Here I am going to explain what Estimated Views are and why you should move over to this metric, how to explain this to your stakeholders and questions we are commonly asked about Estimated Views. This article runs through:
Will moving to using a smaller views number make my new reports look less favourable in comparison to previous reports where we’ve focused on sitewide readership?
older reports which have the sitewide readership?
Why should I move over to Estimated Views?
We know sitewide traffic stats initially sound great. They show big numbers. But often widely inflated. Have you ever had to present a report with an audience figure in the billions? Can you hand on heart say that you believe your campaign reached this many people? Is this you in a meeting?
What if you could predict how many eyes actually see your coverage? Similar to paid media where they can rely on impressions.
Exact impressions would be great but except for asking every publication and influencer for their page-by-page analytics, no one knows exactly how many people see a specific page or post except the publisher themselves. And at that point in time. This makes measuring earned media a headache.
This is why we put so much effort into “Estimated Coverage Views’.
Here's what we gather about your coverage:
If it is a social post or online article (we apply a different formula for each)
The publication or influencer's potential audience size
Where your story lands on the site (homepage or buried deeper)
The social media activity surrounding your coverage
We also factor in:
Social engagement trends based on platform and audience size
Insights from research on content sharing
This then gives us an Estimated Views number. You can read more details about the exact algorithm here.
Questions you might be asked when moving over to Estimated Views
How do I explain this change to my stakeholders?
Feel free to copy and amend this paragraph. You can even add it as a slide in your report.
To improve our PR measurement, we're adding an additional metric to our report - Estimated Views. Rather than just tracking broad sitewide publisher metrics (which count everyone visiting a website or following an influencer), this new metric is more focused on how many people will see our actual coverage. It is sourced from CoverageBook and is already used globally by thousands of PR teams. You can liken it to impressions, making our efforts more comparable to other marketing strategies.
AMEC award winning leaders like James Alexander at Diageo say this about Estimated views from CoverageBook…
“It's a big gripe of mine seeing PR saying potential reach is X million or even X billion people. As a brand manager and allocator of budget, you can't take a lot from 'reach data'. We like using the 'Estimated Coverage Views' metric in CoverageBook. It's more realistic which means it's easier for me to compare PR against other areas of marketing”
Why should we use Estimated Views over monthly visits
1 - It is a much more realistic reach figure
2 - It gives you a more consistent approach when comparing PR coverage to other marketing activity, such as actual social views and impressions used in paid media.
3 - For anyone looking to place a value on PR coverage, you can use Estimated Views to Calculate the cost per 1000 earned impressions to mirror a paid media ROI approach. More on that here.
Is Estimated Coverage Views just a guess?
Not quite. It's an educated guess, honed over five years with a massive and ever-growing dataset. We believe it's a giant leap forward in understanding your coverage's true reach (but we don’t stop there - we are also making it possible to showcase the impact of your work. More on that here).
Will moving to using a smaller views number make my new reports look less favourable in comparison to previous reports where we’ve focused on sitewide readership?
Once you are confident that using Estimated Views is a better measurement metric, it's easy to still compare new campaigns with older ones. You can add older campaigns to CoverageBook, download the CSV and compare like-for-like metrics. Speak to [email protected] if you need help with this.
How often is the calculation updated?
While we don’t have a set timeframe, we constantly check and tweak the algorithm as and when it needs it.
What time period does Estimated Views cover?
Estimated views look at the views that a piece of coverage will gain in its lifetime. Most of the views will be in the first month but we do factor in longtail views in the algorithm. If there is a post that then begins to rank for high-volume keywords, you might want to edit and update the figure for that certain post. Here’s how