When to Buy Reach and When to Earn It (PR vs. Ads)

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Why this matters

PR and advertising both drive awareness but through completely different mechanisms with different cost structures, timelines, and trust signals — treating them as substitutes leads to budget decisions that optimize for the wrong thing. Understanding the ROI profile of each tells you when to buy reach and when to earn credibility.

Try it yourself

Find a recent press placement your company or a competitor received and estimate its Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) by looking up the CPM for that publication and calculating what an equivalent ad buy would have cost.
Compare the trust signals in that earned article (third-party byline, editorial framing, journalist credibility) against a display ad for the same product — identify which elements a reader would weight more heavily and why.
Calculate the cost per earned mention for your last PR campaign (total PR spend divided by number of placements) and compare it to your blended CPM from paid channels in the same period.

References

Institute for Public Relations — Measuring PR Value