Paid, Owned and Earned Media...Oh My!

Paid media is media in the form of advertising that firms pay for. Public relations and marketing professionals have more control over the content as they decide the size of the ad, how many people it will reach and how often it will run. However, the downside to paid media is that people might not pay attention to your ad. Since there are so many different forms of media platforms to promote content on, your ad could get lost since there is too much noise. Paid media should be used when you are launching a new product and you want to generate a lot of buzz. When Kanye West launched his new Yeezy 6 collection, he did it through paid media on MTA subway turnstiles and billboard ads in Time Square (Petrarca, 2018). Owned media are channels that firms own and operate themselves. Forms of this type of media include social media accounts, blogs, apps and website pages. Owned media costs less to maintain and organizations have full control over the content posted. Although, since it is your own channel, consumers are skeptical about the credibility of the content published since it is not objective. The best time to use owned media is when you want to control the narrative to ensure that you sound sincere and your words will not get misconstrue by journalists. After the global backlash of Pepsi’s advertisement featuring Kendall Jenner last year, Pepsi issued an apology statement via Twitter (Pepsi, 2017). Earned media is essentially a “third party endorsement.” It is generally more trusted because the press generated is supposed to be coming from unbiased individual. Moreover, organizations have no control over what the third party publishes, therefore a negative story could have damaging repercussions. After it was revealed that Facebook compromised the privacy of more than 50 million users to Cambridge Analytica, an organization that worked with Trump’s presidential campaign, their stock price fell. This scandal caused a lot of negative press for Facebook and a result, the company lost $75 billion in market capitalization (Salinas, 2018).

Pepsi. 2017. Twitter.

https://twitter.com/pepsi/status/849679114416115714?lang=en

Petrarca, E. 2018. Kanye west posted yeezy ads all over the new york subway. The Cut. https://www.thecut.com/2018/02/kanye-west-yeezy-season-6-subway-ads.html

Salinas, S. 2018. Facebook fell 13 percent this week to below $160, the stock's worst week since July 2012. CNBC.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/23/facebook-cambridge-analytica-stock-sees-third-worst-trading-week-ever.html