Papermill Founder and Director, Ashleigh McInnes sat down and shared her thoughts on the current state of brand building and ROI in the age of performance marketing.
The very first day I started Papermill back in 2010, I threw out the AVE (Ad Value Equivalent) method for attributing value to PR coverage.
Old and outdated, AVE relied on multiplying the cost of an ad placement by an invented number—anywhere between 3 to 15—to spit out a dollar figure meant to represent the “value” of a piece of earned media.
While some agencies still cling to AVE, the PR industry has struggled to agree on a single metric that effectively captures ROI. We have impressions, reach, sentiment, and impact—but nothing standardised or consistently reliable enough to confidently measure a campaign’s value in isolation.
And that’s always made me uncomfortable.
Sure, we can estimate readership using circulation stats, but connecting that exposure to actual leads is far more challenging. The journey from an organic media mention to a converted customer is often invisible — attributed to paid search when someone finally enters the funnel.
But now, a recent WARC report is finally offering a more meaningful way to evaluate the long-term impact of PR. It shows how equity-building efforts—like earned media—can play a vital role in keeping future customers engaged until they’re ready to buy and can be activated or ‘nudged’ into the funnel by performance marketing.
According to the report, brands that invest 30–50% of their marketing budget into equity-building, alongside performance marketing, see a 90% uplift in sales compared to those relying solely on performance tactics.
It’s certainly not a perfect solution to the industry-wide challenge of accurately attributing ROI to organic Public Relations strategies, but it’s a refreshing reminder of the power of word-of-mouth and ‘always on’ brand-building in the marketing funnel — especially in a digital environment dominated by short-term metrics like CPCs and CPMs.
My prediction for 2025 and beyond?
As AI-driven performance marketing becomes ubiquitous, it will start to lose its edge. Brands will need to lean more heavily on earned and owned channels—not just for trust and differentiation, but as more credible, human touchpoints in a highly automated landscape.
