This past May, Raina Lazarova, Muck Rack’s vice president of global insights, was reelected chair of the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) for a second two-year term through June 2028.
As AI reshapes how organizations measure communications, Lazarova is helping lead the profession’s shift away from vanity metrics and toward proving real business impact. In this conversation with PRsay, she discusses the opportunities and risks AI presents, why communicators must connect their work to organizational outcomes, and what the future of measurement and evaluation looks like.
What is the biggest challenge facing communications measurement today?
Number one is the notion that AI can solve all problems. There’s an expectation that AI can provide cheap, even free, solutions to meaningful communications measurement. And the temptation to take those shortcuts is big. The truth is that there isn’t any universal technology that can answer an organization’s communications objectives.
The second risk I see is that, as a result of the proliferation of AI, there is a growing complexity in what communicators are dealing with. Making sense of what is important to the business is becoming increasingly complex. There’s more data than ever, not less. There’s more disinformation out there. Measuring business impact is getting harder.
The job of our profession is to provide clarity amid that complexity. Our job is to hold the line on high-quality, trusted data, credible methodologies, and ethical, honest accountability in communications.
You’ve spoken about the need to move beyond counting coverage and toward measuring business impact. Why is that shift still difficult for some organizations?
Counting coverage is easy. You can present it consistently, you can give it as a number, and everyone understands it.
The problem is that that number usually doesn’t tell you whether communication actually worked, if it delivered on the business objectives that it has been given by investors, senior leadership, et cetera.
From my perspective, demonstrating business impact requires three things to happen in parallel within an organization: Number one is that it requires data beyond just communications data, beyond what we see as outputs in the media.
It requires digital assets that reside within the organization, such as website traffic, sales, reputation tracking, customer behavior, and investor sentiment. Those areas are owned by other functions in the organization, which leads us to the second prerequisite: internal relationships.
The communications team needs strong internal relationships with the rest of the business to demonstrate the value of their work.
Number three is the need for patience and consistency when building measurements and frameworks. All three need to happen for us to demonstrate business results.
But a lot of times, you will see reluctance in terms of [a communications professional] raising a hand and saying, “I want to volunteer and start measuring what I do in this particular way.” Communicators are sometimes afraid even to start thinking about measuring business impact, because that makes them accountable for it. It requires a cultural shift.
Where do you think AI will create the greatest opportunities for communicators who are seeking deeper insights?
Before the advent of AI, insights were considered a luxury — something that only big organizations and communications teams with bigger budgets could afford. Now, AI gives more organizations access to deeper, more genuine insights.
AI gives us the opportunity to process large amounts of data at scale and relatively cheaply, providing the foundation on which we can then apply our consultancy minds and critical thinking, which is key for the profession in this day and age when AI is eroding the business of agencies and vendors alike. We can provide deeper insights and link communications activities with business outcomes.
Research shows consistently that earned media dominates AI responses. The core of our profession is to effect change and perception when it comes to reputation [through] earned media, owned media, et cetera — and then to connect that with what you see downstream in terms of AI citations.
What measurement trends do you think will have the greatest impact on the profession over the next three to five years?
The need to mature our thinking about measuring AI visibility across different large language models, sometimes referred to as Generative Engine Optimization, as part of bigger communications-measurement frameworks.
The trend will be for more transparency. There will be more pressure on businesses that deliver those insights to publish their methodologies and apply high standards for quality and the ethical use of data.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the trend for deeper integration of commerce measurement with business performance and business impact. Although it’s a slow process, more organizations will have access to measurement and insights into their PR activities.
We need to be able to connect share-of-voice metrics, narrative, AI visibility, to brand health, to business performance, to whatever the business objective is.
This isn’t something that applies only to for-profit organizations. In fact, we have seen an increasing number of not-for-profits and other organizations becoming AMEC members and applying the integrated evaluation framework, one of AMEC’s best-practice assets. Objectives can be defined by the goals you have for influencing different stakeholder groups.
When you look ahead to the end of your second term as AMEC chair in 2028, what do you think success will look like for AMEC and the communications-measurement profession?
I would like to see communications treated as a strategic function. That has definitely improved over the last few years, but there’s still a long way to go.
Measurement and evaluation are the tools communicators need to demonstrate business impact and outcomes, positioning them as a strategic function. We see ourselves as the prime tool for communicators to achieve that desired strategic position.
Looking forward, again, although we launched the GEO-measurement principles a couple of weeks ago at our annual summit in Dublin, I want to see those principles embedded in practice, not just on paper or on our website.
I want to see more PR awards around the world applying and referencing the GEO-measurement principles, [with] more ethical, grounded-in-quality data and consistent application of those GEO principles.
Personally, I want to make sure we remain relevant and continue to help the profession. I want the community to feel better equipped and more confident to thrive, not only survive, for whatever comes next.
Clearly, we are going through a disruption at the moment. It’s not something anyone, or many people, in our profession foresaw two years ago. But it’s happening. It’s a bit like COVID: Going through that crisis helped us all to be better equipped and prepared for what’s to come next.
And personally, I want to see the global community of measurement professionals better prepared for the future. The way I see my job as chair is to give the profession better frameworks, principles and standards, and a shared language they can use when dealing with those challenges.
We are here to create principles and standards and to uphold the highest standards. We have our annual AMEC awards that recognize best practices in communications measurement, and we will continue doing that work with passion. I want to make sure that we continue to be relevant and to help the profession.
Here, Lazarova discusses the momentum she feels emerging from the recent 2026 AMEC Global Summit.
That’s a really interesting shift. It makes a lot of sense that focusing on meaningful metrics is key as AI changes the landscape.