In recent times, we have seen the meteoric rise of social media, where chocolate bars have been resurrected, musicians have socially networked their way to chart success and unprecedented levels of hype have opened the door for new marketing methods. The power of social media in a lot of ways boils down to the power of opinion – if enough voices sing the same tune, it’s hard to ignore.

But should there be a limit to the power placed in the hands of the user? NewsCred, a news aggregator that ranks stories by the “credibility of their source”, has recently been launched and sparked a significant amount of online chatter. Users can rate each story, author and publication’s credibility, seeking to establish quality over popularity, unlike other news aggregators.

The site itself claims that NewsCred is all about “the Social Media Revolution” – harnessing the power of community to allow “the discerning news consumer to focus only on credible news content while filtering out the noise”. Interesting concept, yet the premise itself is problematic. Can something be deemed “credible” based on the recommendation of a group of faceless strangers? As Marissa Peacock discusses in her article, “Is it an author’s credentials, a publication’s political endorsement or a penchant for not lying, making up or otherwise hiding the ‘truth’ no matter how messy or uncomfortable it makes us?”

Rory Cellan-Jones also discusses NewsCred in his blog for the BBC Website, taking the debate to an interesting level, by stating his concern that “sites like NewsCred will become playgrounds for lobby groups and obsessives” and asks, “Isn’t it likely that those with passionate views will rush to judge the credibility of news stories according to their own prejudices, while the rest of the internet population just won’t bother?”

My own personal concern is that there is also a level of laziness that results from relying on sites such as NewsCred – since when did it become so difficult to make up your own mind? But perhaps I am missing the point. Either way, if there is one thing that Snakes on a Plane  has taught us (a truly dreadful film – avoid it), it’s that you can’t always trust internet popularity as an endorsement.

Everyone’s going online, newspaper circulation figures and ad-rates are declining and many people are predicting the realisation of Ghostbuster Egon Spengler’s famous quote, “Print is dead!”

And yet something doesn’t seem right.  I remember many years ago buying a PDA that could download my favourite sections of the BBC news site.  “Wow, this is the future!” I thought to myself, “No more newpapers, I can get everything I need from this”.  But, today am I reading news on my iPhone – no I am not.  A quick look around on my commuter train this morning showed the majority of people reading a newspaper with the rest reading books or staring out of the window.  A couple of people were using PDAs but only to check e-mail (and yes I did get a few funny looks for peering over their shoulders!).  So it would seem that print is very much alive on my train at least.  One explanation is the success of free newspapers – by far the majority of papers being read this morning were the London Metro.

Local versions of the Metro are available in urban centres in 23 countries with a total readership of about 23 million.  In London, Metro is joined by other free papers such as London Lite, TheLondonPaper and City AM.  The circulation of these papers has been increasing with many experiencing record levels this summer.  Some people have argued that this is compensated by a corresponding decline in paid-for newpapers.  Indeed as we can see below, the Evening Standard has suffered a fall in circulation while the London free press has grown.  However the combined readership of these titles is more than four times the initial circulation of the Evening Standard which implies that more people are reading print media in London.

Free press is popular because it doesn’t cost anything either in money or in time since the paper is there at the station for you to pick up or as with London Lite or LondonPaper it is literally thrust into your hand.  As MIT professor Dan Ariely explains, we instinctively irrationally overreact to free offers even if it means that quality will be compromised. 

We're right in the middle of financial results season, the time where the number crunchers of the UK banking industry come out of their counting houses and tell the stock market how much money they've made.

In recent years, these articles have followed a familiar pattern: Bank X announces profits of a figure that only quantum mathematicians understand, city analysts rejoice as profits beat expectations, everyone goes home happy.

