Stephen A Smith Applauds Reported Pat McAfee Extension Discussions: “He’s Earned It”

Readers can replicate the analysis, challenge the findings, and apply the framework to their own categories. The report's methodology section discloses every prompt category, every engine sampling cadence, every scoring rubric, and the limitations and confidence intervals that apply. 5W's prescriptive 90-day, 6-month, and 12-month playbooks for brands competing on the AI answer surface — segmented by company size, category, and starting position. The crisis facing local services brands and operators across HVAC, plumbing, dental, funeral, car wash, and home services. The strategic distinction between optimizing for recommendation engines (GEO) and answer-extraction engines (AEO), with prescriptive frameworks for each.

When reporting to stakeholders about your social media impact, it’s valuable to include a high-level overview of your earned media value. Explore the category-level benchmarks that feed the State of AI Search annual report, including citation share rankings across consumer and B2B markets. Brands with active earned media programs across high-authority publications captured citation share that paid media spend alone could not buy.

• This represents an 18% increase from 2024’s figures, highlighting continued growth in the sector despite increased competition.
• If someone discovers your site through a blog post, review, or press article, that’s earned media in action.
• Affiliate marketing is where people promote another company’s product or service in return for a commission on generated sales.
• One proven way to earn social media mentions is to consistently publish high-quality thought leadership blog posts and share that content across all of your social media channels.
• This is exactly why marketers are investing time and effort into understanding earned media value and building strategies to increase it.

You could even set up your back-end analytics to track how much site traffic comes from your news. There are many ways to measure earned media, from message pull-through to audience reach to social media mentions. So, how do you measure the quality of your work? From satellite media tours to sponsored content, your company is paying to have your brand reach a certain audience with a precise message.

Why earned coverage is so powerful

Quite surprisingly, 90% of people earned media on Instagram follow a business (Instagram). Messaging-only apps like Discord, Slack, and WhatsApp also fall into the same channel category. This way, when people Google things related to SEO and marketing, we can naturally feature our product. In other words, people use search engines a lot, and some of them may be looking for a product or service like yours. It has tremendous potential reach, it’s free but can be boosted with a small ad budget, it works with all content formats, and finally, it’s a two-way communication channel. You start by picking a few fundamental channels to fuel your growth, then experiment with new ones and double down on the ones that work.

Over-relying on paid media while neglecting owned channels creates expensive dependency with no lasting value. Focus on niche audiences, create valuable content that addresses specific problems, build relationships with micro-influencers, and cultivate a community that amplifies your message. Unlike paid campaigns that stop delivering the moment you stop paying, quality owned content continues generating value for years. Unlike earned media, which requires merit, paid media guarantees visibility, provided you have the budget.

What Are Examples of Earned Media?

If someone discovers your site through a blog post, review, or press article, that’s earned media in action. Since you’re not paying directly for coverage, likes, or links, it can feel tricky to prove ROI. One of the biggest challenges marketers face is quantifying earned media value.

Unlike earned and organic media, communications professionals and marketers have control over paid opportunities. Unlike marketing spend, defining and measuring earned media is not very black and white. Earned media can be an incredibly powerful tool to establish trust and create brand awareness for companies of all sizes. Founder and CEO of JSA+Partners, a strategic communications firm working with consumer tech, digital media and gaming companies. Compared to advertising metrics, the value that earned media contributes to the organization's profitability and purpose is harder to determine. Readers sought out and paid attention to information such as the independence and credentials of the journalist, the balance of the coverage, and the prestige of the outlet in which the story appeared.

Social Media Mentions and Shares

Therefore, having a good network of journalists is not just beneficial, but essential to the success of your earned media strategy. Nurturing professional relationships with journalists is a cornerstone of earned media in public relations. PR departments with well-established relationships with journalists get more earned media coverage with less effort. Even though you don't pay for the placement, you still need to invest to get earned media opportunities. And it’s here that PR activities can bring you earned media — and more credible sources for your potential clients. Additionally, it differs from owned media, which includes channels you have full control over, like your website and blog.

Pros of Paid Media: Immediate Results and Precise Targeting

Join our community of marketers, business owners, and creatives where we share real insights, practical strategies, and support each other’s growth. Whether you’re a startup, a small business, or an established brand, investing in earned media isn’t just smart, it’s sustainable. In a world full of noise, earned media helps your brand stand out, not by shouting louder, but by being worth talking about. When people tag your brand, repost your content, or mention you in comments or stories without being paid, that’s classic earned media. To understand the true power of earned media, it helps to look at it in action.

We attract and retain people who aren't satisfied by the mere act of coping with change, but want to create tomorrow. Perceptions are created, shaped, and amplified across AI platforms, search, social, and earned media – often before a brand knows the conversation has started. Ryan McManus, chief executive of VML UK, said the team responded to a brief that came from the real world and enlisted what felt like the whole internet to help track down the stolen bars. Customized reports and dashboards make for easy analysis and our Google Analytics integration helps marketers understand the impact of earned media on web traffic and conversions. Federal agencies, local governments, political offices, campaigns and other public sector organizations all leverage Critical Mention to track the news that matters to them.

This is some of the oldest earned media out there, and it still occurs today. To show you what this looks like in practice, here are some common examples of earned media today. To make sure you're caught up on this "web 2.0" version of an old-school term, let's dive into what earned media means today and the various ways you can use it in your marketing. In fact, according to HubSpot Research, 57% of people in the U.S. trust what they hear from friends and family the most when they discover a new product. And a lot of those people listen and use those stories to make buying decisions. And, it's that technology blogger's "Top 10 Apps of The Year" article that was viewed and shared by thousands of people after you launched your new mobile app.

Of course, the lines between earned and paid media can blur at times. And the happier your customers, the more positive earned media you'll get the next time they're chatting with someone who's looking to buy a product like yours. When a customer service team solves a critical problem for someone, it's making current customers happy. You might not think of "word of mouth" as an example of earned media, but today, it continues to be as free and impactful as a tweet or Yelp review. One of the biggest things to change in the world of earned media over the last decade is how customers express their feelings about a product they've used. If you build a product, and it's good enough, getting included in somebody's roundup is a form of earned media.