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How to Measure PR Performance? [15 Metrics Explained]
Measuring PR is no longer about counting press releases. In 2026, PR performance can (and should be!) measured using data-driven metrics. In this guide, you’ll learn how to measure PR using concrete indicators and guidelines.
Measuring PR performance is the process of using data and analytics to evaluate the overall impact of your PR activities on brand visibility, audience perception, and desired business outcomes.
How to measure PR performance?
To measure PR performance, you need to combine:
- tracking how visible your brand is,
- understanding how people react to your message,
- checking what real outcomes your efforts created,
- monitoring your brand performance compared to competitors,
- and evaluating whether PR activities support your broader business objectives.
In other words, rather than focusing on simple outputs like media mentions or impressions, you should evaluate PR performance across multiple dimensions.
To keep your PR measurement efforts structured, consistent, and actionable, you should build your framework on a clear set of PR metrics.
15 Metrics to Measure PR
PR metrics are measurable indicators calculating how and to what extent public relations efforts contribute to business goals, such as brand awareness, reputation, lead generation, and revenue-supporting activities.
Instead of focusing on single numbers, PR metrics should be analyzed as a set of interrelated indicators that show both the quantity and quality of PR impact.
📜 Barcelona Principles
There’s no universal set of PR metrics. However, modern PR measurement follows a few widely accepted rules known as the Barcelona Principles:
1. Set clear, measurable PR goals
2. Measure outcomes, not just media outputs
3. Link PR effects to business performance where possible
4. Use both qualitative and quantitative metrics
5. AVE is not PR value
6. Measure social and traditional media consistently
7. Ensure measurement is transparent and reliable
Below, you can find a practical breakdown of PR metrics that reflect how modern PR performance should be measured across visibility, perception, outcomes, competitive analysis, and business impact.
| Visibility metrics | Perception metrics | Outcome metrics | Benchmarking metrics | Financial metrics |
| Media mentions volume | Sentiment | Social media engagement | Share of voice | PR ROI |
| Media mentions reach & impressions | Share of positive sentiment | Website traffic from PR | Presence Score | Assisted Conversions |
| Potential audience size | Context of mentions | Branded search growth | Topic dominance | Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) |
01 Visibility metrics
Visibility metrics measure how many people had the opportunity to see your PR actions and how widely your message spread across social media and non-social channels.
The first step of any PR activity is to get noticed. The more people your message reaches, the greater the potential impact of your PR efforts.
Visibility metrics are these indicators that help you understand the scale of your exposure and potential impact. Remember, though, that they need context of qualitative metrics to show true PR success.
Visibility metrics include:
- Media mentions volume
- Media mentions reach & impressions
- Potential audience size
Media mentions volume
Media mentions volume shows how many times your brand was mentioned across online media and social media platforms.
In other words, this quantitative PR metric represents how many outlets, influencers, and profiles shared content mentioning your brand.
The higher the volume, the more significant the brand visibility.
Media mentions reach & impressions
Media mentions reach and impressions show how many people could have been exposed to content mentioning your brand across online media and social media platforms.
This quantitative PR metric adds some context to mentions volume because it presents the potential size of the audience that may have seen your PR mentions, not the number of actual views.
Potential audience size
Potential audience size estimates the total combined audience of all sources that mentioned your brand online.
Potential audience size estimates the total combined audience of all sources that mentioned your brand online.
In other words, it represents the maximum theoretical number of people your PR content could have reached.
The larger the potential audience size, the greater the overall exposure of your PR activities.
How to measure visibility?
The most effective way to track your visibility metrics is to use a media monitoring tool.
Such platforms monitor multiple social and non-social media sources in real time and can provide you with helpful – and often AI-supported – insights.
02 Perception metrics
Perception and quality metrics show how audiences perceive your brand in general and in response to specific PR efforts, helping you assess whether your communication achieved the desired effect.
PR efforts go beyond “reaching as many people as possible”. They aim to influence how a brand is understood, discussed, and remembered.
Therefore, perception and quality metrics focus on adding context to visibility metrics by uncovering the meaning behind mentions.
They help you determine whether your message was interpreted correctly and whether your PR activities strengthened (or weakened) your brand perception.
Perception metrics include:
- Sentiment
- Share of positive sentiment
- Context of mentions
Sentiment
Sentiment measures the emotional approach to a brand, product, service, campaign, or topic resulting from online conversations. It shows whether mentions express mostly positive, negative, or neutral attitude.
This qualitative PR metric helps you assess how your PR efforts influence overall brand perception over time or the brand reputation after specific campaigns.
Further read: What is sentiment analysis and why do you need it?
Share of positive sentiment
Share of positive sentiment shows how many of your brand mentions are positive compared to neutral and negative ones. Usually, the share of positive sentiment is presented in %.