So far, so 2006.  But in the wake of the US subprime crisis, the ongoing drought in interbank lending and the realities of an economic slowdown, results this week look very different. So far HBoS and Lloyds TSB have announced a 70% fall in profits, HSBC has seen a 28% drop and Alliance & Leicester swallowed a massive 99% fall to pave the way for its acquisition by Santander. Northern Rock eschewed profits entirely and posted a £585m loss. The banks are clearly jumpy, and the media (to judge by recent headlines) has followed suit. So where does this leave the ordinary punter?

Metrica's ConsumerPulse data provides some interesting insight on public confidence in their finances.

Whilst the banks are having a tough time of it, there are some winners in the current financial climate. An excellent article on bbc.co.uk today shows that "value providers" like Aldi and Lidl are enjoying increased sales as people tighten their belts. 

Metrica's ConsumerPulse survey runs every six months and, with a new version about to launch (and rebranded UKPulse), it will be interesting to see if consumer attitudes change as the economic slowdown continues.  Watch this space!

As a media evaluation agency headquartered in the UK that does a lot of international business, my colleagues at Metrica and I have done more than our fair share of travel with British Airways over the last few years. 

Luckily for us we didn't happen to be flying in those awful early weeks when Terminal 5 fist opened - to tremendous fanfare, but ultimately global embarrassment.  BAA's Chairman, Sir Nigel Rudd had claimed it would put Heathrow at "the leading edge of global travel" calling it "a living, breathing advertisement for Britain's ambition". Instead it received weeks of press comment along the lines of "Catalogue of Errors led to T5 fiasco" which not even BA's highly-professional in-house communication teams and PR agency were able to do much about.

And it wasn't just the mainstream media that were having a field day, but BA's customers and potential customers were all chatting about it online in social networks and blogs - as the chart and link from Google trends below shows.  It doesn't need Metrica's media analysis consultancy skills to tell you that the spike of buzz at the launch of T5 was dominated by unfavourable coverage! 

Happily for BA, and indeed BAA, the bad early days of T5 now seem to be firmly behind it.  All passengers that I have talked to who have used the terminal recently have been full of praise for its efficiency, speed and ease of use.  So I was particularly pleased this morning to hear on BBC Radio 4 and then to read in today's "Guardian" that BA is launching an advertising campaign tomorrow based around the slogan: "Terminal 5 is working".

What I particularly like is the freshness and daringness of this campaign which will be providing live updates detailing percentages of late flights, time taken to get to check-in etc.  Not only is this modern confident communications, but it also tips a nod to the 'news now' generation of media consumers.  No longer does the audience want to read old facts, and old news; they want the latest information, and they want it now.  If the traditional marketing channels aren't able to deliver it, then they will look more and more for their news and information on the web and via social networks.  It's an advertising concept of its time so congratulations to ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty for the creative work and good luck to GFK who will be conducting the research for the ads each morning. 

It's nice to see BA using it's market research in such an innovative way.  I will follow the campaign closely and can't wait to see how BA's PR teams capitalise on these ads.  We will track the reaction to it in the social media environment with great interest.

Finally, on the subject of BBH, you have to admire their creative work - as so well demonstrated by their own recent viral work for this year's graduate recruitment drive below

Great acting I thought by the young man in that film, and I wonder if he grew up to be another of Metrica's favourite blog authors, Chris Reed, of The Ginger Monkey... :-)  

Here at Metrica we are always eager to recommend to our clients, effective alternatives to AVE as a way to measure their PR activity. As Richard pointed out previously, we don’t take much notice of AVE for our own press coverage, so why would we promote it to others?

Taking this a step further, Claire recently wrote about how PR can move out of the shadow of advertising to take a more prominent position in the marketing sphere. With that in mind, isn’t it another timely reminder that PR ought to stop measuring itself against advertising?

PRs often cite AVE being a measure their board understands, which is all well and good, but how do you explain what a drop in AVE means in relation to your PR?  As Peter Preston points out, in yesterday’s Observer, “ads cost what you feel like paying” and advertising rates are subject to the “mysterious world of the 'rate card’”.

