The Earned Media Illusion: Why This Service Category Creates Confusion
The marketing industry's earned media category conflates fundamentally different activities with different economics. An owned vs. rented framework better predicts which investments create lasting value.
The Problem with Earned Media as a Category
The paid, owned, and earned model that Forrester popularized in 2009 was intended to simplify media strategy. Paid was advertising, owned was your website and email list, and earned was everything else. The simplicity made it appealing, but recent research suggests the framework hides more than it reveals.
A 2023 analysis by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute found that the business impact of earned media varies widely. Some activities produce measurable results. Others show no detectable effect on sales or brand equity. The category is too broad to distinguish high-value actions from low-value noise.
The economic realities within the category are also mismatched. A placement in The New York Times and a viral TikTok both count as earned, but their lifespans differ. Reuters Institute research shows that quality journalism can create reference value for up to 2 years. Social engagement drops by roughly ninety percent within forty-eight hours, according to Sprout Social’s 2023 benchmarks.
The category blends activities with fundamentally different patterns, economics, and durability.
How the Category Frame Shapes Agency Behavior
Agencies that position themselves as earned media specialists often optimise for platform-centered metrics: impressions, mentions, share of voice, engagement. These metrics show activity, but not necessarily business results.
The ANA’s 2022 compensation study found that two-thirds of PR and social media retainers tie bonuses to growth in impressions or engagement. Only twenty-three percent tie compensation to outcomes like leads or revenue. This creates predictable incentives. Once impression targets are met, the business impact becomes secondary. Agencies deliver against the metric that earns compensation, not the metric that builds owned value.
The earned label also carries an implied value judgment. It suggests the brand has received attention through effort rather than payment. But what is actually received is attention on someone else’s property. The platform controls distribution. The platform owns the data. The platform can change rules at any time.
SparkToro reports that Facebook organic reach for brand pages fell from 16% in 2012 to under 2% in 2023. Brands that relied heavily on that reach saw their investments eroded by changes outside their control.
The Owned vs Rented Distinction
A more useful distinction separates owned channels from rented ones (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.) based on control of the customer relationship.
Owned channels include websites, email lists, mobile apps, and podcast RSS feeds. The brand controls access and distribution.
Rented channels include social feeds, search engines, marketplaces, and publication placements. The platform mediates access and owns the behavioral data.
This reframing leads to a key observation: most paid and most earned media live on rented channels. Whether reach is purchased or organically gained, the dependency remains the same. The payment structure differs. The vulnerability does not.
Edison Research’s Infinite Dial study shows that podcast audiences accessed via RSS, which creators own and maintain, maintain attention far more reliably than platform-dependent social audio formats. Ownership matters because platforms can shift attention at any moment.
How Better Strategic Classification Categories Improve Marketing Decisions
| Dimension | Earned + Paid (Old) | Owned + Rented + Paid (New) | Why this matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operational buckets | Two categories in reality: earned activity and paid activity. Owned is not treated as a strategic bucket. | Three explicit categories: owned assets, rented platforms, and paid acceleration. | Restores ownership as a primary strategic lens. |
| Content and SEO | Treated as earned because visibility is “organic” and effort based. | Content is an owned asset. SEO is rented distribution on Google that points to owned properties. | Stops confusing distribution with ownership. |
| Social media | Counted as earned unless spend is added. Optimised for engagement on platforms. | A rented channel fully controlled by the platform. | Removes the illusion that organic reach is owned. |
| PR and influencer work | Classic earned activity measured in mentions and reach. | Exposure on rented platforms with optional paid layers. | Shifts focus to whether attention converts into owned relationships. |
| Email list | Separate bucket optimised for platform metrics like CPM and CPC. | A primary owned channel and compounding asset. | Elevates list growth, repeat visits, and retention as success metrics. |
| Paid media | Separate bucket optimised for platform metrics like CPM and CPC. | Paid becomes a layer applied to owned or rented to accelerate specific outcomes. | Aligns spend with building assets instead of buying impressions. |
| Success metrics | Impressions, reach, engagement, CPM, CPC. | Owned audience growth, first party data, customer value, profitable use of rented channels. | Reinforces durable business outcomes instead of platform activity. |
| Long term value | Earned visibility fades quickly and must be recreated. | Owned assets compound while rented channels provide short bursts into owned. | Makes value accumulation and compounding effects visible. |
| Strategic risk | High dependency on platforms across both earned and paid. | Owned channels buffer against platform shifts, rented and paid remain tactical. | Creates more resilience and control. |
Why the Industry Should Not Resist This Reframing
The earned category has historically served useful functions for agencies. It created clear lanes for PR, influencer, and social teams. It supported retainer models built on ongoing activity. It offered metrics like impressions and engagement that tended to rise even when business outcomes stayed flat. These structures made the industry work.