Unlike overall sentiment, this metric shows how much of your visibility contributes positively to brand perception, making it especially useful for benchmarking and campaign evaluation.
In other words, the share of positive sentiment makes it easier to understand whether increased attention actually benefits your brand or just increases visibility without improving perception.
Context of mentions
Context of mentions represents in which situations, topics, and narratives your brand appears in media coverage and online discussions.
It helps you understand why your brand is being mentioned and what it is being associated with.
This perception metric is especially useful for checking whether your brand is discussed in the right and desired context – for example, as an expert, innovator, or trusted solution.
Or is it linked to unrelated, misleading, or negative topics after specific PR activities.
How to measure perception?
Just like in the case of visibility metrics, the most effective way to track your online perception is with a dedicated media monitoring tool.
03 Outcome metrics
Outcome metrics show whether your PR activities influenced audience behavior. They go one step beyond visibility and perception by addressing a crucial question: did PR make people do something?
While visibility metrics measure exposure and perception metrics evaluate the context, outcome metrics focus on concrete actions taken as a result of PR-driven communication.
They help you assess whether PR contributes to tangible progress toward marketing and business goals.
Outcome metrics include:
- Social media engagement
- Website traffic from PR
- Branded search growth
Social media engagement
Social media engagement measures how audiences interact with PR-driven content across social platforms. This includes signals such as likes, comments, shares, reposts, and saves.
Unlike reach or impressions, engagement shows active audience interest, making it a valuable indicator of message relevance and resonance.
This outcome metric helps you assess:
- whether PR content triggered a discussion,
- whether audiences found the message valuable enough to react,
- and how strongly your PR activities contributed to conversation growth.
High engagement suggests that your PR message not only reached people but also motivated them to participate, which increases the chances of further interaction.
How to measure social media engagement?
There are basically two ways to monitor your social media engagement:
- Manually, using native social media analytics tools like Meta Business Suite (for Facebook and Instagram), YouTube Studio, etc.
These tools work well for channel-level analysis but usually don’t provide cross-platform comparisons and broader context.
- Social media listening and management tools, like Sprout Social or SocialPilot
These tools can analyze engagement across multiple channels in one place, which is perfect when your PR activities span multiple platforms and earned media channels.
Website traffic from PR
Website traffic from PR shows how many users visited your website after being exposed to PR coverage, media mentions, or earned content.
This metric directly links PR activities with user intent and curiosity.
It indicates that your communication encouraged the audience to search for additional information about your brand, product, or offering.
Website traffic from PR is especially useful for measuring:
- campaign effectiveness,
- media placement quality,
- and PR contribution to the marketing funnel.
When analyzed alongside on-site behavior (time on page, bounce rate, conversions), it provides strong evidence of PR’s real impact beyond awareness.
How to measure website traffic from PR?
To measure website traffic from your public relations activity, you need two things: UTMs and Google Analytics.
In short, UTMs are short parameters you can add to URLs that will help you identify where website traffic comes from.
For example, you can use the free Campaign URL Builder tool to set up your parameters.
Later, you check this data in Google Analytics and analyze not only the traffic source, but also user behavior, engagement, and conversions.
Branded search growth
Branded search growth measures changes in the number of search queries containing your brand name over time.
This outcome metric reflects increased brand interest and recognition, often influenced by a successful PR campaign, media exposure, or thought leadership.
Branded search growth is particularly valuable because it helps connect PR with performance marketing and SEO efforts.
An increase in branded searches suggests that PR activities had a positive impact on brand awareness and encouraged the audience to actively look for your brand.
How to measure branded search growth?
Measuring branded search growth is easy with Google Search Console.
This native Google tool allows you to track which keywords people use to find your website and how interest in your brand changes over time.
Remember, though, that due to the rising popularity of LLMs and AI chatbots, the search behavior is evolving.
Therefore, if you’d like to track your brand visibility in AI-driven tools, you can use dedicated tools like Chatbeat, Semrush, or Peek AI.
04 Benchmarking metrics
Benchmarking metrics evaluate your PR performance in relation to competitors, not in isolation. Because even strong visibility or positive sentiment means little without more broad context.
They help you understand whether your PR efforts are actually helping you stand out in the market or outperform competitors during key moments.
These metrics are especially useful for:
- competitive analysis,
- market positioning,
- campaign evaluation,
- and long-term PR strategy optimization.
Benchmarking metrics include:
- Share of voice
- Presence Score
- Topic dominance
Share of voice
Share of voice measures how big part of the total conversation in your market belongs to your brand compared to competitors.
It is usually expressed in % by dividing your brand’s mentions by the total mentions of all tracked brands within a defined topic, industry, or time period.
