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According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust earned media more than any other form of advertising. That’s what gives earned media value its edge in any marketing strategy. It’s not just about visibility, it’s about credible visibility. Where consumers are constantly bombarded with ads, earned media acts as a powerful form of social proof. You’ve earned the attention through quality, relevance, and trustworthiness.

Choosing the right influencer marketing metrics will help you measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and show their impact on the bottom line. Factor in creator fees, paid amplification, content rights and measurement tools to ensure accurate ROI tracking. Influencer budgets vary based on creator tier, platform, deliverables and campaign goals. Union’s partnership with Dove has helped the company gain positive PR and showcase its values to a wider audience through an influencer and a hashtag rather than paying for ad placements. That’s why tracking press pickup, syndicated mentions and creator-driven buzz is most valuable when paired with real-time social listening and rapid reporting.

Moreover, by monitoring website traffic, businesses can better understand the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and make informed decisions to achieve their KPIs. Consumers are increasingly sensitive to brand alignment, with 25% saying they’re concerned about brands partnering with influencers or creators whose values don’t align with their own. For example, use Sprout’s Instagram Profile Report feature to track followers gained during an influencer campaign alongside other key metrics. In Sprout’s 2025 Content Benchmarks Report, brands averaged 83 inbound engagements per day in 2024, up from 70 per day in 2023, a signal that stronger strategies are being rewarded with more interaction.

What to look out for when earned media value is calculated

You can measure earned media reach with specialized tools, like Prowly's Media Monitoring. There are many ways to measure earned media, from message pull-through to audience reach to social media mentions. In short, while paid and owned media push your brand forward, earned media pulls people in. Some tools offer a monetary estimate of your earned media reach. You can certainly do outreach with press releases but it’s not up to you when or where coverage takes place.

That’s why tracking key influencer marketing metrics effectively has become crucial. In the Q Sprout Pulse Survey, marketers said influencer marketing is essential for boosting brand awareness, building audience engagement and trust and driving revenue. Sprout research continues to show influencer marketing is a proven growth lever. He has years of experience analyzing and reporting on the news media. Close behind were Indian actors Alia Bhatt and Nitanshi Goel, each driving $5.5 million and $5.4 million, respectively, for L’Oréal, Gucci and a cluster of Indian luxury brands. EMV generated by beauty brands surged 187 per cent year-on-year, which can be largely attributed to L’Oréal Paris and its flagship Lights on Women’s Worth Award.

Step 2: Build Your Earned Media Strategy

However, while earned and paid media marketing are crucial components of a marketing strategy, they’re not the same. These media strategies can help you reach your overarching marketing goals, boost revenue, and increase ROI. Producing accurate and insightful content on a consistent basis can slowly earn trust from publications and audiences. Those insights can be sharpened into compelling story angles that media outlets find interesting. Companies find original data by conducting surveys or examining the behaviors and activities of their users. Earned media by its nature takes longer and is less transactional, so if you want to make it part of your marketing strategy, you need to get, well, strategic about it.

Sentiment analysis and trend tracking

Photo tweets were where it’s at on Twitter this year for Home Decor brands measured by both engagement rate and frequency. Fashion brands really jumped on the #AlbumCover trend this year, which immortalized one epic photo in a TikTok video that had influencers and trendsetters putting forth their most aesthetic outfits. Another way we got earned media was by reaching out to journalists and offering them a jacket to test. Then, reach out to any sites linking to competing but outdated statistics pages on the same topic to build links to your page (earned media).

FAQs About Earned Media

Jenna Guarneri, founder of JMG Public Relations, a public relations agency in New York City, explained that AI search doesn’t just change how people find information — it changes what information gets found. By the end of the year, mass adoption of public large language models (LLMs) as a replacement for traditional search will double public relations and earned media budgets, according to global research and advisory company Gartner. Super Bowl 60 ads were 9% less likely to amuse people compared to 2025’s ads. Breaking down all the key stats from the big game’s ads, including cost, reach, social engagement and more. GEO is the practice of optimizing content to be cited by AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. TrendKey DataTimelineVoice search24% of AI interactions voice-powered; 67% YoY smart speaker growth; 89% wearable growthBy 2026Multimodal AI40%+ citations will include video; infographics gaining weightEnd 2026AI agents35% of BI queries powered by AI agentsBy 2026Personalization78% offering real-time personalization; 65% federated learningBy 2026

Tech & Software brands earned median engagement rates on Instagram and Twitter while struggling on Facebook and TikTok. More than a few food hashtags like #foodie and #FoodTok broke through for Retail brands on TikTok this year, suggesting people like to fuel up while they shop. Just like on Twitter, Home Decor brands stuck with industry-themed hashtags on TikTok like #home and #design to help users find their earned media content.

PR, Communications and marketing agencies use the Critical Mention platform to help clients track earned media coverage in real-time, analyze campaigns and grow their brands. Paul is a strategic marketing executive and brand builder that navigates businesses through the ever changing marketing landscape to reach revenue and company M&A targets with 25 years experience. The TVREV article Netflix Doesn’t Need To Go All-In On Live Sports To Be Major Player set up the strategy that live events like the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight, which drew millions of viewers, proves that Netflix can compete in the live event space without overextending itself.

Data studies, benchmark reports, original surveys, interactive tools, and definitive guides are the formats that consistently earn backlinks and citations. Original research, proprietary data, strong opinions, useful tools, and genuine expertise all travel on their own. The single biggest driver of earned media is whether the thing you created is actually worth talking about. You build a system that produces earned media as a byproduct. You don’t run an earned media campaign the way you run a paid one. Diverse earned media footprints tend to be more resilient because visibility isn’t tied to one algorithm’s decisions.

• Historically, one of the biggest struggles with earned media is proving its effect on your brand’s bottom line.
• When done right, PR stunts can help generate tons of earned media mentions on publications and across social media.
• Status tweets were a surprise hit for Alcohol brands this year on Twitter, but photo tweets were also a tried and true source of engagement.

It’s widely considered the most credible of the three because it’s validated by someone other than the brand itself. You’ll learn why it matters and what moves to make before everyone else. Let PR Newswire help you achieve unmatched visibility and reach. Yes, earned media is an effective way small businesses can increase brand visibility, credibility, and engagement without a large advertising budget. Search engines see things like earned media mentions, backlinks and social signals when scanning the web for information. The biggest advantages of earned media are credibility and cost-effectiveness.

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Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands to identify which signals correlate most strongly with AI visibility, and found brand web mentions are the dominant predictor — correlating 0.664 with AI Overview visibility versus 0.218 for backlinks. When the same content was distributed through third-party news outlets, the citation rate reached 34% — a 325% lift. Stacker and Scrunch ran the first controlled study measuring how earned media distribution changes AI citation rates. Cited press releases had a 30% higher rate of objective sentences and 2.5x as many bullet points as non-cited ones. Muck Rack's "What Is AI Reading?" report analyzed more than one million citations from leading AI models and found that earned media accounts for 82% of all AI citations, with non-paid sources accounting for 94%.

It’s time for brands to consider investing in earned media as much as paid, and with the latest advances in technology, they can. Consistently deliver engaging content to the right audience, be patient and you’ll start seeing positive results. While it’s ultimately third parties that provide your earned media, you can start the conversation. With all those benefits, it’s no surprise everyone seems to be getting in on the earned media game. To make the most of these influencer marketing partnerships, you’ll need to understand who your target audience follows on social media, then build a relationship with them. But it’s still typically more affordable than paid media, which also requires all of those things, plus an up-front advertising investment.