Have you been diligently working on your client's PR campaigns but have no idea what your results are? Without valuable insights, you won't know what to do next, and it's hard to prove the ROI of your hard work.
The media measurement tools mentioned in this article can provide valuable media analytics and insights that can help improve your campaigns, retain existing clients, and win new ones:
- What are media measurement tools?
- What are marketing campaign measurement tools?
- Traditional media measurement tools
- PR campaign measurement tools
- Marketing campaign measurement tools
- Social media monitoring tools
- Social media analytics tools
- SEO tools
- Heatmaps
- Email analytics tools
Ready to take your PR activities to the next level? Prowly lets you try before you buy.
What are media measurement tools?
Media measurement tools let you quantify the results of your media campaigns. Depending on the platform where you work for your clients or business, these tools can measure performance on websites, social media, news outlets, search engines, and more.
What are marketing campaign measurement tools?
Marketing measurement tools are apps built specifically for tracking the success of marketing campaigns. They help you reveal metrics such as return on investment, engagement, conversion rates, click-through rates, and many others.
Traditional media measurement tools
These tools help you measure the effectiveness of traditional media channels such as TV and radio.
Nielsen Audio (formerly Arbitron)
Formerly known as Arbitron, Nielsen Audio measures the effectiveness of audio materials in various formats.
Circulation Figures
Tracking the number of how many copies of a certain publication are distributed.
Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC)
The ABC is an independent organization of publishers that verifies the circulation numbers of various publications.
BARB (Broadcasters' Audience Research Board)
This UK based organization provides independent television audience measurement.
Traditional campaign & media measurement metrics
For traditional media formats, there are two main types of metrics you can track:
- Media impressions: the number of times a piece of content is viewed across different platforms.
- Ad Value Equivalency (AVE): a metric that estimates the value of media coverage by comparing it to the cost of purchasing the same amount of ad space.
💡 Remember that although AVE is a traditional method, it’s not the best way to measure your PR tactics’ impact. In digital PR there are many better ways to make data-driven decisions. Find out more in this article: What is Advertising Value Equivalency in PR? (+ AVE Alternatives)
PR campaign measurement tools
Just a note before we dive deep into other measurement tools - we'll get into the specifics of what you can measure with Prowly, as we have detailed information at our fingertips. For the other listed tools, we lack detailed testing data, but you can discover more by booking a call or utilizing a free trial where offered.
Prowly
- Pricing: starts at $258 per month
- Free trial: yes
What is Prowly?
Prowly is an all-in-one public relations software solution that helps small and medium PR agencies and in-house PR teams manage media relations, create press releases, pitch the right journalists, and monitor PR campaigns all using the power of AI.
What features does it offer?
PR CRM, pitching tools, a media database with over one million contacts, an AI Assistant, a press release creator, media monitoring tools, and a detailed PR reporting suite.
Who is it best for?
Agencies and in-house PR and marketing teams, especially small to medium size, and any business that wants to get valuable web and social media insights.
What metrics can you track with Prowly?
Share of Voice
Domain Authority
Domain authority, calculated by Semrush on a scale of 0 to 100, reflects a website's overall quality and SEO performance, with higher scores indicating stronger authority.
Backlinks
In Prowly’s PR Reports tool, you can track your PR success by comparing your number of backlinks through different time periods, showing year-over-year growth, for example. Backlinks are counted automatically and you will see them in the main Media Monitoring dashboard for each project. 
Media tiers
Set up media tiers in Prowly based on the preferences of your target audience, not just visitor numbers. Track how often your brand is mentioned in Tier 1 outlets and monitor the number of press mentions in each tier to assess their value.
Top mentions
Prioritize top mentions from media outlets that best match your target audience, using filters like country and sentiment. In Prowly, you can generate and sort a list of top mentions by industry category and domain authority to effectively measure your PR activities.
Sentiment analysis
The solution uses algorithms and machine learning to perform sentiment analysis, which Prowly groups into easy-to-follow categories.
