Paid, Owned, Earned Media – How To Get the Best Of Each Type

Everyone wants to get attention for their brand. Marketers divide their focus across the different forms of media to get attention.

Classically they are divided into three main types of media. Paid, owned, and earned media. Why is this important? Because each of these types of media requires different levels of effort, time, and dollar spend. They also have different levels of reach and scalability.

If you’d like to skip ahead to a specific section feel free.

Paid Media
Owned Media
Earned Media

What are paid, owned, and earned media channels?

Now we’re getting to the good stuff. Paid, owned, and earned media is not a new phenomenon. Many marketers have found that it’s not beneficial to rely solely on one media channel, but instead to create a strategy that uses multiple sources.

You will find that paid, owned, and earned media can overlap. Which creates a pretty balanced marketing strategy. Nevertheless, it’s important to understand the difference between each channel type.

Paid Media

Pros	Cons
Instant results Easy to track Control over message and copy Easy to target high intent customers	Initially expensive Getting more expensive as competition increases Easy to get dependent on paid channels that do not scale with spend

This is by far the easiest to define, and understand. It’s exactly what it sounds like… it’s any marketing channel that you pay for to increase traffic. Typically, paid media is usually aimed at prospects. But, does include retargeting to past customers.

Paid ads work really well when you are just getting started and nobody knows about you. Another great use is through paid retargeting to help you to get visitors back after they have already visited your site. When leveraged with other media types, you can reach people with high interest.

What it costs ($$$)

The cost depends on the type of ad being used. Social media ads could be relatively low-cost, while print could cost a pretty penny. The duration of how long the ad will display also factors into the cost. Another factor is the setup cost, which can actually exceed the cost of media. You might also have a designer fee if you plan on hiring out of house. Here is a better breakdown of the cost of advertising.

Some costs to consider

Content
Design
Production
Script Writing
Website Configuration
Graphics
Email Template

Time up front

Your setup process can take time if you’re creating an ad out of new material. But, if you are promoting an existing piece of content it might not take as long. To get the most out of your ads, you may also need to develop landing pages to drive leads to a conversion, which can take time (especially if you’re working with a designer).

Return on Investment (ROI)

With the expense of paid channels, ROI can vary wildly depending on the type of paid channel, cost of goods sold, a salesperson commission, how you charge (subscription vs product cost), lifetime value of a customer, etc. The good thing is that a properly set up paid marketing channel will also include elements of tracking so you can measure leads/sales directly with spend. Just be sure to know your numbers beforehand, so you can see if there is a positive ROI.

Time to results

Paid ads can generate traffic almost immediately. As soon as they are up, people can see them. So, as you can imagine, you get in front of people’s eyes rather quickly. As we mentioned previously this is a great way to get initial users to try out your product and gain visibility.

Examples of paid media

Here are a few examples of paid media.

1. Display Ads

The founding fathers of online ads. You remember the static banner ads that appeared on websites, don’t you?

But, there is much more to display ads than the typical banner ad we all remember. Here are a few other common display-ad options.

Pop-ups – the little ad that pops up out of nowhere while you’re browsing around online.
Wallpaper ads – the background of a website might change to display an ad that fills the entire page.
Video ads – a small video that automatically plays when the visitor lands on the page.

Display ads are usually very affordable, as far as ads go. Pricing depends widely on the site you’re after and could be altered depending on if you’re going through a marketing site too.

These types of ads are great for retargeting and remarketing as well, and can easily target customers or users who have not completed your desired action (sale, subscribe, etc.).

These ads tend to be hidden in disguise and blend into their surroundings. Instagram, like the image shown above, uses native ads all the time. If you’re scrolling through your feed, you may not even notice that some of the posts are actually sponsored ads.

Social media ads have become increasingly popular. Both online and offline businesses seem to benefit from these type of ads. The good news is, you can set up your ad campaign to be pay per click, so you’ll only pay for actual leads.

Social media can be broken down into two types of ads. Organic and paid.

Organic – or those that happen via word of mouth. These are also earned media (which we’ll discuss later on)

Paid – or posts that are paid to be promoted to reach your audience and others.

