The complete 2026 guide to PR measurement — three-tier framework (outputs, outcomes, business impact), why AVE is dead, and the emerging metrics that matter: Citation Share, LLM perception tracking, narrative intelligence.
AVE is dead. What replaced it is a portfolio — Barcelona Principles 4.0 outputs-outtakes-outcomes-impact, share of voice, share of search, AI Citation Share, pipeline attribution. The comms leaders getting board traction are the ones who combine them well.
PR ROI has a formula. Most teams never run it. The calculation, two worked examples at $180,000, the five metrics that replaced AVE and impression counts, digital PR ROI, what to hold a PR agency retainer to, and why ISG, Forrester, and Gartner now anchor the B2B scorecard.
The 2011 frame on how PR firms measure their work — share of voice, sentiment, referral traffic, message pull-through, and the retreat of Advertising Value Equivalents.
