Earned media value (EMV) assigns a monetary value to the media mentions and press coverage your brand receives. EMV was once considered an essential tool for measuring the impact of a public relations strategy, but it has become a misleading, outdated metric in modern PR. While EMV can look impressive in a wrap-up deck, it often fails to show true brand impact.
There are smarter, more actionable metrics brands can measure instead to get a more comprehensive (and accurate) picture of what a PR strategy is doing in practice. Agencies like LaRue are at the forefront of this movement to focus on what actually matters. When it comes to visualizing the impact of PR in action, your brand can do much better than EMV.
What Is Earned Media Value—And Where Did It Come From?
Earned media is an umbrella term referring to all of the third-party media coverage a brand gets that they don’t pay for themselves. Examples include online product reviews, customer social media posts about brand products or services, magazine or newspaper features, or blog write-ups. Essentially, earned media is all of the digital word-of-mouth marketing your brand receives. Earned media value attempts to calculate the dollar value of all of this unpaid coverage.
EMV is computed by estimating the dollar amount of paid advertising it would take to achieve the same level of coverage. This metric has roots in ad value equivalency (AVE), a similar practice used in traditional PR campaigns. AVE estimates the value of earned media by calculating how much it would cost to buy a traditional ad of a size or reach that would achieve the same coverage.
As pieces of earned media gain traction online, and media impressions accumulate, they’re often “valued” with AVE by multiplying ad rates.
In recent years, AVE has been heavily criticized for failing to capture the true value of media mentions. AVE and EMV alike are all about measuring surface level metrics, such as number of impressions or mentions.
They fail to provide a deeper look at how coverage is received, and how it relates to key factors like brand awareness and customer loyalty.
The rise of influencer marketing gave EMV new life, but not necessarily new rigor. EMV became a popular metric for measuring the value of influencer marketing campaigns, but it has significant limitations.
While an influencer campaign may appear to have a large EMV at a glance, this so-called ‘value’ doesn’t automatically translate into actual sales for the brand in question. An influencer’s product post might go viral for a few days and get hundreds of thousands of views, but fail to increase sales of the product.
EMV also fails to offer a nuanced look at the demographics of the audience making up those views, and a consideration of how the campaign fulfilled other kinds of goals such as meaningful engagement or brand recognition.
Why Earned Media Value Is a Broken Metric
EMV is all about volume over impact. In today’s digital space, volume is easy to overestimate and impact is too important to ignore. EMV often comes up with overinflated numbers based on shaky formulas (i.e. impressions x an arbitrary multiplier). One of its biggest drawbacks is that it completely fails to account for the quality of coverage. It doesn’t differentiate between brand name drops and full features.
Further, EMV ignores what really matters: whether anyone remembers, clicks through, or converts. It can easily be overinflated and gamed by sheer volume, not resonance. EMV can measure the height of a piece of media’s coverage, but it simply cannot capture its depth. In the current media landscape, it’s essential to consider the lasting impact of any marketing campaign.
The Vanity of Big Numbers
A $3M EMV headline doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t shift behavior. A social media post or media feature could generate flashy metrics over the course of a couple days, contributing to a large EMV. If this valuation doesn’t translate into actual results, however, it’s not actually that valuable to the brand at the end of the day.
Before launching any campaign or evaluating any coverage, a brand should set specific goals, such as increasing sales of a certain product, driving traffic to the website, or achieving meaningful audience engagement online. Whether or these goals are met is far more important than what dollar value a questionable formula can generate.
What Brands Should Measure Instead
Fortunately, there are much better metrics available that can provide a more complete picture of the value of earned media. The metrics that are best for a particular case can vary based on goal and channel, but they are all tied to meaningful outcomes. Consider these tangible, strategic alternatives to EMV:
Brand Lift
Brand lift is an increase in positive sentiments towards your brand following media coverage. Surveys or social listening can track perception changes. Media mentions should move the needle on how your audience sees you—in a good way. Brand lift can help you visualize just how far the needle moves.
Traffic Quality
It’s vital to look beyond clicks alone to consider additional factors such as bounce rate, time on site, and pages per visit. A hundred visitors spending less than a few seconds on your site doesn’t compare to twenty visitors spending at least ten minutes getting to know your brand and actually making a purchase. Good press should bring curious, engaged visitors—not just random traffic spikes.
Affiliate ROI and Sales Attribution
For shoppable or affiliate-driven content, track what actually sells. Paying attention to affiliate links can help you pinpoint exactly what sales can be traced back to which affiliates. This can inform future affiliate marketing efforts. Great press combined with a strong call-to-action generates measurable ROI.
Long-Tail Relevance
PR isn’t always immediate—it’s about reputation equity over time. Tracking long-term effects of coverage and campaigns should definitely be part of the equation. Coverage can drive value months later (via search, evergreen linkbacks, or referral traffic), and that value can and should be followed as part of a solid evaluation.
How LaRue Measures What Actually Matters
LaRue is committed to measuring what actually matters with a modern, comprehensive approach to evaluating earned media. Our results-driven reporting is rooted in impact, not inflation.
We pair media coverage with the right backend data to get a meaningful understanding of its effects. Depending on your brand goals, we may consider:
- Analytics
- Affiliate dashboards
- SEO rankings
As a rule, we focus on long-term brand building, not just monthly vanity metrics. Brief blips in increased media mentions are not as important as lasting improvements in brand recognition and perception, in addition to audience connection and growth.
We are committed to helping you see sustainable progress over time.
What to Do When Your Boss Asks for EMV Anyway
EMV may still be expected by your boss or colleagues. With the right reframing, the value of EMV itself can be elevated. EMV as a standalone metric falls short, but when paired with more insightful measures, it can bring more to the table.
Alongside EMV, present metrics that measure impact like CTR, brand lift, traffic quality, and lead generation. You can set a new internal standard for brand reporting over time—one that tracks both sides of the digital coin: volume and impact.
Work With Us
EMV is outdated, overhyped, and often meaningless without context. But with the right metrics in place, brands can finally start measuring what matters—and stop being dazzled by empty numbers.
With LaRue on your side, you can gain a deeper understanding of earned media than ever before. If you want real insight into key brand measures like loyalty, recognition, awareness, and perception, it’s time to make the change. Contact LaRue today to get started.
