How To Measure Your Communications’ Impact: Breaking Down the Top Media Metrics

In an increasingly competitive media landscape, breaking through the noise can be tricky. You can put your message out there, but how do you know if people are actually able to hear it?  

Media metrics allow you to measure the success of your communication: Article impressions, average viewership, and social media engagement all help you gauge how people are responding to your story. However, there are a lot of different numbers out there, and it can be difficult to tell which metric is most important.  

Today, Hawthorne Strategy Group breaks down the top media metrics involved in your communications plan, so you can know if your message is making an impact.  

What Are the Top Earned Media Metrics?  

Earned media—publicity that your organization receives free of charge—is a staple in most communications plans. This type of coverage is organic: News articles, TV segments, and radio segments are all examples of earned media. Because this type of media comes from external sources, such as journalists and influencers, rather than the organization itself, it often comes across as highly authentic and trustworthy by audiences.  

UVM 

UVM (sometimes appearing as UVPM) stands for unique visitors per month. This metric is the most common way to measure earned media. It represents the number of distinct individuals who view or listen to a media platform—in other words, it measures your potential reach. For example, UVM for a digital newspaper represents the number of people who visit that site each month, as verified by web traffic analytics. 

However, UVM doesn’t necessarily indicate how many people viewed a particular page, story, or segment; it measures your potential audience. In the vast majority of cases, exact individual readership on articles is proprietary information guarded closely by each outlet, so UVM is the best way to get a depiction of the placement’s approximate audience. 

Ad Value Equivalence (AVE) 

Ad value equivalence (AVE) is a metric used to estimate the monetary value of a media placement by comparing it to a paid advertisement. Think about how much money it would cost to print a 3-inch ad in a newspaper or broadcast a 30-second commercial: AVE estimates how much your story or segment would cost as an ad. This metric helps put a dollar amount on earned media; however, many communications experts (Hawthorne Strategy Group included) consider AVE to be an inexact metric, as different media monitoring platforms use different formulas to calculate the estimated value of your placement.  

Sentiment 

Sentiment is a media metric that represents how your organization appears in a media placement. Unlike the hard numbers of UVM and AVE, sentiment is often described qualitatively: it reflects the emotional tone of placement, categorizing it as positive, negative, or neutral.  

Sentiment is usually an AI-fueled metric, so it’s not always very exact. For example, an online article reporting on a recent shooting would categorize a brief mention of the hospital where the victim was taken as negative, even though the mention itself is neutral. That’s why it’s a good idea to manually tag mentions: evaluating a representative sample is the most accurate way to measure sentiment. This is how we use the metric at Hawthorne Strategy Group.  

Prominence 

Prominence is exactly what it sounds like: the prominence of your organization within a certain media placement. The general rule of thumb is that if less than 30% of a story or segment is about your organization, it would be considered “not prominent,” 31-70% is considered “somewhat prominent,” and above 71% would be “very prominent.” This media metric is a powerful tool to measure the quality of your mentions: Stories entirely about your organization have more sway than stories with only a glancing mention. Especially when tracked over time, prominence can measure the growth of your organization.  

However, keep in mind that that prominence does not account for sentiment. An article revealing a scandal in your organization could have high prominence but extremely negative sentiment, so it’s important to always consider the context of the media placements when measuring their impact.  

What Are the Top Owned Media Metrics?  

Owned media, as the name implies, is any media your organization owns and distributes itself. This can come in the form of company blogs, newsletter content, or organic social media posts. Unlike earned media, which is published by external sources, owned media comes directly from the organization. This provides a unique opportunity to address readers personally and build a relationship with your audience.  

Impressions  

Impressions is a powerful media metric that measures how many times your content is displayed to a user online. Every time your media is loaded onto someone’s screen, it’s counted as an impression—even if the same user loads your content multiple times. Unlike other media metrics, impressions don’t account for a user’s engagement with your content: clicks, comments, and other forms of engagement don’t impact the metric. 

Views 

Views often get lumped in with impressions, but the two media metrics are distinct. While impressions measure the number of appearances of your content, views look at how many people actually saw it. For example, if someone opens up a social media platform and your recent post loads somewhere in their feed, that is an impression; however, if the user scrolls down far enough to actually see your post, it becomes a view. Both metrics are important in understanding how far your content reaches.  

Click-Through-Rate (CTR) 

Click-through-rate (CTR)—one of the most frequently used media metrics—represents the percentage of people who clicked on a link versus the number of impressions. For example, a post with 25 impressions that receives 5 clicks would have a 20% CTR (5/25 x 100). CTR can measure a link that leads to your content, such as a search result on Google, or a link within your content, like an external registration form. In both cases, CTR represents your audience’s engagement: By measuring how many people click the provided link, you can gauge how effective your content is at capturing attention and driving traffic. 

