I recently had the opportunity to sit down with our new Head of Display, André Britz, to chat about earned and paid media, and the tracking thereof. It seems like she is as excited about it as the rest of the team are.
Rob Stokes (RS): What is earned media and how does it differ from paid media?
André Britz (AB): It is perhaps easiest to talk about paid media before we define earned media. With paid media, the media is bought, planned and a certain space is owned for a period of time. In the words of Tom Troja, founder of SocialSymphony: “The paid media mindset is one of planning, campaigns, takeovers, targeting and control.”
With earned media, the exposure is not paid for, nor is it guaranteed, but I do believe that it takes more effort. Building relationships are much more important and, as with any relationship, trust takes years to build and can be destroyed with one faux pas. Earned media include mentions in online spaces such as blogs, podcasts, photo sharing platforms, video sharing platforms, Twitter, links shared on Facebook, tagging on sites like Digg and delicious: all so-called “word of mouse”.
RS: Can you have one without the other?
AB: Certainly, but do you want to? And I mean just that: it really depends on what you’d like to achieve. I am a huge fan of using paid media to drive earned media. I love every step: from the planning and almost scientific approach initially to seeing how a campaign develops a life of its own.
RS: How can they work together?
AB: Both paid and earned media can support each other on campaigns. It takes a little planning and clever thinking, but it is truly magic to see them interact.
There are endless ways of getting paid and earned media to work together: a paid campaign can seed the earned campaign, and vice versa. The easier approach is probably using paid media to jump start the earned media campaign (by building awareness, encouraging engagement and promoting interaction), because initialising dialog can be hard. Sometimes earned media spaces rely on volume to generate explosive growth. Paid media can be used to kick start the earned media momentum. On the other hand, earned media is a great starting point for a teaser campaign before the launch of a product or service, with paid media driving direct response post product launch.
Either way, planning is crucial, and it will take a lot of work to execute it effectively.
RS: What is the future of both?
AB: There are definitely loads of opportunities for both, and place in the future for each. Both paid and earned media definitely have their advantages, but the current models for paid media and methodologies for earned media need to be constantly scrutinised and that is not happening at the moment.
RS: How important is tracking on paid versus earned media really?
AB: It is vital to determine the objectives upfront, quantify them, and track what is needed to measure the success. How else will you know if you failed or succeeded? And measuring failure is equally important because that is how we learn. But then, maybe I am just a nut that loves to track as much as possible and allow the data to tell me the story.
RS: What should be tracked in paid and earned media?
AB: As much as possible to measure if you have reached your goals. It is therefore crucial to quantify the objectives from the outset.
With paid media, identifying the objectives is mostly easier than with earned media. Objectives in paid media can for example include:
- Branding (how many unique users had been reached?)
- Driving traffic (how much traffic had been driven to the specific pages?)
- Competition entries (how many unique individuals entered the competition?)
- Registrations (how many unique individuals completed the registration process?)
- Sales (how many sales were made and what was the value of each sale?)
Try to track the process in between as well - this will give you an indication of where you might be losing traffic and why.
Earned media tracking is not always as easy. Smart marketers define the objectives up front, as well as the earned media key performance indicators: mention volume, retweets, comments, etc. These need to be tracked, and that is certainly possible by using ORM tools like BrandsEye to help you gather information about earned media mentions. Web analytics tools will help you make sense of the mentions by providing data on what it means for website traffic and activity.
RS: Paid for vs. free tracking tools: is it really ALWAYS worth the money to get a tracking tool for each and every little thing?
AB: I will probably get a lot of flack for this, but no. It is not always worth the money to get a tracking tool for each and every little thing. But if you know what it is you need to track, assess the tools available, their functionality and price structures and get the best tool for the job (even if it isn’t the most expensive).
RS: What tracking tools exist for paid vs earned media?
AB: Paid media - Ad server examples include DoubleClick, MediaMind, Atlas, and ADTECH. Be wary of the free products and make sure they have the necessary functionality to address your needs.
- Analytics tools like Google Analytics and Omniture’s SiteCatalyst.
- Earned Media tools like BrandsEye, Summize, Technorati, Digg, Reddit, Google Alerts and so forth.
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