On 13 May, Signal AI brought together senior communications and data leaders in London for our latest Exec Connect breakfast. The conversation centered on a question that's been quietly building across the industry: can communications teams put a financial value on their work, and if so, how?
Moderated by Neil Morrison, Managing Editor at Signal AI, with guest speakers Jessie de la Merced, VP of Corporate Affairs at Vinted, and Juno Bijlard, Director of Data Science at Vinted, the session offered a candid look at what's shaping communications measurement in 2026.
While these events are private forums for open dialogue, we're sharing the standout themes from the conversation.
1. Comms measurement needs to speak the language of the business
For years, communications measurement has lived in the world of outputs: volume, sentiment, reach, Share of Voice (SoV). Useful, but incomplete. They tell you what happened, but not necessarily what it was worth.
Vinted's team has built an algorithm to isolate the contribution of earned media within an econometric model, arriving at a euro value for Comms activity. Their top-line metric isn't impressions or coverage quality, it's revenue impact. When measurement is expressed in the same terms the business already uses to make decisions, Comms earns a seat at the table rather than a line in the report.
2. The AMEC framework gives Comms a roadmap to outcomes
Using the AMEC framework as a guide, the discussion mapped out three distinct tiers of measurement. Outputs capture the success of the communications activity itself: sentiment, reach, and messaging alignment. Outtakes show what audiences do with that coverage: social shares, engagement, and direct response. Outcomes show how Comms activity changes opinion and behavior.
Vinted's model pushes firmly into that third tier. And critically, it helps teams understand not just that Comms drives outcomes, but which activity drives the most value, so effort and budget can be directed accordingly.
3. Trust is the stepping stone, not the destination
Output metrics like reach and SOV don't go away; they become inputs to something bigger. The room discussed how a "trust score" sits as a meaningful midpoint between traditional output measurement and financial impact. Building trust with audiences is what ultimately converts coverage into commercial value.
This framing helps Comms teams make the case internally: measurement isn't a reporting exercise. It's a model for understanding what moves the needle, and why.
4. Data science in Corporate Affairs is a wide-open opportunity
One of the most energizing threads in the room was the role of data scientists in communications functions. It's an emerging and largely unexplored area. Juno Bijlard's work at Vinted gave the room a glimpse of what’s possible when Comms expertise and data science capability work together.
More sophisticated inputs, like readership over reach, help teams be far more targeted about where they focus their output. This kind of collaboration, whether through internal teams or external providers, is becoming a genuine differentiator for functions that want to demonstrate commercial impact.
5. Audiences aren't disappearing. They're moving.
There was substantive debate about whether LLMs and Reddit represent new audiences or simply existing audiences in new places. The consensus leaned toward the latter, but the implications for measurement are significant either way.
LLMs can't access paywalled content, which means syndicated articles may grow in prominence as AI-generated answers increasingly cite accessible, open sources. Coverage that previously seemed secondary could, in an LLM-cited world, become significantly more valuable. It's also reshaping how teams collaborate: GEO and LLM measurement sit across Comms, Marketing, Product, and Technology, and getting to a coherent answer requires those functions to work together in ways they haven't before.
The London session made one thing clear: the direction of travel in communications measurement has changed. The question is no longer "how much coverage did we get?" It's "what did it contribute to the business?" Vinted's work is proof that it's possible and replicable.
If you're working through similar challenges, we'd like to hear from you. Talk to our team.