Data visualization
With Prowly, you can personalize your data visualization. You can export your data to Excel (.XLSX), Numbers (.CSV), or copy it into a PR report to easily share your outcomes with your clients or company.
Prezly
- Pricing: Prezly pricing starts at $50 per user, per month
- Free trial: available
What is Prezly?
Prezly is a PR CRM for agencies and businesses that want to reach out to a large number of media professionals in a systematic way.
What features does it offer?
Email outreach, sites and newsrooms, CRM for public relations, PR and media analytics, and linking coverage to the PR CRM for more valuable insights.
Who is it best for?
PR agencies.
Meltwater
- Pricing: not disclosed publicly but our research on Meltwater pricing shows it's around $6,000-10,000 per year
- Free trial: Unknown, but you can request a demo
What is Meltwater?
Meltwater is a data analytics platform that gives insights into media, social, and consumer trends.
What features does it offer?
Media intelligence, media relations, consumer intelligence, influencer marketing, and sales intelligence.
Who is it best for?
Agencies. Smaller PR teams are better off looking at Meltwater alternatives.
Press clipping services
These services send you updates and summaries of content where your brand was published, both online and offline. It's a tool that has been around for a while and is available in Prowly too.
With Prowly you get press clippings and a host of other PR features with a flexible pricing plan and a free trial period.
Marketing campaign measurement tools
These are digital analytics tools for marketing performance measurement that give you insights about specific marketing channels.
Mixpanel
- Pricing: starts at $28 per month
- Free trial: No, but there is a forever-free plan
What is Mixpanel?
Mixpanel is a product and website analytics platform that helps you better understand your customers and how they behave in your app or on your website.
What features does it offer?
Website metric analysis, research validation, KPI monitoring, website and product performance reporting, and feedback collection.
Who is it best for?
Product businesses and marketing teams.
Google Analytics
- Pricing: free
- Free trial: not needed - this tool is free to use
What is Google Analytics?
A free tool for measuring just about any aspect of your website performance. From visitors to conversions and the performance of individual pages, GA has it all.
What features does it offer?
Website analytics, campaign performance tracking, conversion rate tracking, website visitor behavior tracking, and more.
Who is it best for?
Any business with a website.
Meta (Facebook & Instagram) analytics
- Pricing: free
- Free trial: the tool is free to use
What is Meta Insights?
This tool helps you track the performance of your organic and paid media content on Meta's platforms.
What features does it offer?
Metrics and trends tracking, visual reports, ad performance overview, demographic reports and more.
Who is it best for?
Agencies, in-house marketing teams, and anyone with a business account on Meta.
Adobe Analytics
- Pricing: not disclosed publicly, research shows that it starts at $2,000 per month
- Free trial: not available
What is Adobe Analytics?
Adobe Analytics is a web analytics platform that helps you track the customer journey throughout digital channels.
What features does it offer?
Website analytics, drag-and-drop segmentation, ad hoc analysis, page reports, mobile dashboards, cross-device analysis, and more.
Who is it best for?
Business owners and agencies.
Kissmetrics
- Pricing: starts at $25.99 per month
- Free trial: available, but only after a demo.
What is Kissmetrics?
Kissmetrics is an analytics tool for tracking human behavior on your website and removing bottlenecks to additional revenue.
What features does it offer?
Real-time website metrics, tracking across websites and products, funnel tracking, detailed customer activity monitoring.
Who is it best for?
Business owners and ecommerce stores.
Social media monitoring tools
Social monitoring tools give you details on the performance of your brand on social media channels.
Prowly
- Pricing: starts at $258 per month
- Free trial: available for 7 days
What is Prowly?
Prowly is a PR and media monitoring tool that gives real-time insights about your brand terms and target keywords.
What features does it offer?
Real-time monitoring, keyword combinations and context, sentiment analysis, estimated mention reach, and region and language filtering.
Who is it best for?
