You raise an interesting question about the value of corporate blogging and statistics. Blogging is new enough that I don't believe there are industry-standard metrics yet, but some PR metrics are commonly used. They include competitive awareness (numbers of mentions about a company vs. its competitors in different media categories), reputation (positive vs. negative mentions in categories), and reach (the combined audience of the media mentioning the company). Blogs are the long-tail of media - many blogs with small audiences add up to the reach of a major publication -- and the only way to effectively engage in the blogosphere is through blogs. Airbus is clearly missing the boat, err, plane, here.

Lynda