PR Agencies wasting whose money?

Emirates Today ran a story back on 6/2/2007 that was quite interesting. Not sure how no one noticed it here.

To quote:

Public relations agencies are largely failing to provide their clients with value for money, according to the managing director of media analysts Mediastow.

Mohammad Elzubeir said UAE companies were wasting money on ineffective PR.

“Of course, there are good and bad PR agencies; some understand how to measure their effectiveness and some don’t,” said Elzubeir.

Mediastow surveyed 150 PR practitioners, 87 PR agencies and more than 200 in house PR managers. The study showed that 83 per cent of the respondents do not know how to measure their work, while only 12 per cent counted clippings and five per cent were able to calculate the equivalent advertising value.

Why is this not surprising?