Article Metrics

Please see below for detailed explanations of the metadata associated to outlets and articles displayed within CARMA Insight.

If you have any further questions, please contact your local CARMA support team.

AVE

Online: The methodology CARMA uses to calculate the Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) for the article is calculated from the number of impressions using the following calculation

AVE = Online Impressions x $0.37

$0.37 is the estimated average cost per reader and is consistent with other methodologies used in the communications measurement industry.

The calculation for AVE for monitored clips is:

  • ​​​​​​​Print (Newspapers & Magazines):
    • ​​​​​​​Manually Uploaded articles- Size of article (in 1/16ths of a page) x advertising rate (Full page display rate [run of paper, colour]) for that newspaper/magazine
    • Automatically Uploaded articles (NLA eClips Print)- Full page display rate x percentage of article within the full page​​​​​​​
  • Broadcast (TV & Radio)
    • All providers except TVEyes: Clip duration in seconds x outlet display rate 
    • TVEyes: 90 seconds (average clip duration agreed with key stakeholders) x outlet display rate
  • Social media – there is currently no advertising equivalency for social media

It is important to note that the industry is moving away from the use of AVEs as a measure of the value of communications activity.  AMEC, the global communications measurement trade body, strongly encourages communications professions not to use AVEs for this purpose.  For a list of 22 reasons why AVEs are invalid, please see the AMEC website: https://amecorg.com/2017/06/the-definitive-guide-why-aves-are-invalid/

Circulation 

Circulation is a meaningless concept when applied to media types beyond print, such as broadcast or online.

For example, CARMA uses Monthly Unique Visitors for online content, whereas previously this was presented as “circulation”, whereas MUV represents the number of people that saw a website domain over a whole month, which is much higher than the number of people that saw an individual article on average.   

Conversely, the circulation is the number of copies published of a print publication which may be less than the number of people who read an individual article.  This is not an apples-to-apples definition and causes bigger problems the more we move from a print dominated media landscape to a digital and broadcast dominated one.   ​​​​​​​

Impressions has now been added in place of Circulation, therefore consolidating a readership number for all media types under impressions, with the following formulas generating the impressions number.

Engagement 

  • X (Formerly Twitter): Likes + Reposts (Formerly Retweets) + Replies
  • Facebook: Likes + Comments + Shares
  • Instagram: Likes + Comments
  • YouTube: Likes + Comments [although you can’t export YT data from Insight]
  • REDDIT: Comments
  • Tiktok: Likes + Comments + Shares
  • LinkedIn: Likes + Comments + Shares

Impressions

An impression is a metric used to quantify the number of times that a piece of content can potentially be viewed. Please see below the definitions how CARMA generates an impressions number for each media type: 

  • Online Impressions = Total Unique Monthly Visitors x 0.025 
  • CARMA’s research has shown that, although it varies from article to article, the average percentage of visitors that read an individual article is 2.5%. 
  • Print Impressions = Print Circulation x 2 
  • Broadcast Impressions = Viewership per hour
  • Viewership = Average hourly viewership of the channel
    Broadcast Impressions = Viewership
  • Social: Impressions = Total no. of views  

Monthly Unique Visitors

Data provided by SimilarWeb (SW).

Monthly Unique Visitors is the sum of devices visiting the analyzed domain, within the country and period analyzed.

Unique Visitors is the foundation of many of SW's other traffic and engagement metrics. SimilarWeb calculates Unique Visitors for desktop and mobile web the exact same way. All traffic is the sum of desktop and mobile web unique visits (not deduplicated).

The process for updating impressions and MUVs from the SimilarWeb API is an automatic one when new coverage is ingested into Insight.  The process looks up our database of SimilarWeb domains and if the MUVs are >3 months old then it will update the data from the API.

More information on the SimilarWeb data methodology - here

MOZ- Domain Authority

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website will rank in search engine result pages (SERPs).

Insight users will be able to sort and/or filter articles based on the outlet’s domain authority, allowing them to see how potentially impactful articles are.

Domain Authority Benchmarking

  • Scores between 40 and 50 are considered average.
  • Domain Authority between 50 and 60 must be rated as good.
  • Scores above 60 rate the Domain Authority as excellent.