The creator economy is here to stay, and as brands continue to invest heavily in influencer marketing, it’s crucial to have reliable tools to evaluate performance. Earned Media Value (EMV) is one of the most widely used KPIs for creator campaigns,—but it’s also one of the most commonly misunderstood.
In this post, we’ll provide a comprehensive overview of EMV by outlining what it is, why it matters, and how brands can leverage it in their social media marketing strategies.
What Is Earned Media Value?
Definition and Importance
Earned Media Value is an influencer marketing metric that’s used to quantify the value of social media content. EMV measures engagement with social media content about a brand that is created by a third party. This third party is typically a creator, but EMV can also be used to gauge the impact of posts from publications, retailers, and other brands.
The value of engagement (or Earned Media Value) garnered by a given piece of content is attributed to all brands mentioned within that post. For example, imagine a lifestyle creator shares her outfit on Instagram, and tags Coach, H&M, and Benefit Cosmetics. If the post generates engagement worth $500k EMV, Coach, H&M, and Benefit would all collect $500k EMV from this activity.
CreatorIQ leverages proprietary technology to determine the specific Earned Media Value of digital content. This work has made EMV a go-to metric within the industry for measuring creators’ performance on social media. In combination with other metrics, such as content volume, creator community size, and EMV retention, Earned Media Value can be used to evaluate the impact of influencer marketing campaigns and benchmark brands within their competitive landscapes.
Why Does Earned Media Value Matter?
Before we dive into how to calculate Earned Media Value, let’s cover why it’s an essential metric for social media marketing.
Trust and Credibility
First, in contrast to paid advertising KPIs, EMV captures earned media—that is, any content about a brand that’s not created by that brand. Creator endorsements and online word-of-mouth recommendations, like customer reviews, are both examples of earned media with the potential to drive serious sales conversions.
Relative to other forms of social media marketing, earned media is especially valuable to brands because of its trustworthiness in the eyes of consumers. People are much more likely to make purchases based on advice from a friend or expert than from a paid ad. Because earned media typically represents a content creator’s enthusiastic opinion, it’s a key tool for building your brand’s reputation.
Additionally, as the creator economy grows, influencer marketing is becoming increasingly integral to any brand’s success. Robust creator programs are the most effective way for brands to increase the volume of earned media created about them—and, correspondingly, their Earned Media Value.
How to Calculate Earned Media Value
Unfortunately, you can’t just type your brand’s name into an Earned Media Value calculator to gauge your social media marketing performance—but that doesn’t mean it’s a black box. Like other EMV metrics, EMV is quantified using CreatorIQ’s proprietary algorithm. Three primary factors contribute to EMV figures: platforms, audience engagement, and creators. Let’s take a look at the roles that each of these variables play in how to calculate Earned Media Value.
Platforms
Not all content platforms are created equal, so Earned Media Value accounts for the platform a post is published on. For example, a YouTube video about your brand receives a higher baseline EMV figure than a Tweet, because a video keeps the attention span of a viewer for longer—not to mention that it takes longer to produce on the creator’s end. CreatorIQ’s influencer marketing software actively tracks EMV for content created on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Meta, Snapchat, Pinterest, and X, as well as websites and blogs.
Audience Engagement
The majority of a post’s Earned Media Value performance depends on the engagement it receives from audience members—that is, the number of people that liked, commented, viewed, or shared this post after it was published.
By focusing on engagement, EMV provides an accurate, detailed representation of content’s social relevance. A post won’t garner significant EMV if consumers passively scroll by it; instead, this post will score highly only when its viewers are inspired to interact with what a creator has to say. For brands looking to complement EMV, CreatorIQ also offers full Impressions data.
Creators
As a holistic measure of earned media performance, Earned Media Value accounts for content from four types of third-party creators: creators, brands, retailers, organizations, and publications. Because EMV metrics are primarily used to evaluate influencer marketing activities, creator posts generally make up the majority of the EMV figures attributed to brands. However, if a third-party retailer, publication, or company creates content about a brand, this activity will also count towards that brand’s EMV. What won’t count toward a brand’s EMV are posts from brand founders or a brand’s owned media handles.
Broadly speaking, the larger a creator’s following, the more Earned Media Value they are likely to generate on a per-post basis. While EMV calculations do not specifically factor in creators’ audience size, more followers results in more opportunities for engagement, so content from established, popular creators tends to garner higher EMV totals than content from micro- and nano-creators.
How Can Brands Use Earned Media Value?
Now that you have answers to questions like “What is Earned Media Value?” or “Why Does Earned Media Value Matter?,” and understand how to calculate Earned Media Value, you’re probably wondering how to incorporate it into your brand’s social media marketing strategy. As a KPI, EMV is most helpful when it’s tracked alongside other metrics, like creator community size and content volume. A combination of these metrics can be used to effectively monitor an influencer marketing program’s success over time.
Benchmarking and Reporting
Marketers can use Earned Media Value to benchmark the impact that individual posts, creators, products, and campaigns have on brand awareness and reputation. For example, when Kosas debuted its Brow Team collection, the makeup brand identified top EMV-driving creators to include in its launch promotion, and kept a close eye on the campaign’s overall EMV to evaluate its success.
Many influencer marketing managers also use Earned Media Value to benchmark their programs’ performance against competitor brands’ performance, and even map their EMV growth to industry-wide trends. CreatorIQ’s interactive Top 10 Leaderboard and monthly reports rank the top 10 beauty and fashion brands by EMV across multiple verticals and markets, helping category leaders understand their position within the competitive landscape. Additionally, brands can use the Top 10—and EMV more broadly—to track their performance over time, and compare the success of various campaigns.
Earned Media Value is an indispensable metric for any brand engaged in influencer marketing. By understanding and effectively measuring EMV, you can gain invaluable insights into your marketing efforts and optimize your strategies for greater impact.
Ready to take your influencer marketing to the next level?
Previous versions of this blog post, which has been updated with recent insights, were originally created by Christina Vasiliou and Catherine Kulke.