Firstly how much of the value in news release distribution is in this visibility area and how much is in editorial/blog pickup i.e. writing about the release? As your survey highlighted the pickup measure as a key source of differentiation what proportion of the value add does PRN think is vested in this measure – or does your “bonus” comment above answer my question?

The second question is the one I posed in the post. Given that these releases are pushed to many recipients, and given the volume of releases we are talking about, at what threshold of pickup are these recipients being spammed?

Thanks for your post. To say that 54% of releases are not written about is misleading. They are covered — by people like you and me. Social media was not measured in the survey. We only tracked the press Sarah Palin loves to hate: mainstream media. In your comment on Greg Hazley’s post, you said the elephant in the room was a lack of media pickup of press releases in general. My contention is that most issuers are pleased to have full-text reproduction of their release on thousands of sites, and an SEO benefit by issuing via PR Newswire. Enticing a reporter to do a story is a bonus — and one that happens more with PR Newswire than our competitors.

As I said back then, you have to consider the total economic cost of producing a press release ie not just the cost of distribution, but the time and money spent both client and agency side to create the content for distribution. Whichever way you look at it, these figures from PR Newswire go to show what a huge waste of time, money and effort is going into so much of this activity (and this isn’t just a recent phenomenon).