This week, we discussed Paid, Owned, and Earned media. In particular, I remember the quote “Earned is King, Owned is Queen, Paid is Jester“. In this post, I will discuss an article & video I came across (Who’s Winning the Battle Between Paid and Earned Media?) that helped me make the connections between all these different types of media in the digital marketing world.

This quote stuck with me in particular: “content an audience willingly watches should not be equated to content audiences avoids.” This is referring to earned (the former) vs. paid (the latter) media – in today’s world, there are AdBlockers galore, which prevent consumers from seeing certain marketing messages. But, there is also Buzzfeed article upon Buzzfeed article that indirectly markets to consumers (topics including Disney princesses, 90’s TV shows, the best hamburgers, and more…). So which channels should we invest marketing dollars into?

What the author and Sarah Hofstetter (the woman in the video) are saying is that it’s more and more difficult the quantify a company’s impact because of the blurred lines between revenue generated from paid and earned media (Did the consumer click on the ad because it showed up on their Facebook sidebar? Did they specifically seek out the product because it was part of an EliteDaily article?) The authors suggest that here should be a balance between the two, instead of choosing one exclusively; because they work alongside each other.

As much as marketing is a quantifiable business activity, the prevalence of earned media is complicating the measurability of social media’s impact. I think that is generally a good problem to have; nonetheless, there needs to be some way to measure the activities of earned media in order to make future marketing projections more accurate.

References:

• Skid, N., & Hall, D. (2015, October 7). Who’s Winning the Battle Between Paid and Earned Media? Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/digital-crash-course/earning/300795/