Great platforms for social media ads are:

Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Instagram
Reddit
Tumblr
StumbledUpon

Many small businesses can run social media ad campaigns on their own. But, some find that springing for a marketing agency tends to be more beneficial. This is where the price gets knocked up from being relatively inexpensive, to moderately or more expensive.

A few types of native ads include:

In-feed
Promoted posts/listings
Search result ads

3. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

These are ads that show up in search results. They can definitely put your name ahead of the competition (literally ahead of them). Now you can get you seen on the same search result pages as them. Thus making these types of ads one of the top forms of online advertisements.

Search engine ads appear at the top of search queries, meaning you’ll be seen first out of every other result that pops up. You can even pay to be above your biggest competitor, even if the search query is under their name!

There are a few ways to work these ads. You can opt for a pay per click(PPC) or per set amount of impressions (usually 1000).

4. Offline Ads

Rather an old school and not a typical channel for many eCommerce stores and saas businesses.

Even though it’s hard to measure the effectiveness of print style ads, they are still widely used. Think of how many ads you see driving to your favorite restaurant. You’ll see ads during your commute there, and you’ll probably see them at the restaurant too.

In fact, you may see them so often you’ve probably developed some sort of blindness to them. So here are a few examples to jog your memory.

Newspaper
Magazine
Billboards
Flyers
Branded swag (hats, water bottles, t-shirts)

These types of offline ads can get rather expensive between ad space, printing prices, hiring a designer, and buying product for swag, etc. Regardless, they are still used and very popular.

5. Radio Ads

Another offline ad can be a radio ad. Though not quite as popular as other types of ads, they can still be effective. The trick is getting all your information in the tight time slot given.

Certain types of businesses seem to do better with this type of ad over others, however. Like a local car salesman, or a new local restaurant, for example. If you haven’t heard of any competitors using this type of media, you may want to reconsider yourself.

Some of the better-fit businesses seem to be local and small businesses. You may hear a restaurant or the local car dealership, for example.

These types of ads can run a pretty penny though, so if you’re on a tight budget you may have to drop this option.

6. Video Ads

Has video ever gone out of style? Between Youtube channels, and now Live videos, you have a few platforms for all your video needs.

You may have noticed that you can even put your ad into some of these videos. Youtube, for example, has become notorious for placing video ads within a video. Though these video ads are short, they do get seen.

You don’t see video ads while browsing through Youtube. You may also hear a video advertisement start playing on a webpage you visit. Some sites rent out video ad space that will autoplay once the visitor arrives.

This type of ad can become expensive. But, generally speaking, you’re looking at 10-30 cents per view.

7. Podcast Ads

Podcasts are increasingly popular and very niche. So you might be able to find the perfect new audience for your own business by using a podcast.

Most podcast listeners listen actively and are engaged in the stories being told. Podcast listeners are also a wide demographic, hitting everyone from teens to adults. So your ad can probably fit into the perfect podcast and have a great impact on the listeners.

Depending on the podcast, you may get a time slot pre-roll ad or your host may read the ad live. So if you have a preference, be sure to do your research.

8. Word of mouth marketing

You may be thinking word of mouth marketing doesn’t belong in ‘paid media’, but if you think about it, it actually does.

If we’re talking about word of mouth through a referral program, influencer program, or affiliate program then there is a price to pay. The referral incentive for the person sharing can be considered ‘paid media’.

In the example above you can see that the customer shared the business on their Facebook profile. But, if a referral comes in, that business will have to fork over $5.

Owned Media

Pros	Cons
Complete control Costs less Published directly on your site	Limited audience Needs internal maintenance

Owned media is everything that relies on the direct control of the business. Owned media is its own battlefield. What can you do to generate awareness and build user engagement?

Usually, paid and earned media are used to push traffic to your owned media. But, with the popularity of blogs, SEO, and content creation, it’s a lot easier to pull in traffic organically.

Owned media works by creating value for the visitor. These types of channels do more than just sell a product, which works at pulling customers in rather than pushing products and services on to them.

What it costs ($$)

Depending on what domain and host you choose, along with how much data you have, you could run your website fairly cheap. On the other spectrum, you can own a social media profile and even a WordPress site for free.

If you are looking at a paid owned channel, costs could run you as low as $10 a year but could go upwards to hundreds and beyond. And that’s just for the domain and host. There are multiple little things that can hike the price up, once you add it all up.