As a quick example, Google estimates the cost per click for an ad from the keyword “beer” to cost $0.53 in Australia (from https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox). If I get an unpaid link to my beer page from a blog, then as a rough, dirty estimate, I can say that every click from a blog is worth $0.53 in advertising. This gives you a neat but equally foolish measure as ad value equivalent. It’s foolish because it doesn’t factor in positive or negative coverage; or the extra search engine optimisation value of receiving an unpaid link.

To answer the “what kind of hits do you count?”, it is all about setting goals – whether that is sales, comments on a blog, average time on site, signups for your newsletter, etc. This sort of thing is very easy to track. As for time-frame, I view anything that builds links and clicks as cumulative – they’re valuable for the life of the link. This is why thinking in terms of the very long term is so important for online PR campaigns, because the best campaigns will have ongoing value.

Ugh, monitoring media value for articles is very abstract and as you say, nonsensical!

A very quick metric to use (which doesn’t get your hands dirty in stats) is to say that the ad value of clicks from a blog post is equal to the average cost per click in your SEM campaign. This will give you a nice, easy to use, daily figure which is about as sensible (or possibly, nonsensical) as print editorial equalling print ad value.

Actually I think it’s usually the other way round:
it’s usually the media who view any product-related stories are a one-off thing based on news-worthiness (they wouldn’t want to ruin their rep by being in bed with a company, being their bitch), and it’s the PR departments who flatter themselves that they have established a long term relationship…
the blogger’s thinking “just some person I met and had drinks with, once” and the PR person is thinking “my new boyfriend”

It seems obvious to you & me that print media are slowly dying out, but print media still have way more cache for marketeers. why?
- partly because media coverage is evaluated (often by external media valuation companies) in terms of ad value. this means the size of the article is compared to the price of a similar sized advertisement. web advertisements (especially on blogs) are often cheaper (hence the articles are also considered less valuable)

- press coverage is also evaluated in terms of circulation or viewers. besides the fact that blog traffic is usually equivalent to a very niche magazine rather than a general interest one, quantifying traffic becomes very problematic. When the articles are around forever, what timeframe do you establish to count the number of views per page? And what kind of hits do you count? the cursory, not-even-read google hits?
(of course, there’s no guarantee either that when a story is published in print that magazine readers actually read the article in question. And the stories are not around forever, accessible by google, like blog posts… but that’s bringing logic into the argument..)

for these reasons, as well as the fact that they have limited budgets and time, many communications people are lazy about the way they approach online media.
i know a company PR person in Brazil whose dept. will not approach any online media at all because they can’t track the value. stupid!
i suspect there’s also a kind of bias about prestige: because blogs have minimal production costs and there is no limit to space for articles, it might be perceived as ‘easy’ to get blog coverage. so maybe some PR people don’t think they need to invest any effort in the way they approach blogs.

of course, print media also get hundreds of unsolicited press releases every day, many without preliminary or follow up phone calls – so bloggers shouldn’t be surprised to get them too…

And it’s not a one-way street: most print media regard press releases as a valid source of stories, (at least from time to time). I guess from the media perspective, it’s always a matter of figuring out what readers want to read about. ….Maybe the editor would decide on a given day that a new type of pet food might be of interest to a whole bunch of newspaper-reading old biddies…..

I wish people would read my blog before sending me stuff. It would be great if they also realised blogging is my interest not income. I have to weigh up the interest if it’s going to cost me money to blog it – ie city parking min $25 or two hours of my time + writing.