Different Kinds of Digital Media
Nov 13, 2020
Let's shed some light on the road how to slice and dice digital media. In this blog article we look at the 3 most popular ways how to group the digital media. A definition what Digital Media is, can be found here.
Paid - Owned - Earned
A very popular way with companies to segment digital media is the split into:
Paid media
Owned media
Earned media
When speaking about 'paid media' you are referring to the media that you pay to show your products. So we are talking ads here. You pay, you get a media value. This is scalable over the time: The more you spend the more you get.
'Owned media' is term that is coined for the media that the company owns. Believe it or not, in the past years companies turned more and more into small (or big) publishing houses: They own a website, they operate social media channels, they use an email list... in all of these media the company decides what gets published.
The company is the beneficiary of the 'earned media' without paying for the coverage, and often the company does not even encourage it. A product review on a website could be an example of an earned media.
Brand vs E-commerce
A lot of companies still separate the media and the media engagement along the lines of 'awareness' (= brand) vs 'transaction' (= e-commerce). While a transactional media engagement results in a sale, awareness based media placements focus on building the brand. We are concentrating on digital media here, this split could also be used for non-digital media.
Examples for a transactional digital media engagement could be an affiliate marketing campaign: I pay the affiliate only if a sell-out takes place. An awareness engagement could be a brand post on the company's social media profile.
Of course the lines are blurry and they are blurring as we speak: brand posts on Instagram also lead to sell out, and an affiliate post on a blog also builds the brand.
This is why - when you define your media engagement by brand vs e-commerce - you should think of 'primarily' awareness media placements vs 'primarily' transactional ones.
Performance Marketing
One sub-group of 'Brand vs. E-commerce' is the performance marketing. When you have a performance lead digital media strategy then you STRONGLY or ONLY look for digital media that allow you to increase your sell out. You are not focusing on brand advertising. In some instances the term 'performance marketing' is used as a synonym for the transactional / e-commerce approach as defined above.
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In the meantime have a great day,
Sebastian
Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash
