Is Earned Media Value A Valid Metric For Social Media Measurement?

Earned media value (EMV) is touted by some marketing agencies as a valuable metric for measuring social media and influencer marketing campaigns. Proponents say it provides a simple, concrete and universal way to measure influencer marketing and other social media campaigns. Bill Boulden at Clear View Social calls EMVs, or what it would have cost to have purchased the same amount of media reach through advertising, the accepted advertising industry standard for valuing social media campaigns. However, many experts in PR and marketing measurement call EMVs nonsensical and meaningless. The New Advertising Value Equivalency Stephen Waddington, partner and chief engagement officer at Ketchum, calls EMV a new version of Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE). It’s calculated by multiplying the reach of earned or social media content by a multiplier based on impressions. People use AVE and EMV because they’re easy. But they’re also wrong,” Waddington states. Bottom Line: Many digital marketing agencies promote earned media value as a way to judge the effectiveness of influencer marketing and other forms of social media marketing. It provides a simple number to compare earned media and social media to paid advertising, they say.

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earned media value EMV social media measurement metric

Earned media value (EMV) is touted by some marketing agencies as a valuable metric for measuring social media and influencer marketing campaigns. Proponents say it provides a simple, concrete and universal way to measure influencer marketing and other social media campaigns.

Social Chorus says EMVs offer a concrete way to measure the value of social word-of-mouth marketing programs. Bill Boulden at Clear View Social calls EMVs, or what it would have cost to have purchased the same amount of media reach through advertising, the accepted advertising industry standard for valuing social media campaigns.

However, many experts in PR and marketing measurement call EMVs nonsensical and meaningless.

The New Advertising Value Equivalency

Stephen Waddington, partner and chief engagement officer at Ketchum, calls EMV a new version of Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE). PR measurement experts and industry associations dismiss AVEs, which measure the value of earned media by comparing it to advertising of similar size and placement, as an outdated and meaningless metric.

There is no widely accepted formula for determining EMVs. Different marketing and PR firms advocate different calculations. It’s calculated by multiplying the reach of earned or social media content by a multiplier based on impressions. Critics say multipliers used to calculate the metric are arbitrary. EMVs provide clients large numbers but offer no real…

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