The ongoing campaign against AVEs (advertising value equivalents) as a measurement tool has received a boost from their exclusion from entries in a PR awards programme.

The PRWeek Awards 2011 will not accept the use of AVEs as an evaluation method in submissions, a move that has been welcomed by the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation Communication (AMEC), the global trade body for media evaluation and communication research agencies and professionals.

“We believe AVEs are outdated and insufficient as a measurement,” wrote PRWeek. The magazine has suggested instead that candidates emphasise the measurement of actual business outcomes of PR campaigns.

AMEC’s executive director Barry Leggetter has praised the decision, and asked AMEC members worldwide to campaign for other awards events to follow suit.

Last summer, the AMEC European Summit resulted in the Barcelona Principles, a new framework for research and measurement based on analytics. AMEC has since argued that AVE measurement should be replaced by this new system.