You’re paying a PR agency $5,000 to $15,000 a month. They send a report full of numbers every month. They’re always “working on things.” And somewhere underneath it all, you have a nagging feeling: is any of this actually doing anything for our business?
You’re not paranoid. You’re probably right.
There are five tells that separate an agency quietly coasting on your retainer from one still earning it. If your own reporting matches two or three of these, it’s worth a hard conversation before your next invoice clears.
Sign 1: Their Reports Lead With “Impressions” and “AVE”
If your agency’s monthly report opens with “potential impressions” or “advertising value equivalent,” that’s your red flag. These are the two most misleading metrics in PR, and agencies lean on them precisely because they inflate small results into big-looking numbers.
Potential impressions is the publication’s total audience, not the people who actually saw your mention. Get mentioned in a Yahoo article and they’ll report 900 million “impressions.” In reality, maybe 200 people read that specific article.
AVE (Advertising Value Equivalent) is worse. It takes the publication’s ad rates and pretends your editorial mention is worth that much. This metric was debunked over a decade ago, and even the industry’s own standards bodies have rejected it.
What a real report includes instead:
- Actual placement URLs you can click and verify
- Domain Rating of each publication
- Whether the link is dofollow or nofollow
- Referral traffic from each placement
- Impact on your search rankings and branded search volume
If your agency can’t hand you these five things on request, either they don’t know how to measure real results, or they don’t want you to see them.
Sign 2: You Can’t Name a Single Specific Result
Quick test: without looking at any report, name one specific placement your agency earned you in the last 90 days. Not “we got some coverage,” but a specific article, in a specific publication, with a link to your site.
If you can’t, that tells you everything. Good PR produces results you remember, because they’re significant enough to remember: a feature in a major outlet, a backlink from a high-authority site, a journalist who becomes a recurring source for your industry.
Agencies that produce real results don’t need to bury them in 20-page reports. The results speak for themselves.
Sign 3: “Relationship Building” Is the Excuse for Zero Placements
Every PR agency talks about journalist relationships, and yes, relationships matter. But “relationship building” is not a valid excuse for months of zero placements.
A healthy engagement follows a fairly predictable arc:
| Timeframe | What You Should See |
|---|---|
| Month 1 | Strategy defined, media lists built, first pitches sent |
| Month 2 | First 2-4 placements, journalist responses, angle refinement |
| Month 3 | 5-10 total placements, measurable SEO impact beginning |
| Month 6 | Consistent monthly placements, clear ROI metrics, search ranking improvements |
If you’re at month 4 and still hearing “we’re building relationships,” your agency is either stalling or out of its depth. A team with the right approach can produce results within weeks, not quarters.
Sign 4: Every Client Gets the Same Playbook
Does your agency blast press releases through a wire service? Reuse the same pitch template with your company name swapped in? Do their “strategies” look identical regardless of your industry?
That’s the factory model of PR — and it’s what most agencies below the top tier actually run, while charging premium prices for a production-line service.
Effective PR is built around your business, not a template. That means:
- Custom data angles specific to your industry and audience
- Targeted journalist lists built around reporters who actually cover your space
- Reactive capability to jump on a trending story relevant to your brand within hours, not weeks
- Original research or data that gives journalists something new to write about
If your agency’s approach could be dropped into any company in any industry unchanged, it’s not worth what you’re paying.
Sign 5: You’re Locked Into a Long Retainer With No Performance Guarantees
The traditional model: a monthly retainer, typically $5,000 to $15,000, with a 6 to 12 month commitment. The agency promises “strategic communications” and “media outreach” but guarantees nothing specific.
That’s $60,000 to $180,000 a year with no guaranteed outcome. Ask yourself: in what other part of your business would you accept that?
The retainer model protects the agency’s revenue, not your results. It pays them whether they deliver or not, and it creates a perverse incentive: why work harder this month when you’re already locked in for six more?
Better structures exist: campaign-based pricing, pay-per-placement, performance bonuses. Anything that ties the agency’s incentive to your outcome instead of your commitment.
What to Do If You Recognize These Signs
If three or more of these describe your current agency, work through this checklist:
- Request a meeting about specific, verifiable results only. No impressions, no AVE, just actual placement URLs with domain ratings and traffic data.
- Ask for their journalist interaction log. Who did they pitch, when, and what was the response? Any agency doing real work has this on hand.
- Set a 60-day deadline with clear, measurable goals. If they hit them, great. If not, you have your answer.
- Calculate your real cost per placement. Total spend divided by meaningful placements (DR 40+). Over $2,000 per placement, you’re overpaying.
The PR industry has a transparency problem, and it survives on vague reporting because clients don’t know what good PR looks like. Now you do.
Curious what results-driven PR looks like? At Presslei, we work on a campaign basis: 8 to 14 earned placements in 30 to 45 days. Every placement is a real URL you can verify. No retainers, no vanity metrics.
About the Author
Salvador Jovells
Founder of Presslei. 12+ years in ecommerce SEO across international markets. After a decade of link buying for Hockerty and Sumissura, I reverse-engineered 5,272 earned media placements and founded a reactive PR agency that builds authority through data-driven stories journalists actually want to publish. Based in Zurich.
