There's a number that gets thrown around a lot in PR. You might have seen it on an agency's monthly report, usually formatted something like this:

Total PR Value Generated: $847,000

It sounds incredible. It's also, largely, made up.

That number is called Advertising Value Equivalency – or AVE. The idea is simple: take every piece of media coverage you landed, figure out what that same space would have cost as a paid advertisement, and call that your "PR value." A full-page spread in the NZ Herald? Let's say that's $12,000 in ad spend. So your agency "generated" $12,000 in PR value from that one story.

Agencies have been using AVE for decades. And for decades, pretty much everyone who thinks seriously about communications has agreed it's nonsense.

The PR industry's own governing bodies – including AMEC, the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication – formally declared AVE an invalid metric back in 2010. That was fifteen years ago.

And yet, plenty of agencies are still using it. Or something close to it. Because it produces big, impressive-sounding numbers that make clients feel good about their invoices.

We think that's a problem. So we built something better.

What's Wrong With How PR Gets Measured?

Let's be honest about the state of PR measurement, because it's a bit of a mess.

AVE had obvious problems – it assumed that a news article was worth exactly as much as an ad of the same size, which ignores the fact that earned media (a journalist choosing to cover your story) is fundamentally more credible and more trusted than paid advertising. So in some ways AVE actually undersells PR.

But the replacement metrics the industry moved to aren't much cleaner.

Reach and impressions figures are pulled from media kit circulation numbers – which tell you how many people could theoretically have seen your story, not how many actually read it. A story published on Stuff.co.nz technically reaches millions of monthly visitors. How many of those people saw your particular article, let alone read it? Nobody really knows.

"Share of voice" and "sentiment analysis" are useful internally but meaningless to a founder trying to figure out whether their PR spend is working relative to other marketing channels.

And the monthly PDF report that most agencies send – full of logos, coverage screenshots, and reach numbers – doesn't answer the one question every client actually wants answered:

Is my PR spend beating what I'd pay for the same exposure through advertising?

That's the number that matters. And nobody was calculating it in a way that was simple, honest, and impossible to inflate.

So we did.

Introducing the Earned Media Efficiency Index

The Earned Media Efficiency Index – EMEI – is the metric we developed to give our clients a clear, honest answer to that question.

Here's how it works.

For every piece of coverage we land, we pull the media outlet's verified circulation figures from their published media kit. We use those figures to calculate the total audience reach of your coverage. Then we apply a standard CPM (cost per thousand impressions) to estimate what that reach would have cost if you'd bought it through paid advertising.

We use $25 NZD as our default CPM – a conservative, fair-market figure. For clients who run their own paid media campaigns and know their actual CPM, we can tailor the index to their real numbers, which makes the comparison even more meaningful.

That gives us a "fair market value" for your coverage. We then divide that by what you actually paid us.

EMEI = Fair Market Value of Coverage ÷ What You Paid Payper

An EMEI above 1.0 means your earned media was more cost-efficient than paid advertising. The higher the number, the more efficient.

Simple. Transparent. Impossible to fudge.

What Does This Look Like in Practice?

Here are two real examples from our current clients.

Evnex

Evnex is New Zealand's leading EV charger manufacturer, and they've been a Payper retainer client for some time. Consistent, high-quality coverage across outlets including NZ Herald, Stuff, and trade media.

Their EMEI sits at 2.90.

That means the earned media we've generated for Evnex is 2.9 times more cost-efficient than if they'd bought the same audience reach through paid advertising. For every dollar they spend with us, they're getting the equivalent of $2.90 in paid media value.

Contented

Contented is an AI startup that raised a $4.1 million seed round earlier this year. We helped them announce that round, and the coverage was substantial – 18+ pieces across New Zealand and Australian outlets including NBR, BusinessDesk, Capital Brief, and Reseller News.

Their current EMEI is 8.01.

That's an extraordinary number. But it's important to give it context: Contented is a newer client, and their EMEI has been supercharged by the seed round announcement – a moment that generated a concentrated burst of high-quality coverage. As the relationship matures and coverage normalises beyond a landmark announcement, that number will settle to something more stable.

We're transparent about that with them. An EMEI of 8.01 right now is genuinely exciting. But we'd rather them understand what's driving it than walk away with an inflated expectation of what steady-state PR looks like.

That's kind of the whole point.

Why This Matters More Than a Big "PR Value" Number

We've heard stories – not from our own clients, but it's common in the industry – of businesses being shown "PR value" reports with figures in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, feeling great about their agency, then quietly wondering six months later why they couldn't point to any tangible business impact.

The PR value number was real. The methodology was just designed to impress rather than inform.

The EMEI is designed to do the opposite. It's a ratio, not a dollar figure – so it can't be inflated simply by landing more coverage in higher-circulation outlets. It answers a specific question (are you beating paid media on efficiency?) with a specific, honest answer.

Our clients see their EMEI in every regular report we send. It sits alongside their coverage list, outlet reach figures, and the fees they paid that period. Everything in one place, nothing hidden.

And because we only charge when we land coverage, our incentives are completely aligned with yours. We don't benefit from sending you a big, impressive EMEI based on shaky assumptions. We benefit from actually delivering efficient, high-quality coverage – because that's the only way we get paid.

How to Use the EMEI When Evaluating Your PR

Whether you're working with us or another agency, the EMEI framework is a useful lens for evaluating your PR spend. Here's what to look for:

• EMEI below 1.0: Your PR is costing more than equivalent paid media reach. That doesn't automatically mean it's not worth it – earned media carries credibility that ads don't – but it's worth interrogating.
• EMEI between 1.0 and 2.0: Solid. Your PR is delivering genuine efficiency over paid channels.
• EMEI above 2.0: Strong performance. Your coverage is reaching significant audiences at well below market ad rates.
• EMEI above 5.0: Usually driven by a landmark moment – a major funding round, an award, a product launch that broke through. Enjoy it, but set realistic expectations for what follows.

If you're currently working with an agency that can't show you this kind of calculation – or won't – it's worth asking why.

The Bottom Line

PR has always been hard to measure. That's partly why the industry developed AVE in the first place – clients asked for a number, and agencies gave them one.

But "hard to measure" doesn't mean "impossible to measure honestly." It just means you have to be willing to do the work, and willing to share a number that might sometimes be smaller than a made-up one.

The EMEI isn't perfect. No single metric ever is. But it's honest, it's grounded in real data, and it answers the question that actually matters.

And if you want to see what yours looks like, get in touch. We'll show you.