But the shift to an owned first, rented second, paid third framework is not a threat to those models. It strengthens them and prepares them for the future.
Service differentiation becomes clearer. PR, social, content, and SEO firms can articulate their value with greater precision when they show how their work contributes to owned audience growth and first-party data, rather than relying on broad earned categories that obscure what is actually being built.
Retainer economics become more durable. When agencies help grow owned channels, communities, and content libraries, the value of their work compounds over time rather than disappearing from a feed after 48 hours. This creates longer, more stable relationships with clients because the assets continue to pay dividends.
Reporting becomes more credible. Moving away from impression curves toward owned audience growth and first-party data strengthens internal trust and elevates marketing inside the organisation. It ties activity to business outcomes instead of surface signals.
Most importantly, the rise of AI makes this reframing essential, not optional.
AI systems require accessible, high-quality data to produce real value. Brands that rely on rented platforms for reach are limited by shrinking API access, platform restrictions, and algorithmic opacity. Brands that invest in owned channels, first-party data, and content libraries gain strategic leverage: they can train models, personalise experiences, automate intelligently, and compound insight over time.
Agencies that embrace this shift do not lose relevance. They gain it. They become partners in building the systems and assets that AI can learn from, not just the activity that populates someone else’s platform.
The reframing is not about reducing the need for creative or strategic services. It is about positioning those services where they generate lasting value in an AI-driven environment. The industry benefits when it leans into this shift rather than resisting it.
The AI Investment Thesis
AI amplifies the gap between owned and rented strategies because AI systems need access to data to generate value.
McKinsey’s 2023 report shows companies with unified first-party data see two to three times higher returns on AI investments than companies relying on third-party data. Data ownership and accessibility determine what AI can do.
Brands with strong owned assets gain advantages:
• First-party behavioral data that can be used without platform restrictions
• Content libraries that they fully control for training models
• Direct customer relationships with no intermediary
• Historical patterns unaffected by algorithm shifts
Brands dependent on rented platforms face limits. Social platforms have reduced API access. Customer interactions live behind opaque ranking systems. Historical data can disappear when platforms pivot.
Gartner predicts that by 2026, companies with strong first-party data strategies will outperform peers by a quarter on efficiency metrics. As AI improves, the gap compounds.
Investment Implications
If owned versus rented explains more than paid versus earned, investment strategy shifts.
Instead of dividing budgets across paid, owned, and earned, leaders can evaluate every activity by its contribution to owned audience growth and first-party data.
This reframes traditional tactics:
• A PR placement that drives email signups builds owned value.
• A PR placement that produces impressions without conversion mechanics strengthens a rented channel.
• Social engagement measured by likes grows platform value.
• Social engagement measured by email growth builds brand value.
Forrester’s 2024 B2B study reports that companies prioritizing first-party data see 40% lower acquisition costs over 3 years. The drivers include reduced platform dependency and improved targeting precision.
Caveats and Limitations
Owned strategies require upfront investment and delayed payoff. Brands with constrained resources may need to rent channels for awareness before their owned channels mature.
Value varies by category. Some industries see less return from owned list development than others.
Owned channels require more sophisticated attribution systems than rented platforms.
The AI advantage depends on AI progress continuing and regulation allowing data activation.
Conclusion
The earned media category was a useful simplification in 2009. Today, it explains less and obscures more.
The pattern across research suggests a more predictive distinction between owned and rented. It clarifies which investments build compounding value and which depend on external platforms.
For marketing leaders, the better question may not be how to balance paid, owned, and earned. The better question is:
What percentage of our marketing investment builds assets we control versus assets that live on platforms we rent?
The answer increasingly shapes strategic flexibility in an AI native landscape.