The media:on proof report lists every placement of your release that we have verified as live: the outlet, a link to the page, the site's Domain Rating, its estimated monthly audience and its top reader countries. A link enters the report only after our checker has confirmed the page loads and shows your headline. The report is a page in your order dashboard that you can save as a PDF or download as a CSV, and it keeps updating as later pickups are verified.
What does the report contain?
The report has the same sections for every media pack, in this order.
| Section | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Header | Your release headline, your company name and the date the release was approved |
| Verified placements | How many pages carrying your release have been verified live |
| Combined potential audience | The monthly audiences of all those sites added together |
| Average domain rating | The average Domain Rating of the sites, counting only those with a rating listed |
| Top placements | The ten placements with the largest audience |
| Every verified placement | The full list, once there are more than ten |
| Credits | Anything we could not get published, and the amount refunded |
Each row in the placement tables gives the outlet name, linked to the live page, with its Domain Rating, audience and top countries. The report closes with a line saying it keeps updating as late pickups are verified.
The CSV download has one row per verified placement with seven columns: outlet, URL, Domain Rating, potential audience, top countries, age group and the time the link was verified. That file is the one to keep.
How does a link get verified?
Before a link can appear, our checker requests the page and applies two tests. The page must return a normal successful response, and it must contain your headline. Outlets often shorten or re-case long headlines, so the check looks for a distinctive opening section of it rather than an exact match of every character. Redirects are followed, and links that have not yet passed are checked again daily.
Some sites block automated checks. For those, an editor can open the page, confirm the release is there and verify it by hand. What never happens is a link being listed because a supplier said it would exist. If nobody has confirmed the page, it is not in the report.
That matters because the same release commonly appears on a few hundred pages, and a list nobody has checked is easy to pad. The verification step is what makes the report worth reading.
How should you read the numbers?
Verified placements
This is a count of pages carrying your release. They are syndicated copies of the same text, not separate articles written by journalists. The syndication and earned coverage post explains why that difference matters.
Combined potential audience
This is the sum of each site's monthly readership. It is not a count of people who read your release, and the report says so beside the figure. Because a few very large sites dominate the total, it can run into billions. Treat it as a measure of the size of the sites you appeared on, and do not quote it as the number of people who saw your news.
Domain Rating
Domain Rating is a third-party score from 0 to 100 that estimates the strength of a site's link profile. It describes the site, not your page, and the links inside syndicated releases are nofollow, so a high Domain Rating is not a ranking benefit passed to you. It is useful for judging what kind of sites the release reached.
Top countries and age group
These describe each site's overall audience, not the readers of your release. They help you see whether the sites reach the markets you care about.
The audience, Domain Rating, country and age figures are estimates from third-party traffic and SEO data or from the distribution network's own figures. They are entered with each link. Where a figure is not known, the report shows a dash rather than a guess.
When does the report fill in?
Media packs go live within 48 hours of your release being approved. The report page starts filling in as soon as the first links verify, so you can watch it grow. Some sites pick up releases later than others, and those are added as they pass verification. When the report is ready we can email it to you from the order.
If a named outlet in your pack does not publish, it appears under Credits with the amount we refunded.
The SaaS Directory Package works differently. Each directory is submitted for you, takes about two weeks, and is reported as a spreadsheet of listing URLs rather than a media report.
What should you do with the report?
- Check the named outlets. Compare the report with the outlets your pack named. Anything missing should either still be verifying or be listed under Credits.
- Open a few links yourself. It takes a minute and you will see how the release is presented on each site.
- Save the CSV as your baseline. It is the record of where the release ran and when each page was confirmed. The measuring results post explains what to track next to it.
- Link to the strongest pages. Add the announcement to your own newsroom or press page, with links to a few placements readers will recognise.
- Describe it accurately. "Our announcement on AP News" is accurate. "AP News wrote about us" is not, and anyone who clicks through can tell the difference.
- Send it to the people who asked. A board, a client or a partner can see every placement in one place.
The report records distribution. It does not measure results. Enquiries, branded searches, journalist interest and earned articles are what show whether the release worked, and they happen after the report is finished.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the audience figure so large?
Because it adds together the monthly readership of every site the release appeared on, and a few of those sites are among the largest on the web. It describes the sites, not how many people read your release.
Why is an outlet I expected not in the report yet?
Either it has not published yet, or it has published and not yet passed verification. If a named outlet does not publish, we refund it and list it under Credits.
Can other people see my report?
The report page sits behind your order login and is not indexed by search engines. You choose who gets the PDF or CSV.
To see how the report fits into the whole process, read how media:on works. When you are ready to publish, you can start here.
media:on Editorial. Written and reviewed by the media:on editorial team, who edit every release before it files.