Invite colleagues
The terms "earned, owned and paid (aka bought) media" have become very popular in the interactive marketing space today. These seems to be the way increasing more digital marketers are describing the various types of media. Therefore, I wanted to introduce these ideas to our team so we could take advantage of the work others have done in conceptualizing the notions of 'earned, owned & paid'.
Paid and Owned media advertising allows you to clearly communicate and control your message. The content, timing, and placement of these ads can be targeted to reach your desired audience but 'Earned' tends to be more difficult for digital marketers to understand as many feel unconfortable at relinctuishing control of the brand messages and as a result many campaigns are poorly done because of this tension to control the brand communications.
On an excellent post on David Armano's "Logic + Emotion" blog, he talks about us all being media and the implications for trusting this media especially when much of this is paid. To highlight this he puts forward a paid/earned media framework.
I thought this could form the basis of a broader conceptual framework for digital marketers to use when considering integrated campaigns (so thanks to David for my starting point). Below you will find my model that puts forward the core areas for consideration when coming up with media strategy.
Strategic Digital Marketing Framework- Earned, Owned & Paid Media
The additions to David's initial framework relate to 'owned media' and the introduction of search to this model. Although I think the Forrester Research summary is now dated and the thinking since this was published has evolved further, it still gives a good overall summary.
The key area for me that has changed since Forrester Research orginally defined the notions of paid, owned & earned is area of search marketing. In seems that this channel is evolving before our eyes and the search engine results page (SERP) is continually being changed by almost all search providers (Google, Bing, Baidu etc). More content is more integrated, social, mobile/local and personal. Advancements in usability and relevancy are driving these SERP changes that can be mapped into the three media categories:
- Paid Content-paid search ads
- Owned Content-native website, video, social, local and blog content
- Earned Content-user-generated content (UGC) like YouTube/Youku videos, tweets and consumer reviews
I am interested in what observations other digital marketers have and look forward to any comments or suggestions about the conceptual framework I have put up.
Written on Sunday, 17 October 2010 16:47 by Matt McDougall