Share of voice helps answer a simple but strategic question: how loud is our brand compared to others?
This benchmarking metric is particularly useful for:
- comparing PR visibility across competitors,
- tracking performance during campaigns, launches, or brand crises,
- identifying whether increased activity actually improves market presence.
However, the share of voice should always be analyzed together with sentiment and context. A high share of voice driven by negative coverage does not indicate PR success.
Presence Score
Presence Score measures how strong and consistent your brand’s visibility is across monitored channels compared to competitors in a given period. This metric is designed exclusively by Brand24.
Presence Score connects:
- frequency of mentions,
- distribution across channels,
- and overall stability of visibility over time
This metric helps you understand whether your brand has long-term exposure or is visible only during short-term spikes of attention.
Topic dominance
Topic dominance presents which topics, themes, or narratives dominates in all conversations about your brand.
This metric helps you understand what your brand is primarily associated with in media coverage and online discussions.
So, instead of focusing on how often your brand is mentioned, topic dominance reveals why it is mentioned and in what context.
It is especially useful for checking whether your PR efforts position your brand around strategic topics, such as expertise, innovation, or specific product categories.
Or whether online discussions take an unexpected and unintended turn.
How to measure benchmarking metrics?
Many tools can help you measure benchmarking metrics, but the key is consistency and comparability. To get meaningful results, you should:
- Track your brand and competitors using the same keywords, topics, and time range
- Monitor benchmarking metrics regularly to spot trends and shifts, not just one-off spikes
- Analyze results together with sentiment and topic context to understand the quality of competitive visibility
05 Financial metrics
Financial metrics focus on how PR activities support business results and contribute to revenue-related outcomes.
While PR is rarely a direct sales channel, these metrics help translate communication impact into business-relevant signals. And that’s essential in modern data-driven marketing.
Financial PR measurement is especially useful for:
- presenting PR value to stakeholders,
- connecting PR efforts with marketing and sales teams,
- supporting budget decisions,
Financial metrics include:
- PR Return on Investment (ROI)
- Assisted conversions
- Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)
PR ROI
PR ROI measures whether the value generated by PR activities is higher than their cost. The formula is extremely simple: ROI = Net Profit/Total Costs x 100%
However, unlike paid advertising, PR ROI is rarely linear or immediate.
This is because PR:
- often influences decisions indirectly,
- works across multiple touchpoints,
- and delivers long-term value through reputation and trust.
Instead of calculating artificial monetary values (such as AVE), modern PR ROI focuses on business contribution, for example:
- increased demand or branded search,
- assisted conversions,
- improved conversion rates after PR exposure.
Therefore, PR ROI should be interpreted as strategic impact, not a short-term revenue formula.
Assisted Conversions
Assisted conversions show how often PR activities support conversions, even if they are not the final interaction before purchase, sign-up, or other desired conversion event.
In many customer journeys, PR plays an early or mid-funnel role by:
- building brand awareness,
- increasing credibility,
- validating purchase decisions.
Tracking assisted conversions helps you understand whether users exposed to PR content later convert via other channels, such as paid search or organic traffic.
This metric is particularly valuable in B2B, SaaS, and high-consideration industries, where decisions involve multiple touchpoints over time.
In practice, tracking assisted conversions is possible with Google Analytics. You can find the relevant report in Advertising → Conversions → Conversion attribution analysis.
Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) measures how much money you spend to reach 1,000 through PR activities. It is calculated with the formula: (Total PR costs / Total impressions) x 1,000.
CPM helps:
- compare PR efficiency over time,
- benchmark different internal PR campaigns,
- and compare cost efficiency with other channels.
Conclusion
Measuring your PR performance with single metrics or surface-level results is simply wrong. As PR is a complex process and quite vague process, it requires a comprehensive approach.
In practice, PR efforts should be measured holistically by considering brand visibility, audience perception, real outcomes, competitive context, and business impact.
Otherwise, you’d end up with false conclusions that don’t reflect the real value of your PR activities. And with wasted budget.
A structured measurement framework helps you understand what actually works, what needs improvement, and where PR supports broader marketing and business goals.
When tracked consistently over time, PR metrics turn communication from a cost center into a core source of insight.
In 2026, we don’t say that “PR is hard to measure”. We say “PR is measurable when you use the right metrics and look at them in the right context”.
Final thoughts:
- Start measuring PR from clearly defined goals, not from tools or dashboards.
- Always analyze PR metrics together, because single indicators never tell the full story.
- Competitive context often matters more than absolute numbers when evaluating PR success.
- Consistency over time is more valuable than short-term spikes caused by single campaigns.
- PR measurement becomes powerful when it informs decisions, not just reports.
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