Sharing Advice for Better Marketing

Home > Blog > Digital marketing strategy > Customer acquisition strategy > Your new, new media options

Your new, new media options

Defining paid, earned and owned media

With the rise in importance of social media and online PR, we’re seeing more companies change their method of budgeting, reporting and investing in media to reflect the types of sites where audiences spend their time online. The trend is towards a review of investments in the 3 main media buckets of earned, shared and paid which each give opportunities to influence customers. None of these media types are new, but what is new is the increasing prominence given to owned and earned media while paid media has always dominated in the past.

It’s a positive move since it poses questions about how best to measure the returns from social media and set the investment at the right level.

My take on the intersection between these new channels is illustrated by this diagram:

The main types of media are:

1. Paid media. Simple. Paid or bought media are media where there is investment to pay for visitors, reach or conversions through search, display ad networks or affiliate marketing. Offline traditional media like print and TV advertising and direct mail remain important accounting for the majority of paid media spend.

2. Earned media. Traditionally, earned media has been the name given to publicity generated through PR invested in targeting influencers to increase awareness about a brand. Of course, it’s still an investment. Earned media also includes word-of-mouth that can be stimulated through viral and social media marketing and includes conversations in social networks, blogs and other communities. It’s useful to think of earned media as developed through different types of partners such as publishers, bloggers and other influencers including customer advocates. Think of earned media as different forms of conversations occurring both online and offline.

3. Owned media. This is media owned by the brand. Online this includes a company’s own websites, blogs, mobile apps or their social presence on Facebook, Linked In or Twitter. Offline owned media may include brochures or retails stores.

It’s useful to think of a company’s own presence as media in the sense that they are an alternative investment to other media and they offer opportunities to promote products using similar ad or editorial formats to other media. It emphasises the need for all organisations to become multi-channel publishers.

You can see on the diagram above that there is overlap between the three different types of media. It is important to note this since achieving this overlap requires integration of campaigns, resources and infrastructure. Content on a content hub or site can be broken down (atomised) and shared between into other media types through widgets powered by APIs such as the Facebook API.

Note that some such as Dave Fleet and David Armano identify company owned social media as a separate channel from owned media, but social media cuts across all three.

Thanks to the others who have helped set out the way today’s media looks and can be exploited, these are their recommended posts:

Related posts

This entry was posted in Customer acquisition strategy. Bookmark the permalink.
  • Dawn

    Would a brand’s own affiliate programme (CAP or rev share) fall under paid or owned media? If it does it has its own site and does sales and marketing on behalf of the brand?

    • http://www.smartinsights.com/about-dave-chaffey/ Dave Chaffey

      Hi Dawn, if it’s the brands own affiliate programme on own sites, then it will be owned.

      It’s a sound strategy to create owned intermediary sites if they can be resourced right. I remember Amazon purchased photo site DP review which will now refer traffic and has own ad revenue presumably. So this is an example of an owned affiliate programme: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0705/07051402amazonacquiresdpreview.asp.

  • Dawn

    sorry that’s meant to be *CPA (not CAP) :)

  • http://www.greenwisebusiness.co.uk Stephen Bateman

    Thanks for sharing this.

    The distinctions provide a useful framework for thinking about the balance of media.

    Also, the trackback to Forrester et al is great.

    However , I’ve been researching the shift in marketing comms and the growing importance of earned media to uncover whatever I can and that’s how I came across an article co-authored by David Edelman for McKinsey Quarterly in which the authors add two other “circles” or types of digital media: “sold” and “hijacked”.

    I was wondering whether or not you think these two are useful additions or whether they are already covered in the three existing types of media?

    Here is the link to the McKinsey paper http://bit.ly/nJBEVI

    I’d be interested to hear your thoughts

    • http://www.smartinsights.com/about-dave-chaffey/ Dave Chaffey

      Hi Stephen, that’s interesting thanks.

      I’ve taken a look and don’t think they are so useful, but it depends on your perspective.

      If you’re a marketer thinking – how do I increase Reach, Awareness and Familiarity of my brand then Paid+Earned+Owned covers it nicely – I like the simplicity – the others are just distractions.

      If you’re a business manager thinking how do I increase my revenue per visit then the Sold is useful. I know Amazon does this, but when others do it I do wonder whether they have looked at the impact on conversion rates and brand favourability. Even for Amazon ad revenue is a very small proportion of total revenue.

      Hijacked is a separate an issue for reputation management – it doesn’t answer the marketers question above. Yes, it needs to be managed, but this comes from a PR persons perspective.

      Still, thanks for flagging this up – I had seen these and discounted them – maybe I can add a footnote to my diagram in the next edition of my book.

  • Pingback: Definitions: paid, earned, owned media « Conversity.be

Feedback Form
Feedback Form