5 PR analytics to measure your owned media performance

Most PR teams have a great handle on their owned media: publishing content, pitching stories, and managing newsrooms.

But when leadership asks, “So what did this actually deliver?”, the answer is often vague page stats or loosely defined coverage quality.

That doesn’t show the real value of your team.

Meanwhile, other departments – like marketing – run on dashboards, funnels, and conversion rates.

See the problem?

If PR wants a seat at the table, it needs to speak the same language: real metrics that show whether your owned media strategy is actually doing its job.

This article breaks down five practical PR metrics that give you an honest picture of performance, what they measure, why they matter, and how to access them.

If you’re serious about media measurement analytics and about showing the contribution of your team, this is your starting point.

What’s the definition of owned media?

Owned media refers to communication channels that a brand controls end-to-end.

You decide what gets published, how long it stays live, how it’s structured, and how everything connects across your comms ecosystem.

For PR teams, owned media typically includes:

• Your brand newsroom
• Corporate website
• Blogs and thought leadership hubs
• Email newsletters
• Brand-owned social channels

Unlike earned media, you don’t rely on an editor to publish your story. And unlike paid media, performance doesn’t stop when spend does.

Owned media is your permanent source of record. It’s where official statements live, where updates are logged, and where your narrative is documented over time.

It’s also the first place journalists (and increasingly AI systems) look to verify what your company actually says.

That’s why modern PR strategy should start with owned media first.

Earned and paid channels amplify the story. But owned media anchors it. If your newsroom isn’t clear, structured, and up to date, everything built on top of it becomes shaky.

5 PR metrics to measure the success of your owned media

Now that we’ve brushed up on definitions, let’s get into how to actually measure owned media.

Quick caveat: there’s no shortage of PR metrics out there. But most dashboards still lean heavily on volume-based signals, such as traffic, impressions, or raw mentions. That provides useful context, sure. But they don’t tell you whether your newsroom is influencing coverage, shaping narratives, or driving action.

The five PR metrics below focus on impact. They help you understand:

• Whether AI systems recognize your newsroom as a source of truth
• Whether your owned content feeds earned media
• Whether your key messages are landing
• Whether your content drives meaningful next steps
• How fast your team can publish when it matters

Together, they give you a practical framework for modern PR measurement that reflects how people (and machines) consume your content today.

Let’s start with the big one.

1. AI Citation Share

AI Citation Share measures how often AI systems reference your owned content when answering questions about your company, products, or industry.

Put simply: Are AI tools pulling from your newsroom, or filling the gaps with sources from elsewhere?

This matters more than most teams realize. As people increasingly get information via AI assistants and AI-powered search, those systems decide which sources are trustworthy enough to summarize or cite. If your owned media isn’t structured, current, and authoritative, you won’t show up, and you’ll lose control over how your story is told.

Tracking AI Citation Share helps you understand:

• Whether your newsroom is treated as a source of truth
• Whether your key announcements are visible beyond traditional search
• Whether AI-generated answers reflect your narrative

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How do you access AI Citation Share?

This metric isn’t available in GA4. Right now, teams typically measure AI Citation Share through a mix of:

• Manual prompts in AI tools – Ask structured, recurring questions about your brand, leadership, products, and crisis topics. Track which sources appear and whether your corporate newsroom is cited or referenced.
• AI visibility platforms – Use tools like Ahrefs that monitor how LLMs reference your brand across different AI systems.
• Structured content audits of priority topics – Map your key narratives against AI-generated answers. Identify gaps where your owned content is missing, outdated, or overshadowed by third-party sources – and fix them.

It’s early days, but one thing is already clear: AI systems prefer well-organized, regularly updated owned media with clear headlines, named spokespeople, and supporting facts.

Once you’ve gathered enough answers, you can turn those observations into a simple metric.

How to calculate AI Citation Share

AI Citation Share can be calculated as:

For example: If you test 50 AI-generated answers across different tools and 18 of them reference your newsroom or official statements:

That number tells you how often AI systems treat your owned media as a primary source.