CTR is a media metric that can apply to various types of media. In addition to owned, this metric can also measure audience engagement with paid and social media. If your content shares a link, you can measure its CTR.  

Share of Voice 

 

Unlike other media metrics, share of voice directly compares different topics or organizations. Think of it like your slice of the pie: Share of voice is the percentage of the market a conversation or company controls. This metric can look at the number of online mentions, social media activity, or the volume of media placements your organization has compared to other companies in your industry. The greater your share of voice, the more visible your brand.  

A brand does not need to have a majority share of voice to lead the conversation. For example: In a given media market, News Station A has a 44% share of voice, News Station B has 31%, News Station C has 25%. While News Station A does not have a majority, it still has the largest share of voice by a large margin. 

What Are the Top Paid Media Metrics?  

Paid media refers to any media placement that your organization pays to obtain. These placements are the core of advertising campaigns, but they can also play a vital role in your communications plan. Paid media placements are a powerful tool to get your story in front of an audience—both people you already know and new ones you’re trying to reach. Examples of paid media range from digital ads on a website to TV commercials to a billboard in Times Square.  

Return on Investment (ROI) 

One of the most important paid media metrics is return on investment (ROI). This metric, usually expressed as a percentage, measures the overall profit of your paid media campaign, including both what you spent and what you earned. For example, if your organization made $50,000 from a campaign you invested $25,000 into, then your ROI would be 200%—your net profit divided by your total investment. ROI considers multiple revenue streams as well as cost streams, providing a broad view of your communication’s impact and monetary value. 

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) 

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is another key media metric for measuring the financial success of your communications. Different from ROI, this metric focuses on the revenue generated from a specific advertising campaign: how much money you made from how much money you invested. For example, if the ROAS of your most recent paid media campaign is 3:1, that means you generated $3 for every $1 spent. This same ROAS could be expressed at 300%. By measuring ROAS, your organization can understand the economic value of your specific paid media placements.  

Cost-Per-Click (CPC) 

Cost-per-click (CPC) is the other top media metric used for paid media campaigns. CPC measures the price of each individual click on an advertisement. Unlike other paid campaign types that charge fixed rates upfront, the specific cost of a CPC campaign varies based on competition, ad performance, keyword relevance, and more—making the specific rate an important metric. The higher your CPC, the lower your ultimate return on investment.  

Conversion Rate 

Paid media placements often encourage viewers to complete a certain action: click on a link, fill out a form, or subscribe to a mailing list. These desired actions are called conversions—and conversion rates measure their impact. More specifically, conversion rate is a media metric that represents the percentage of users who convert after seeing or interacting with your media placement. This measurement helps you determine the success of your paid media: A high conversion rate indicates your media is effective at driving interest, contributing to a higher return on investment.  

What Are the Top Social Media Metrics?  

Social media is a newcomer in the media landscape. Platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok have carved out important niches in today’s media world that cannot be overlooked. However, it can be difficult to distinguish what type of media these posts are: Your organization can share media to its own profile, pay to boost a social media campaign, or earn media from an influencer. But what if a company sends an influencer a product to review for free without directly paying for their video? As you can see, the lines can become blurry very quickly.  

Thankfully, understanding how to measure the impact of your social media content is much more straightforward.  

Followers 

Followers is a social media metric that refers to the number of individuals who subscribe to (or “follow”) your page. In most cases, users don’t need to follow an account to see its content, so becoming a follower indicates that they want to continue seeing content. Your total number of followers represents the portion of your audience that is most tuned-in to your content.  

Engagement  

Engagement is a broad media metric that encompasses a lot of media types and measurements, but it boils down to the same thing: user interaction. On social media, engagement can refer to the number of likes on Facebook post, comments on TikTok video, or shares of an Instagram Reel. Each of these specific metrics can be measured and reported on individually to gauge how individual posts performed. When analyzed together, engagement measures your audience’s interest and connection with social media content.  

Tags and Mentions

Tags, mentions, and other versions of referencing a specific account allow you to link to other profiles on a social media platform. This metric might not seem as essential as others, but tags and mentions are a powerful representation of your organization’s visibility. When another account references you in their own content, they amplify your organization to a new audience you might not have otherwise reached. Similar to share of voice, this media metric is a key insight into how prominent your organization is in the vast network of a social media platform.  

How to Make an Impression on Your Audience 

There’s no one way to measure the success of your communications. Different types of media placements on varying platforms will have vastly different impacts: Some messages are best suited as owned content, while others will perform better as earned media. Others still could thrive as paid placements or on social media! To determine the best landing spot for your message, consider what is the desired impact for your media—then determine the best way to measure it.