Why PR must shift from EMV to business metrics and effectiveness in influencer marketing

There’s no doubt that the genesis of influencer marketing was in PR. It has now evolved into a fundamental pillar of modern communications, with new changes to keep up with every day.

All the growth that the influencer marketing category has experienced, has been despite the fact that the industry at large has done a relatively poor job of equating measurement to business value. Businesses have just known deep down that it’s working and continue to invest. Now that it has become a significant line item for brands, they need to see more than simple metrics to keep investing.

Unfortunately, some segments of the PR industry are still relying on simple media metrics and earned media value (EMV), a subjective ad-rate equivalent, to gauge success in the creator economy. This approach isn’t just outdated, but it undermines the strategic value of influencer partnerships.

PR must abandon the pursuit of just measuring efficiency (reach, impressions, follower counts) and focus on effectiveness. Clients want to know how influencer activity truly drives audience engagement, shapes sentiment, and delivers tangible business outcomes.

The flaws of EMV for public relations

EMV tries to quantify the cost of securing an influencer placement as a comparison to paid media advertising. The problem is that it doesn’t represent the value of influence because it falls over on a few key points:

• Subjectivity and lack of standardisation: There is no universal formula for calculating EMV. Every platform and agency applies a different multiplier to metrics like reach or impressions. This lack of standardisation means a "£100,000 EMV" figure from one campaign isn’t comparable to the same figure from another. The subjectivity of it undermines the credibility of the metric.
   
• Misleading dollar value: EMV provides a misleading dollar value that equates an organic post (which audiences actively seek out) with a forced advertising impression (which audiences often ignore). It dramatically overstates the commercial impact, encouraging clients to chase superficial success rather than genuine returns.
   
• Focus on outputs, not outcomes: EMV is an output metric. It counts what happened (the post went live, the impressions were recorded). It is not an outcome metric and can’t tell you if the post changed brand perception, drove a sale, or shifted consumer sentiment. To measure true effectiveness, we must start tracking changes in behaviour, not just views.

If we want to elevate influencer marketing to a serious, strategic budget line, comparable to media spend or TV advertising, we must use metrics that speak the language of commercial accountability. We need to start asking if creators moved the needle.

The effectiveness mandate

Measuring effectiveness requires shifting from simple media numbers to things that actually impact brand health and business value. This is where the industry’s new focus should lie, in marrying creative comms strategy with rigorous analytics.

In my opinion, PR teams should prioritise the following hard metrics:

• Audience sentiment and analysis: Within this, we need to go deeper than simply positive or negative sentiment. How are audiences reacting to content? Which key phrases, topics, and competitor mentions are starting to trend in the comments section? These are the kind of questions that are crucial for brands to understand. These are the things that help with brand health monitoring and understanding the actual tone of the conversation.
   
• Influencer share of voice: This is the influencer equivalent of share of voice in PR terms. It measures a brand's presence in creator conversations relative to competitors, providing a clear indication of a brand's actual market presence among authentic voices.
   
• Creative efficacy: Within a campaign, you may be addressing different audiences with different types of creators or narratives. Tracking how each of these drive different outcomes is a useful insight for brands. This data informs not just the influencer brief, but the entire owned and earned content strategy for the brand.

When equipped with hard metrics, PR teams can tell a richer story: "We partnered with 20 macro-creators, resulting in a 15% lift in positive brand sentiment, which translated to a 30% increase in traffic to our owned newsroom." This clearly connects the dots between influence and business impact.

By embracing this intelligence, the PR industry can finally move past any subjective or inefficient measures of the past. Influencer marketing, at its best, is a sophisticated, accountable, and highly effective driver of commercial and communications outcomes. As clients increasingly look to their agencies for guidance in the influencer space, PR professionals must embrace the data and methodologies that substantiate it.

Detch Singh is the founder and CEO at influencer agency Hypetap.

Further reading

The disconnect between PR metrics and budget holders’ expectations

25 years of change for PR agencies… from metrics to social media

Beyond the clicks: the metrics that really matter in digital marketing