During an economic slowdown – such as the one we are in now – editorial is the cost-effective alternative to advertising. Good work by PR teams is going to help companies to thrive during these challenging times, so why devalue that hard graft with falling ad value equivalents.

Look at the good work you are conducting in terms of message penetration, ownership of coverage and increasing brand awareness. Examine how these metrics relate to your sales trends, customer enquiries and website traffic.

These are the outcomes which will have a real impact on your bottom line and with minimal effort in terms of input, we can help show you how they correlate to your PR efforts.

There’s so much value in PR at this stage of the economic cycle, so let’s prove it. 

Here's a screen grab from a BBC online news article that I read this morning (original article).  What's so extraordinary about this?  Well, the first thing that might strike you is that it is a page from BBC News online before it went through it's latest redesign.  In fact, the article is dated 8th March 2006.  So why flag it for attention now?  The reason is that as I was sipping my cup of tea I noticed that it was the 4th most read article on the BBC's website.  Today's fourth most read article?? Nearly 30 months after it was first published?!

It gets really interesting when you read the content of the story itself - Tim Weber's 2006 article, somewhat ironically, is commenting on how an email was then doing the rounds claiming that Microsoft were contemplating charging for using a Hotmail account.  Which was true, except that the deliberations over how to monetise Hotmail had actually been going on in 2001, a full five year's earlier.  (See the report by the BBC here.)  This original 2001 article was now climbing the popularity rankings of the BBC a full five year's later.

Now, fast forward to 2008 and the story is starting to appear again.  So what is happening and what does it mean? 

First of all it shows that the consumer doesn't always check the date of an online article before they read and react or respond to it.  In both articles' case, their resurgence in popularity has been driven by people forwarding the link to their friends and colleagues without paying heed of the date.  Examples like this are fairly common on the BBC, and in other online media too.

It also shows the power of 'the long tail' with online and social media.  Articles and comments once written tend to stay around.  They're available, they're visible, they're searchable, they're forwardable.  They carry influence and they can still affect reputations.  To the media consumer, they're still real.  They still carry influence, and shouldn't be ignored necessarily just because they aren't in this week's batch of press clippings.

Welcome to the new media.  The days of yesterday's news being tomorrow's fish and chip wrapper are well and truly behind us. The way that the media works and the consumer interacts with it are changing rapidly.  Are you ready for these new challenges to your ongoing PR strategy and metrics?

Imagine a world in which newspapers have been wholly replaced by online news sites… not so hard is it?! And somehow, without even trying, it makes sense.

Jeff Jarvis muses the idea in his Guardian column today, referring first of all to a vision outlined to him by Edward Roussel, head of digital for the Telegraph. Roussel’s vision is that Google becomes an online distribuitor for a paper’s content so it can concentrate on its real job (journalism).

And Bob Wyman, a technology entrepreneur, agrees: "If Google can provide free hosting to the 'citizen journalists' who are making life difficult for the newspapers, Google should be able to host the newspapers for free as well." It’s a good point and one which lends weight to the idea that the days of hard copy news papers are numbered.

And there are more:

·         As Wyman points out, Google, with all its services (search engines, alert systems, video serving, database services, application hosting), is kitted out to be the ideal news distributor: "Ideally, every newsroom would be able to think of Google, and all its capabilities, as their own”

·         Moving to an online news model which offers publications the opportunity to concentrate wholly on content (and not worry about distribution) should also, one would hope, have a positive affect on the quality of copy

·         If audience/reader interaction and conversation is moving online then a hard copy newspaper’s content essentially becomes isolated – from both dialouge and commerical opportunity

·         And surely online better reflects contemporary lifestyles…

·         Plus of course there are the environmental benefits…

So already (I think) the argument for waving goodbye to newspapers and moving online is becoming really rather compelling.

Unless, you’ve been on the moon for the last 12 months, you'll be aware that the economy is on something of a slow down at the moment and worse, many people are predicting a recession. 

