Universal Information Services

As our service for analyzing media exposure continues to explode, I wanted to share the most common question we get from future subscribers. This question is a strong indicator of what matters most to corporate communicators and PR professionals who must track and measure their news media exposure. In this question evolves the primer and why Universal Information Services developed the Impact Score.

The Question:
“What really is the impact of our publicity?”

From that simple question we can determine the following about this client:

• Understanding the value of earned media is important
• Demonstrating ROI from their media exposure is of great value to their stakeholders
• Gauging the impressions their media exposure had on a target audience is key

In other words, “How did my earned media impact the news viewing public?”

It is no wonder that this question is so important. With all companies doing more work with fewer people, and the pressure to justify costs and efforts ever growing, people must have objective figures to prove their impact. For this reason, our Media Analysis Director Gina Svendsen, spent the last year developing a scoring system to effectively account for qualitative measures and news prominence. This effort has culminated in our aptly named, Impact Score.

From our media analysis literature (stay awake here):
The Impact Score takes into account the number of qualitative driver conditions met AND the media source. Points are given in two areas: 1-qualitative points and 2-media source points. For each qualitative driver present in a given story, 1-point is given. Media source points are earned from a 3-tier point system. Sources are tiered into three categories named top, middle, and bottom. The top tier includes sources that have a circulation or audience placing them in the upper 1/3 of news sources. Top tier sources can also be top industry publications, which may not have a high circulation, but carry a high regard in the industry. Middle tier sources have a circulation or audiences indicating a mid-level prominence, between tiers 1 and 3. Other industry sources may also be named in this middle tier rank. The bottom tier will include sources with a circulation or audience below that over the upper 66% of sources. Media Source points are awarded as follows: top=15, middle=10, bottom=5. Together the statistic generated unveils the true impact of a story, a weighted factor our clients can use to truly understand their impact on each news story.

If you’re struggling to demonstrate the impact of your media exposure, or just want to explore media measurement options from Universal Information Services, let us know. We’d also love to here how you approach PR analysis based on your news monitoring results.

Thanks for your time!