There are many reasons I say this:

• 99% of all the content created by PR professionals now appears online
• There is an entire industry growing up around creating tools to mine the huge volumes of data this generates
• The data that can be derived from earned media is potentially more valuable than the data from paid media campaigns because of the inherent rise in the value of earned media.

The limitations to date have been that the focus of data gathering in the PR industry has been to listen and monitor. This is hugely valuable in its own right but it doesn’t directly translate into business value. As Context Analytics becomes a part of Project Metal (article here) the most exciting thing for me is looking at how we move beyond listening and monitoring to measuring the impact of earned media on a business. This is now possible and it is an area where Context Analytics has been doing some pioneering work.

By combining media measurement, web analytics, audience data and search analytics we can now demonstrate which type of articles in which digital media destinations generate the lowest cost per customer acquisition. As mentioned in this piece of research from Alterian, earned media outreach can genuinely compete for marketing spend against direct marketing dollars or Google adwords dollars. Now that truly is a crossroads for the PR industry.