Measurement guru cheers decision to reject Ad Value Equivalency

You probably didn’t feel it, but on Friday, Oct. 16, 2009, there was a shifting of the tectonic plates in Portsmouth, NH. No, it wasn’t recorded by the USGS, but if you’re in the PR world, you would have felt it. That was the day that the Institute for Public Relations’ Measurement Commission voted definitively—19 to 2—to “reject AVEs (ad value equivalency), the concept and the practice.”

At the time, I tweeted that I could now die happy because for so long I’ve said that my mission is to have “she killed the AVE” written on my tombstone.

For those agencies, clients and providers that are now left in limbo, making money off of a practice that has now been rejected by leading experts in both Canada and the U.S., I can only say: “move on.”