Paid, Owned, Earned Media: How to Measure their Impact

Have you heard of POEM? Spoiler alert: we are not talking about literature here! Indeed, POEM is short for Paid, Owned and Earned Media. In this article, we delve into these concepts. Read on to gather insights on how to integrate them into your communication strategies effectively.

Paid, Owned, Earned Media: What Are They?

Paid

An advertisement in a magazine, a sponsored web article, a TV commercial, or a paid influencer partnership… As the name suggests, this category includes the visibility you have purchased!

These tools offer the advantage of defining your target audience in advance and getting an estimate of the reach of your content before investing. Whether you want to extend your brand’s current audience or position yourself in a new market, advertising is an amplification tool for your campaigns that remains effective despite an increasing preference among users for organic content.

Owned

This refers to content published in your name, particularly through your official social media accounts, blog articles, your brand magazine…

Owned media is essential: it offers a window into your brand. This type of communication allows you to address your audience on your own terms and control the storytelling associated with your products or services. It is also an excellent way of interacting directly with your customers while attracting new targets.

Earned

Press articles, social media posts, and other content related to your brand that you have neither paid for nor published yourself fall under earned media.

From your followers posting photos of your products to journalists writing articles about your brand, all contribute to your organic visibility. They bring authenticity, if not lasting legitimacy, to your brand. Consider the milestone that an Instagram post by a celebrity or an article in Vogue represents for a young designer.

In short, as the name suggests, earned media is the visibility you earn from your hard work!

Which one to choose for your communication strategy?

Now that we have defined these concepts, what is next?

Knowing these terms provides you with a framework for understanding your media impact.

Although paid, owned, and earned media are complementary, you will need to balance these different levers. Is it more interesting to use a macro-influencer? Strengthen your press relations team? Or produce a new photoshoot? In other words, how do you allocate your budget between paid, owned and earned media?

To answer these questions and design strategies suited to your current goals, you will need to understand the impact of your communication actions.

Therefore, it is essential to adopt a 360° vision and identify the capacity of each of these levers to help you achieve your goals.

How to measure their impact?

You might be already assessing the impact of your social media posts and influencer campaigns. But did you know you could integrate earned media into your analyses as well?

What engagement did our last influencer activation generate? Is their reach similar to the latest posts from our own accounts? Which of our products are most covered by the press?

Here are many questions, whose answers will allow you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your strategy, redirect it as needed, and design the next ones based on reliable data.

Estimation Média offers comprehensive 360-degree media monitoring and provides tailored analyses of your brand’s press, web, audiovisual, and social media visibility. Specializing in both French and international media, our knowledge of the sector’s KPIs and of monetary valuation concepts like AVE and EMV allows you to accurately estimate the return on investment of your communication strategies and obtain the critical data needed for informed decision-making.

To learn more, visit our contact page.