Once you understand the reach of your event’s media coverage, its tone and the ways in which audiences engage with it, you can start to quantify its value to your event, its host and its sponsors.
Value can be generated by print, television, digital and social media coverage of an event, and through live and delayed broadcasts, news coverage, press releases, interviews, video and images. Efforts to measure it typically focus on the cost of advertising needed to achieve similar promotional effects – historically on television but now increasingly in other media too – and the brand benefits of being seen and associated with an event in the media.
What to measure
Media and brand value are the two primary measures of this type of impact.
Media value is not an element of economic impact; it is a measure of cost – what the host would have paid for similar advertising benefit – rather than a direct gain. The ASOIF recommends expressing this as:
- Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) of event broadcast media coverage (ASOIF reference IM-B2.4)
Brand value is a calculation of the monetary worth of an association with an event (whether as a host or sponsor) and the positive portrayal of that relationship in the media. Key measures of this are:
- Sponsor/funder brand value
- Increase in partner brand value as a result of the event (ASOIF reference IM-OUTCOME1)
The sponsorship industry uses a standard methodology for assigning a cash value to the broadcast element of this exposure. This is based on a measure of the amount of time the brand’s logo or messaging is visible or audible during event coverage and the cost of buying similar visibility in 30-second TV advertisements.
Size of audience is the other key driver of brand value for sponsors and hosts, although, for the latter, media evaluation consultants will also take into account factors including:
- Verbal mentions of the host city or venue
- On-screen text credits referencing the host city or venue
- Host city-related perimeter advertising
- Exposure for video segments produced by the event organiser to promote the host city as a visitor destination
Media coverage: How to measure it
AVE is widely calculated by multiplying TV broadcast time or print media column inches by these channels’ advertising rates, to determine the cost of an advertisement of equivalent size. Applying this formula to all event coverage produces a total cash value of AVE.
Measurement of broadcast AVE will generally require the specialist expertise of an external agency, but print media evaluation is easier to carry out in-house. There are a number of ways in which AVE can be derived; the following provide useful summaries of these:
These also include some warnings about the misuse of AVE, which is also not always the best means of calculating media value for all objectives, as it does not measure people’s awareness of the sponsor or host’s brand, their perceptions of and attitudes towards it, nor how they respond to the exposure. If promoting inbound tourism is a stakeholder’s priority, for example, then follow-up research in target markets or visitor surveys may provide a better measure of impact.
Brand value is difficult to calculate without the support of specialist agencies, particularly in measuring broadcast exposure. Smaller events especially may therefore wish to consider other means of evaluating the achievement of specific brand impacts (e.g. promoting tourism) rather than overall brand value.