Leverage Paid, Earned & Owned Media in Digital

Those in the marketing and agency world are privy to the buzzwords “paid,” “earned” and owned.” Traditionally, they stand for the different types of media and can be easily broken down like this:   

Paid is the age old idea of paying to place marketing messages around professional content, a 'go here now' message.

Owned Media may be a new concept, but brands have always had Owned assets such as stores and packaging. The importance of Owned has increased through the possibilities to create digital Owned media content, from websites to apps to social network profiles.

Earned, or word of mouth has been scaled through social media possibilities across blogs, Facebook, forums, YouTube and so forth that now offer anyone the ability to create, comment, link to or share.

The key to Paid Owned Earned though is understanding the way that the three different areas work together and integrated planning / execution across these three different elements can deliver enhanced marketing effectiveness.

The Social Challenge

The conversations on Twitter and Facebook never stop — it’s 24/7/365. A brand can’t buy an ad and then call it quits — it has to continue the conversation, engage consumers and really earn that earned media.

Blasting consumers with banner ads and product placement isn’t enough. With social media, marketing has become more of a pull medium than a push — the audience is active and engaged, transforming marketing into a two-way street. It’s been a curveball for the industry, and agencies have had to restructure and rethink their approach to media to account for the impact of social media.

Paid, earned and owned — as terms — don’t mean as much. To explain why, look at a branded YouTube channel and explains why it could be classified as any of the three buckets:

§  Paid. It can cost ~$100,000 a year to manage.

§  Owned. It’s an exclusively owned URL (much like a website) and the brand has complete control of what is posted.

§  Earned. It’s “squarely social.” A YouTube channel will succeed only if consumers watch and share the videos they see. A brand needs to earn those eyeballs with creative execution of content.

And even a Facebook Page, which is free and “owned,” costs a pretty penny when you consider the fees of hiring an agency and social media specialist to manage the Page and produce content.

And at the end of the day, do consumers care about these buckets? Do they see the paid, earned and owned lines drawn when they’re watching a commercial or tweeting about their favorite brand? No.

Consumers don’t draw those lines, we do,

How Paid, Earned and Owned Play Together

Getting your agency to work outside its comfort zone

Having spent the past several months researching paid, owned, and earned integration, some patterns have become clear. More than any other constituency (brands or software providers), agencies recognize the importance of integrating these three media channels for marketing effectiveness.

Yet agency revenue models, particularly media agency models, are potentially threatened by integrating paid, owned, and earned media. Why would they want to emphasize a channel that is not their area of specialization? This takes them out of the campaign driver's seat. Moreover, it requires them to collaborate with social media, PR, and other ecosystem players.

Incentivize collaboration

Varying agencies and vendors don't only have revenue models embedded in different media channels, but they also compete with one another for budgets and campaigns. The brands' role is to mediate these often clashing interests by bringing all parties to the same table, aligning them around the same KPIs, and by establishing systems that encourage cooperation rather than competition.

Empower the connectors

Large agencies and holding companies are deeply invested in social media, PR, listening, and other earned and owned media practices. They, more than any other constituency, see the need to commingle paid, owned, and earned media. Yet anyone who's been through an acquisition will tell you that buying is one thing while integrating is quite another. Therefore, a critical task for the client is to find the leaders at the agency who have both the power and the skills to jump-start cross-divisional cooperation and empower them to do so with deep campaign responsibilities.

Ensure the agency understands tools, data, and metrics

Tools are rapidly proliferating in all forms of digital media, from ad serving and optimization to content production and dissemination to social media management -- and then there's the measuring and analyzing of all that data. Agencies are positioned to stay on top of the continual developments in tools and software, as well as maintain staff that are highly trained in deploying technological solutions. Uniting and unifying creative, data, distribution, optimization, and insights are hard enough within a single media channel -- much less across all of paid, owned, and earned. Understanding what tools to use and how to use them is a critical component of media convergence. Right now, agencies are best positioned in this area.

 Measuring the Value of Media

A media agency is driven by an objective — it needs to compel consumers to do something, whether it’s paying attention to a new product, buying something or going to a store. Just because the medium is Twitter instead of TV doesn’t mean much — media is media. What’s become most important to the agency is how successful the campaign was at accomplishing the goals.

As more consumers get on board with social media, generating earned media through social shares will become an even higher priority. And that means paid and owned media — and the teams that manage each — will need to work together even more seamlessly. The barriers of the silos are broken, and they’re only going to crumble more.