How useful is advertising value/cost equivalence in Media Analysis?

AVE (also known, and more accurately described, as Advertising Cost Equivalence - ACE) is a conversion of editorial space into a notional advertising cost. The area occupied by the editorial coverage is measured and an estimate of the costs of buying the space, as though it were advertising, is calculated. It is then common practice to multiply the estimated cost of space by a factor of 2, or 3, or 5 or even 8 - to take account of the view that editorial space is worth more than advertising.

AVE is deeply flawed as a system of measurement. With advertising, the advertiser has complete control over what is said and how it is presented. With media coverage, that is not the case. With advertising, the audience knows that the advertiser is presenting his case as positively as he can. With media coverage, this is not the case. Therefore, on key factors of control and credibility, there are major differences between advertising and media coverage.

It need hardly be pointed out that any cash-based measurement that can be multiplied by a factor of 2 through to 8, on the whim of the analyst or client, must and will be treated with deep scepticism. The best that can be said of AVE is that it is simply an index of exposure. (The cash values it generates may sensibly be disregarded.) Furthermore, if AVE is merely an index, it is reasonable to ask whether there is not a more direct measurement of exposure (i.e. how many people in the target audience have been reached). And there is.

It is only fair to add that, while AVE's should be treated with extreme caution, they do have one positive aspect - they reflect, to some extent, through the advertising rates charged, the size and quality of audience reached. This means that they are superior to an even more commonly used deficient form of measurement - simple counts of numbers of articles or numbers of mentions which entirely ignore the size and quality of the audience reached.