Philip Odiakose is the Chief Media Analyst at P+ Measurement Services.
I usually start this conversation with a joke, because if we don’t laugh a little, we might cry.
Media monitoring and PR measurement walk into a boardroom together, and everyone assumes they are twins. They are not. They are distant cousins who attend the same family events and get mistaken for each other every Christmas. After more than fifteen years in PR measurement and media intelligence, I have seen this confusion play out across agencies, banks, telecoms, and yes, even a beverage company where I was personally involved. The misunderstanding is common, but the consequences are anything but small.
Media monitoring is where the work begins, not where it ends. It tells you what was said, where it appeared, who said it, and sometimes how loud the noise was. That is useful. Necessary, even. But knowing that your brand was mentioned is not the same thing as knowing what that mention did to perception, trust, or behaviour. Measurement begins when we move from counting outputs to interpreting meaning. Monitoring delivers data. Measurement delivers insight. One feeds the other, but they are not interchangeable, no matter how fancy the dashboard looks.
One of the most common errors I see with PR agencies and brand teams is mistaking volume for value. A thick report full of clips, impressions, reach, and colourful charts feels reassuring. It looks like work has been done. But activity does not equal impact, and output does not automatically translate to outcome. I once worked with a beverage brand that celebrated sustained media visibility for months, only to discover through deeper analysis that sentiment had quietly shifted among a key consumer segment. Monitoring said everything was fine. Measurement revealed a slow reputational leak that, left unchecked, could have become a full-blown crisis.
This is where the business risk comes in. When organisations confuse monitoring outputs for measurement outcomes, decisions get made on incomplete truths. Budgets get justified with noise rather than evidence. Strategies get renewed because “coverage increased,” even when brand trust declined. If you measure the noise but ignore the effect, you are managing PR by hope, not by evidence. That is not a communications strategy; it is wishful thinking dressed in analytics.
Another problem is the obsession with speed. Real-time monitoring has its place, especially in issues management. But PR measurement is not a race to be first on a dashboard. It is a process of research, interpretation, and context. PR measurement is not 100 percent automation, and it was never meant to be. Tools can tell you what is happening now. Human analysts tell you why it matters, what it means, and what to do next. In that same beverage company example, it was not the real-time alerts that saved the brand. It was a human-led analysis that connected messaging patterns to changing consumer sentiment over time.
This is why I continue to emphasise standards-based thinking in PR measurement. In my book, The Science of Public Relations, I argue for research-driven evaluation rooted in clarity of objectives, not convenience of data. Measurement should answer questions about reputation, relationships, and results, not just media activity. Data without context is just noise wearing a suit. Standards help us separate what is measurable from what is meaningful, and they protect the industry from mistaking automation for understanding. If you are serious about this discipline, I encourage you to read the book and engage with the thinking behind it.
The place of the human analyst cannot be overstated. Measurement requires judgement, experience, and sometimes uncomfortable honesty. A dashboard will not tell you when a narrative is quietly forming in radio conversations or WhatsApp communities, a trained analyst will. Insight is a human outcome, not a machine output. Monitoring tools are powerful allies, but they are not replacements for research or professional interpretation.
I am careful not to frame this as a battle between monitoring and measurement. They are partners, not competitors. Monitoring provides the raw material. Measurement shapes it into something decision-makers can trust. When the two are confused, PR loses credibility. When they work together, PR earns its seat at the table. That is not theory; it is lived experience across sectors and markets.
So let us be clear, calmly and without drama. Media monitoring is data. PR measurement is insight. One tells you what happened. The other tells you what it meant and what to do next. If we keep treating them as the same thing, we will keep asking PR to prove value with the wrong tools. And that is a habit the profession can no longer afford.