It’s not a perfect metric yet. But it gives you a directional signal of authority in AI-driven environments.

2. Media-Intent Conversion Rate

Media-Intent Conversion Rate measures how often people who actively want media information about your brand take a meaningful action after landing on your owned content.

Think: media kit downloads, press contact clicks, spokesperson page views, or subscriptions. These actions signal that someone is actively engaging with your PR content and sees your newsroom as a trustworthy source.

This metric helps you understand:

• Whether visitors can find the information they need
• Whether your newsroom drives meaningful next steps
• Whether your owned media turns attention into action

How do you access Media-Intent Conversion Rate

You’ll usually track this in GA4 or your analytics platform by setting up events for newsroom-specific actions, such as:

• Media kit downloads
• Press contact clicks
• Spokesperson page views
• Journalist newsletter sign-ups
• Contact form submissions from newsroom pages

The key is to segment these actions by newsroom traffic, not your entire website. Otherwise you dilute the signal. If your newsroom lives on a separate subdomain or platform, make sure analytics are properly connected.

How to calculate Media-Intent Conversion Rate

Here’s the simplest way to calculate Media-Intent Conversion Rate:

Say 8,000 people visit your brand newsroom. 140 of them download a media kit, 60 click through to your press contact page, and 40 subscribe to media updates. That’s 240 total media-intent actions.

That number tells you how effectively your owned media converts attention into meaningful interaction.

A low rate may indicate unclear navigation, buried contact details, or weak calls to action. A healthy rate suggests your newsroom supports real media workflows.

3. Share of High-Quality Coverage

Share of High-Quality Coverage measures the percentage of earned media coverage that meets (or exceeds) your defined quality standard.

Not all coverage is created equal. A one-line mention buried in a roundup is very different from a feature article that includes your spokesperson, key messages, and backlinks to your newsroom.

This metric helps you understand:

• Whether journalists are picking up your core messages
• Whether your owned content is influencing the quality of coverage
• Whether your media outreach is landing in the right places

You can get 200 mentions and still have weak PR performance. This metric tells you how much of that coverage actually matters.

How do you access Share of High-Quality Coverage

You’ll usually calculate this using a media monitoring or PR measurement platform that scores coverage based on quality criteria such as:

• Inclusion of key messages
• Spokesperson quotes
• Brand prominence
• Sentiment
• Domain authority or outlet relevance
• Links back to your owned media

Most tools let you assign a quality score (often out of 100) to each article.

For example, you might decide that any article scoring 75/100 or higher counts as ‘high quality’ because it includes at least one key message, a spokesperson quote, and meaningful brand visibility. Everything below that doesn’t make the cut.

That threshold becomes your benchmark and lets you track improvement over time.

How to calculate Share of High-Quality Coverage

High-Quality Coverage can be calculated as: 

Here’s how this could look in practice: You generate 200 earned media hits in a quarter, and 65 of them score above your quality benchmark (say 75/100):

That number tells you how much of your coverage clears your internal quality bar.

Low percentage? Your pitches may be landing, but your narrative isn’t.

Healthy percentage? Your owned content is supporting stronger stories.

Either way, this metric gives you a concrete way to move the conversation from “how much coverage did we get?” to “how good was it?”.

4. Narrative Penetration Rate

Narrative Penetration Rate measures how often earned coverage reflects at least one of your key brand themes.

These themes might include product safety, sustainability, innovation, or leadership perspective – whatever you’ve defined as priorities for a campaign.

Getting coverage is one thing. Getting your story through is another. This metric shows whether your narrative is sticking once it leaves your newsroom.

Use it to answer questions like:

• Are journalists picking up your core talking points?
• Are the same themes appearing across multiple articles?
• Is your positioning consistent, or fragmented?

How do you access Narrative Penetration Rate

You’ll usually calculate this metric using a combination of:

• Media monitoring tools (to analyze earned articles)
• Your newsroom analytics (to track owned content)
• Keyword or message tagging inside your PR platform

Start by defining 3-5 key narratives or messages per campaign (for example: sustainability, product safety, leadership perspective).