Agencies, in-house PR and marketing teams, or anyone who wants a detailed and accurate social media report.
Brand24
- Pricing: starts at $79 per month
- Free trial: available for 14 days
What is Brand24?
Brand24 is an AI-powered social media tracking and listening tool for marketers and brands.
What features does it offer?
Competitive analysis, reputation management, hashtag analytics, PR measurement, white label reporting, and detailed analytics.
Who is it best for?
In-house teams, agencies and freelancers.
Talkwalker
- Pricing: not publicly available
- Free trial: not available
What is Talkwalker?
Talkwalker by Hootsuite is a consumer intelligence platform that gives you detailed insights about your customers.
What features does it offer?
Social listening, media monitoring, social benchmarking, audience insights, customer feedback analytics, social content ratings, and more.
Who is it best for?
Bigger in-house marketing teams and agencies.
Brandwatch
- Pricing: not publicly available
- Free trial: not available
What is BrandWatch?
BrandWatch is a consumer intelligence platform that helps businesses understand how customers interact with them across platforms.
What features does it offer?
Content searching and segmentation, sentiment analysis, real-time consumer data access, and an AI-powered analytics search engine.
Who is it best for?
Agencies and in-house teams of larger businesses.
Social media analytics tools
The best social media measurement tools reveal the performance of your social media channels through specific metrics.
Hootsuite analytics
- Pricing: starts at $99 per month
- Free trial: available for 30 days
What is Hootsuite?
Hootsuite is a free social media measurement tool that lets you measure performance through organic and paid social media channels from a single dashboard.
What features does it offer?
Publishing and scheduling, social media analytics, AI content creation, help figuring out the best time to post, social engagement tools, inbox and messaging tools, and more.
Who is it best for?
Agencies, in-house teams, and freelance social media marketers who need marketing measurement tools.
Sprout Social
- Pricing: starts at $199 per seat per month
- Free trial: available for 30 days
What is SproutSocial?
SproutSocial is a social media management platform with analytics and monitoring capabilities.
What features does it offer?
Social media engagement, publishing, social analytics, social listening, influencer marketing, and employee advocacy tools.
Who is it best for?
Agencies and internal marketing teams.
Buffer Analyze
- Pricing: starts at $6 per month per social media channel
- Free trial: available for 14 days
What is Buffer Analyze?
Buffer Analyze is a part of the Buffer suite of tools that helps you understand your social media platform performance.
What features does it offer?
Content idea libraries, scheduling, publishing, social analytics, customized landing page creator, and an AI assistant.
Who is it best for?
Agencies, freelancers and in-house marketers.
Keyhole
- Pricing: starts at $40.83 per month for the analytics suite
- Free trial: available for 14 days
What is Keyhole?
Keyhole is a full-stack social media tool that lets you manage your online presence, create and schedule posts, analyze their performance, and more.
What features does it offer?
Social media analytics, social listening, historical insights, publishing, and scheduling.
Who is it best for?
Freelancers, in-house teams and marketing and PR agencies.
Rival IQ
- Pricing: starts at $239 per month
- Free trial: available
What is Rival IQ?
Rival IQ is a tool for real-time social media analytics, reports, and real-time alerts.
What features does it offer?
Competitive analysis, channel social media analysis, social media audits, and social listening.
Who is it best for?
Agencies and in-house marketing teams.
SEO tools
These tools help you uncover opportunities to upgrade your SEO performance and rank better with great content.
Moz
- Pricing: starts at $99 per month
- Free trial: available for 30 days
What is Moz?
Moz is an SEO tool for monitoring your SEO performance and finding new ways to improve your rankings.
What features does it offer?
Domain analysis, keyword explorer, link explorer, competitive research, backlink research, and reporting tools.
Who is it best for?
Agencies and in-house SEO teams.
Ahrefs
- Pricing: starts at $129 per user per month
- Free trial: not available
What is Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is an SEO tool that helps you create great content, do keyword and competitor research, and improve your search engine rankings.
