This article provides a comprehensive overview of the metrics available in Meltwater, designed to assist Public Relations and Communications professionals in measuring the impact of earned media. These metrics are essential for evaluating the effectiveness of your PR efforts. Below, we'll explain each metric and how to use them effectively within the Meltwater platform.
Estimated Views
What is Estimated Views?
Estimated Views is a metric that provides an approximation of the number of times an average article from a publication has been viewed. This is accomplished by dividing a publication’s monthly page views by the number of articles it published in a given month. Additional logic is applied to eliminate outliers.
Learn more about Estimated Views.
Reach
What is reach?
Reach estimates the potential viewership of a specific article based on the number of monthly unique visitors to the source. This metric is powered by our partnership with SimilarWeb, a leading internet technology company specializing in marketing data and analytics.
How to view the reach of an article in Meltwater:
Click on “Reach” on the bottom left-hand corner of an article in Meltwater
A breakdown of desktop reach and mobile reach will load below
Click on reach numbers to access detailed information on that specific document.
Here, you will discover Global, Country, and Category Rank.
Example: See the reach of The Washington Post's online publication: https://www.similarweb.com/website/washingtonpost.com
You can see how the reach of the source compares to competitors on a global, country, and category scale:
You will be able to track traffic changes over time and traffic sources.
Social Echo
What is Social Echo?
Social Echo helps you understand the vitality of news coverage (i.e. the extent to which a story resonates with its audience). It’s computed by aggregating the number of posts, shares, retweets, and other engagement indicators.
Why is Social Echo important?
Social Echo can be a very valuable metric when trying to determine the impact of a campaign. High Social Echo is a proxy for a successful campaign (a desirable outcome). Similarly, when trying to determine the impact of an issue you’re tracking, high Social Echo would indicate high impact (an undesirable outcome).
How to view the social echo of an article in Meltwater:
Access Social Echo by selecting the “Social Echo” hyperlink on articles in Explore search results. Please note that the initial update takes 6 hours after publication.
Engagement Metrics:
Facebook - Total number of Posts, Likes, and Comments.
Twitter - Amount of times content has been Tweeted or Retweeted*.
Reddit - Total number of shares across the top 17,000 most popular sub-reddits. (From Oct 2019 onwards)
Please note: Twitter does not provide access to all of their data, there might be slight differences between the metrics displayed in Meltwater and those on Twitter. The Twitter API is focused on relevance and not completeness, which means that Twitter only sends us the data it deems to be most relevant. Therefore, some of the Tweet and Retweet metrics may differ when displayed inside Meltwater.
Why do I not see any Social Echo metrics?
Unfortunately, some articles see less social engagement than you would hope and expect. If an article has little or no social engagement, time would be better spent focusing on the content and/or publications that do drive audience engagement. These metrics, or lack thereof, help you refine and improve your PR strategy.
Sentiment
What is Sentiment?
Sentiment assesses the opinion expressed in a body of a text categorizing it as Positive, Negative, or Neutral.
How to view sentiment in Meltwater?
Access Sentiment in the bottom right-hand corner of each article within Monitor or Explore search results.
Examples of each sentiment type with real-world examples:
Positive - a user is exclaiming love for a Coca-Cola campaign.
Negative - a user displaying negative emotion towards the taste of a Coca-Cola product.
Neutral - this user is simply stating a fact about a Coca-Cola collectable, with no emotion implied.
Learn more about sentiment here.
Advertising Value Equivalency
What is Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE)?
AVE approximates the monetary value of earned media efforts (e.g. a PR Campaign) by comparing them to the equivalent cost of placing advertisements. While controversial, it provides insights into potential PR value instead of actual.
How is AVE calculated?
The calculation of AVE involves several key factors:
Unique Visitors: AVE starts with the unique visitor count for each source, which is based on monthly activity. This data is provided to us by our partner, SimilarWeb, a prominent internet technology company specializing in marketing data and analytics.
Calculation Formula: The formula used to calculate the online advertising value equivalency is as follows:
X * 0.025 * 0.37
Here's what each component represents:
X: This stands for the reach or unique visitor figure for a specific article or source.
0.025: This represents the standard error, assuming that, on average, about 2.5% of the audience will view a particular article.
0.37: This signifies the estimated value of 37 cents for each visitor. Keep in mind that this value can be adjusted to reflect your specific valuation of each viewer.
This calculation helps you estimate the potential advertising value of your earned media efforts based on reach and engagement metrics.
How to view AVE in Meltwater:
AVE Widgets are available in Dashboards to measure and report the potential worth of your media coverage.
Navigate to Dashboards
Select from one of the following insights:
How to Customize AVE:
Select any insight with AVE
In the settings side panel, click the Configuration Settings dropdown
Select AVE value or AVE currency
Adjust these to your choice
Click Apply to see the settings reflected on the dashboard
Share of Voice by AVE
Shows a comparison of share of voice between multiple searches and tags, based upon AVE. AVE is calculated in USD.
Top Locations by AVE
Distribution of AVE by location. AVE is calculated in USD.
Top Publications by AVE
Shows the editorial publications with the largest AVE across your selected inputs. AVE is calculated in USD.
Keywords by AVE
Shows the most frequent keywords and phrases in the articles with the largest AVE across your selected inputs. AVE is calculated in USD.
AVE Trend
Shows AVE between your selected inputs, trended over time. AVE is calculated in USD.
How to Customize Data Density:
In the settings side panel, select Date Density
Choose from hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly
Select Apply and you will see your settings reflected on the dashboard.
Custom Scoring Metrics
What is custom scoring?
Custom Scoring allows you to define metrics tailored to your PR goals. Assign values to topics and placements that align with your brand's message and track performance over time.
What is the value of custom scoring?
Custom Scoring will enable a shared understanding across your team of what is being said about your brand or campaign, to help you optimize future initiatives and effectively prove the ROI of your efforts to key stakeholders
How to set up Custom Scoring:
The below steps will help you select metrics relevant to your PR efforts. Once set up you will be able to apply your selections across other editorial searches and generate reports with one click.
You can view your reports on the Custom Scoring page and also download it as a csv file.
Access Customer Scoring - Select Reports from the left hand side navigation bar,
Select Custom Score Reports
Create a new custom score model - click New Model
You will now need to Select the metrics which align with your goals.
On the next page, you'll see a list of metrics on the left.
Choose the metrics that align with your goals by toggling them 'on.'
Once toggled on, configure options for each metric as needed.
Enter the specific details that are important to your scoring.
Click "Ok" after configuring each metric
Under Preview, select one of your current searches as an input. This will demonstrate how your score performs on articles while you can continue adjusting the metrics on the same page.
Once all updates have been made to the score values, select Next
Name your score model
Note: If you don’t want to generate a report you can skip that with just saving the score. Select 'Save Score Model' in the bottom right corner.
Select your report settings
Select Create Report to finish
This is how your report looks once it has been generated (it could take a few seconds or minutes depending on date range and number of articles):
If you scroll down in this view we provide some insights into how articles perform over time:
10. Viewing and Exporting Reports - You can download this report in the form of an editable CSV file.Your saved Custom Score and your reports will be available in the Custom Scoring page:
11. Accessing Saved Customer Score Reports - Your saved report will be available on the Custom Score page.
Via the tick box, Select the report
The 'View Selected Report' icon will the report page to view the scores and articles
The Export icon will download an excel file for the report. The final columns within this report include the scores assigned to each article.
To learn more about how to optimize custom scoring and check out scoring tips broken down by industries check out the guide here.
💡 Tip
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