Then tag every article or piece of content based on whether those messages appear.

Some platforms support automated tagging. Others may require manual review. What matters is tracking message pickup consistently over time.

How to calculate Narrative Penetration Rate

Simply put, you can calculate Narrative Penetration Rate as:

Consider this: You analyze 120 earned articles from a product launch. 78 of them include at least one of your defined key messages.

That tells you how widely your narrative traveled.

A weaker score usually points to unclear messaging or fragmented positioning, while a stronger one suggests your owned content is translating cleanly into earned coverage.

5. Time-to-Truth Publishing

Time-to-Truth Publishing measures how long it takes your team to publish an official newsroom update after a critical event emerges.

In other words: When your first authoritative statement appears in your owned media.

This metric reflects operational readiness and the efficiency of your crisis communication plan. It shows how quickly your organization can move from uncertainty to clarity when the pressure is on.

Use it to understand:

• How fast your team can publish verified information
• Whether approval workflows slow you down
• Whether your newsroom acts as a real source of truth during issues or crises

How do you access Time-to-Truth Publishing

You calculate this manually by comparing two timestamps:

• When the incident first becomes known internally or externally
• When your first official newsroom update goes live

Most teams track this using a combination of:

• Incident logs or internal comms timestamps
• Newsroom publishing times
• Crisis or issue management records

Over time, logging this metric across incidents gives you a clear picture of your response speed and where you might have to watch out for bottlenecks.

How to calculate Time-to-Truth Publishing

Compared to the others, calculating Time-to-Truth Publishing is refreshingly simple:

Let’s say an incident breaks at 09:15, and you publish your first newsroom holding statement is published at 11:00.

That number shows how long it took your organization to provide an official source of truth.

Long delays often point to approval friction, unclear ownership, or disconnected tools. Shorter times usually signal a newsroom software that’s operationally ready.

FAQ: PR analytics for owned media

What are PR analytics?

PR analytics are metrics that help you understand how your communications perform across owned and earned channels. Instead of just counting mentions or pageviews, they focus on outcomes like narrative pickup, media engagement, and how effectively your newsroom supports journalists, stakeholders, and AI systems.

How do AI systems affect PR measurement?

AI shifts the focus from visibility to authority. Instead of just tracking rankings or coverage volume, PR teams now need to measure whether AI systems cite and summarize their owned content as a trusted source. PR metrics like AI Citation Share and Narrative Penetration Rate help you see whether your official messaging is shaping AI-generated answers.

How do I benchmark PR analytics without industry standards?

Benchmark against your own baseline. Track the same metrics consistently over time and compare performance across campaigns or quarters to identify trends. Improvement and consistency matter more than external comparisons.

What should PR teams prioritize first when building an analytics framework?

Start with metrics that connect directly to outcomes, not activity. Media-Intent Conversion Rate, Share of High-Quality Coverage, and Narrative Penetration Rate give you immediate insight into whether your newsroom drives action and whether your messaging lands. Once those are stable, you can layer in more advanced signals like AI Citation Share.

How do PR analytics help justify budget or headcount?

PR analytics translate communications work into business impact. Executives care about engagement that leads to action, coverage quality, message consistency, and operational readiness. When you can show how fast you publish, how often your narrative sticks, and how effectively your newsroom drives engagement, the conversation shifts from cost to contribution.

The takeaway

Don’t spend your time building pretty reports that don’t tell you anything.

If you want PR to be taken seriously, focus on metrics that show real impact: whether your newsroom drives action, whether your story sticks, whether coverage quality holds up, and whether AI systems treat you as a source of truth.

Start small. Track consistently. Optimize what matters.

And if owned media sits at the heart of your PR strategy, your newsroom should too. That’s exactly what Presspage’s PR software is built for: helping comms teams publish faster, structure their stories properly, and turn owned media into a measurable performance channel.

If you’re ready to level up your PR impact, take a look at our newsroom software.