What features does it offer?
Keyword research, competitor research, website analytics, backlink monitoring, site audits, and content explorer.
Who is it best for?
Agencies, in-house SEO teams and freelancers.
Semrush
- Pricing: starts at $129.95 per month
- Free trial: available for 7 days
What is Semrush?
Semrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that helps you create better content and rule search engine results.
What features does it offer?
Keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, content creation and distribution, PPC keyword research, and many others.
Who is it best for?
Agencies, in-house teams and SEO freelancers.
Google Search Console
- Pricing: free
- Free trial: the tool is free to use
What is Google Search Console?
GSC is a tool for monitoring your presence in organic search results.
What features does it offer?
Page performance tracking, keyword rankings and monitoring, measuring impressions and clicks, and help keeping up with search performance trends over time.
Who is it best for?
Anyone who has a website. Coupled with Google Analytics, it covers your SEO basics.
Heatmaps
These tools analyze your website to reveal patterns in how visitors access them. The "hotter" the heatmap, the more visitors come to that part of your website.
Hotjar
- Pricing: starts at $32 per month
- Free trial: There is no free trial but there is a forever free plan
What is Hotjar?
Hotjar is a user experience and data analytics platform that shows you insights about how people access your website.
What features does it offer?
Heatmaps, polls, feedback collection, video recording sessions, surveys, and interviews.
Who is it best for?
Any marketing team or agency.
Crazy Egg
- Pricing: starts at $99 per month
- Free trial: available for 30 days
What is Crazy Egg?
Crazy Egg is an analytics tool by Neil Patel that helps website owners understand the behavior of their visitors.
What features does it offer?
Heatmaps, visitor recordings, A/B testing, traffic analysis, error tracking, surveys, goals and CTAs.
Who is it best for?
Marketing teams.
Email analytics
These tools help you understand the performance of your email campaigns and all the key metrics such as CTRs, open rates, conversion rates, and many others.
Mailchimp
- Pricing: starts at $10 per month
- Free trial: There is a forever-free plan for up to 500 contacts
What is Mailchimp?
Mailchimp is a popular email marketing tool that lets you build your email lists and create campaigns for different audiences.
What features does it offer?
Visual email builder, audience segmentation, detailed email analytics, landing page builder, email personalization, and more.
Who is it best for?
Small businesses, marketing teams, agencies, and anyone who needs to send business emails.
Get response
- Pricing: starts at $13 per month
- Free trial: available for 30 days
What is Getresponse?
Getresponse is a marketing automation platform that lets you harness the power of emails combined with other marketing channels.
What features does it offer?
Email marketing, SMS marketing, an AI email generator, website builder, landing pages, live chat, and much more.
Who is it best for?
Marketers, agencies, small and large businesses, and anyone serious about email marketing.
10 benefits of using media measurement tools
1️⃣ Data-driven decision making: determine which campaigns work best to get better results for your clients
2️⃣ ROI analysis: spend your marketing dollars on campaigns that deliver real results
3️⃣ Audience segmentation and targeting: determine the audiences that react best to your media messaging
4️⃣ Real-time feedback: understand performance in real-time and make adjustments as you go
5️⃣ Benchmarking: set benchmarks for campaign performance for the future
6️⃣ Budget optimization: better allocate your budget for marketing and PR campaigns
7️⃣ Multi-channel understanding: understand which channels work best and for which audience type
8️⃣ Performance monitoring: monitor campaigns all the way down to individual content pieces
9️⃣ Customer journey mapping: tie each type of content to a part of your customer journey
🔟 Content effectiveness: determine the most effective content for your target audience
Join 1,000+ businesses and start measuring your PR campaigns with Prowly.
Practical applications of media measurement tools
With the right tools, data analytics can be a breeze. The tools listed today can help you monitor just about any aspect of your online and social media presence, helping you create better campaigns for your business or your clients.
And if you're looking for the best tool to manage and monitor your PR activities, try out Prowly.