Here on the Government & NGO (Non Governmental Organisation) team at Metrica we wanted to highlight some research that we found interesting and also to give a few tips for controlling costs and improving time efficiencies that many of our clients are successfully implementing. 

First, the research - published by nfpSynergy earlier this week, it indicates that unsurprisingly, donations are closely linked with GDP, and if that drops, so do donations.  However, the research also concluded that there was an average 17 month delay before a drop on GDP had an impact on a charity’s income. This means there is more than enough time to prepare for the worst and begin to turn the ship so it faces any potential crisis head on. 

In our experience, there are some areas that have proven to be of huge value as clients look to extract more benefit and save costs from their media monitoring and evaluation. Whilst these are particularly relevant to the NGO and charity sectors many of the points will also apply to any business or organisation looking to control costs without diminishing the value of reporting.  

So here are five of our main insights ... 

1. First, and maybe most importantly - making sure you get the right message to the right audience is paramount.  This is particularly the case as the exploding world of media (think online, CGM, social media, TV on demand etc) fragments your target audiences ever wider.  It’s never been more important to have a system in place that allows you to check whether you are reaching your target audiences with the right messages.  If you can’t identify whether you’re reaching your target audiences, why bother measuring at all? 

2.  Once you have identified who your core target audiences are and what they’re watching, reading and listening to, focus your efforts, your media monitoring and your PR measurement on these outlets.   

We see a lot of charities who generate an enormous number of cuttings. When the cuttings books roll in, it’s an impressive sight, until you realise that actually, many of the stories just aren’t relevant -  articles about a local cake sake for example.  The bottom line is that nice though it is, these ‘name checks’ won’t make things happen, they won’t drive fundraising and they won’t raise any awareness of your major issues and campaigns.  

That name check is costing you a lot of money.  I don’t need to tell you how much a cutting costs to be sourced, you will already be painfully aware of that.  Add the cost of getting that piece about the local cake sale analysed, and you’ve already blown a fiver in the time it takes for your monitoring agency’s computer to pick out a keyword.  Getting a few hundred of those a month?  Ouch. 

A specialist media evaluation consultancy will be able to advise you on getting the best from your monitoring brief, focussing in on what really matters.  Is a monitoring company going to offer you advice that will cost them money?   

3. Resist spurious measures like AVEs and other mickey mouse measures – do we really need to go there? You know the arguments against them make sense, now stop paying them lip-service and wave them good bye!  PR, the guardian of an organisation's reputation,  will never be taken seriously at boardroom level while low-end evaluation techniques are still put forward to justify a budget or demonstrate success.

4. Do your reports give you exactly what you need?  Think about what is most important to you, and the different members of your team.  Are you getting the information in a timely fashion? Is the report you receive one long tome with large parts of it irrelevant to your role within the organisation?  If you recognise any of these issues, you should consider utilising online media analysis and evaluation portals like our very own MyMetrica.  Many of our clients find that having the ability to access their data 24/7, in real time, and completely customized to each user’s specific requirements gives them the control over their data that they have been missing. 

5. As previously mentioned, target audiences are becoming increasingly fragmented, making reaching them ever harder.  Proper planning has never been more important.  PR planning when done correctly will allow you to understand your target audiences better, their lifestyles and importantly how best to reach them through the media.  The old familiar PR planning tools don’t help you to get close to your target audiences – instead look to learn from the creditable systems that advertising firms use – you could look into TGI lifestyles or ConsumerPulse for example. 

In conclusion, evaluate your success at reaching your target audiences, not how many cuttings are sitting on your desk every morning.  Control your costs by being ruthless about what is important and what is not; make these decisions based on accurate research rather than gut feel.  Avoid the spurious measures of yesterday in your media evaluation, and ensure that you are using the latest time saving tools.  You will find that your time and your budget will go a lot further!