioning, and digital PR for the AI search era, working across tech, healthcare, sustainability, and social impact.
After a decade advising leaders across government, corporate, and high-trust sectors, Jasmin started Hyde & Seek on the view that the industry doesn't need more volume. It needs better stories, and the right people getting the right kind of attention.
She writes regularly on the shifting economics of earned media, the changing role of PR in an AI-mediated information ecosystem, and why credibility can't be bought.
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