By Sarah Blake & André Britz on 2010/07/12
If there is a debate to be had on the merits of paid media vs. earned media, each side had better be ready to stack up their numbers. It’s said time and time again, but is worth repeating, that one of the benefits of digital marketing is its trackability, which means measurability. So, how does earned media measure up against paid media, and vice versa?
Paid Media
Paid media is probably easier to track, but it is still vital to spend some time, thought and effort on getting the tracking right. Make sure you are collecting the data you need to collect right from day one. You need to track delivery of your media campaigns (i.e. impressions served), interactions with the advertising (this could be clicks, but could be other actions) and very importantly, what happens post impression or post interaction. It is all about what happens after the click. You can (and should) use both ad serving and a web analytics package to give you the best data.
Ad serving has a very important role in the tracking process, even if you are using an analytics package. Not only are ad servers the technology used to serve ads on web sites, but also the technology to track interactions with an advert – even interactions from an impression level. Analytics packages tell you about what a visitor does once she comes through to your website. Your ad server tells you a bit more about what happened before that visit.
It is always best to use a third party ad server. While there are many advantages, it all really comes down to increased tracking capabilities, and the ability to compare advertising across many publishers. By using a third party ad server, you are assured of getting what you pay for across publishers, measuring interactions with the ads (especially with rich media), and post click and post view tracking.
Post click and view tracking allows for true measurement of a campaign – it’s all about knowing what happens after the click. By placing tracking code on the conversion pages of the destination website, conversions can be tracked by placement. Sophisticated ad servers also allow for cross channel tracking. Using this technology, we can gauge how display campaigns support search, for example, and the true value of the various elements of campaigns can be evaluated.
Earned Media
Earned media can be a little trickier to track, but with a bit of thought you can get it right. Online Reputation Management (ORM) tools, such as BrandsEye, assist you with gathering earned media mentions, but it is web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, that help you to see what these mentions mean for your website’s traffic and activity.
ORM software scours the web for mentions of selected keywords, and is a vital tool for any Social Media marketer or savvy PR professional. ORM helps you to understand the reach of mentions of your brand, and though it will track the number of mentions, you won’t be able to tell how many times those mentions have been read. However, better ORM tools help you with an estimate of reach and influence of mentions.
As with paid media, the actions resulting from earned media are vital to track. This is what really tells you how well earned media is helping you to reach your business goals. In most web analytics packages, such as Google Analytics, mentions sending traffic to your website show up as referrers to your site. Analysing actions taken by visitors from those sources will tell give you an indication of how valuable that traffic is.
Ultimately, your tracking solution should allow you to not only compare your earned media vs. your paid media, but to see the effect that they have on each other (and of course on your search traffic). Instead of merely looking at the most recent source of a visit to your site, a multi-touch attribution model allows you to see what effect different media have on a series of visits to your website.
