The PESO Model: Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned Media

The PESO mod­el is help­ful in pub­lic relations.

The PESO mod­el is used to clas­si­fy dif­fer­ent types of media: paid, earned, and shared media. The mod­el has emerged as an invalu­able tool for nav­ig­at­ing the com­plex­it­ies of mod­ern pub­lic relations. 

This con­tem­por­ary approach to PR affords organ­isa­tions a more com­pre­hens­ive and stra­tegic per­spect­ive on their com­mu­nic­a­tions efforts, respond­ing adeptly to the expo­nen­tial rise in digit­al chan­nels and audi­ence segmentation.

Here we go:

The PESO Model

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The PESO Model

The PESO mod­el divides the media land­scape into four dif­fer­ent media chan­nel types: 

• Paid chan­nels include advert­ising, spon­sor­ships, ambas­sad­or col­lab­or­a­tions, etc.
• Earned chan­nels include news art­icles, influ­en­cer endorse­ments, word-of-mouth, etc.
• Shared chan­nels include social media brand posts, accounts, SERP vis­ib­il­ity, etc.
• Owned chan­nels include news­let­ters, web­sites, pub­lic­a­tions for intern­al or extern­al use, etc.

Don Bartholomew, vice pres­id­ent of digit­al research at Fleishman Hillard, presen­ted a ver­sion of the PESO mod­el in 2010. According to PR blog­ger and PR meas­ure­ment expert Heather Yaxley, his 2010 art­icle is likely to be the earli­est men­tion of the model:

In 2013, PR blog­ger Gini Dietrich pop­ular­ised the PESO mod­el on her blog and later trade­marked her heav­ily pro­moted and widely spread infographic.

“In June 2013, Gini Dietrich presen­ted the first iter­a­tion of the PESO mod­el you may recog­nise in a blog post: The Four Different Types of Media. It was fol­lowed in August by the post Mobile Marketing: Use the Four Media Types in Promotion, where she talked about integ­rat­ing paid, earned, owned, and shared.”
Source: PRConversations​.com ¹Yaxley, H. (2020, June 28). Tracing the meas­ure­ment ori­gins of PESO. PRConversations​.com. https://​www​.prcon​ver​sa​tions​.com/​t​r​a​c​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​m​e​a​s​u​r​e​m​e​n​t​-​o​r​i​g​i​n​s​-​o​f​-​p​e​so/

“It is also worth point­ing out this 2010 McKinsey Quarterly art­icle by David Edelman and Britan Salsburg that includes sold and hijacked media along­side what used to be called POEM (paid, owned and earned media). Both of these con­cepts still have value even though their exe­cu­tion has changed in the past dec­ade.“
Source: PRConversations​.com ²Yaxley, H. (2020, June 28). Tracing the meas­ure­ment ori­gins of PESO. PRConversations​.com. https://​www​.prcon​ver​sa​tions​.com/​t​r​a​c​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​m​e​a​s​u​r​e​m​e​n​t​-​o​r​i​g​i​n​s​-​o​f​-​p​e​so/

I prefer to use the mod­el to under­score the crit­ic­al dif­fer­ences between mar­ket­ing (paid media) and pub­lic rela­tions (earned, shared, and owned media). Others prefer to use the mod­el to show­case how pub­lic rela­tions could ven­ture into paid media channels.

Learn more: The PESO Model: Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned Media

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Different Types of Media in PR

Paid Media

Paid media is some­what for­eign to pub­lic rela­tions, encom­passing advert­ise­ments, sponsored con­tent, and oth­er forms of pur­chased expos­ure. However, the PESO mod­el under­scores its util­ity not as a stan­dalone strategy but as one com­pon­ent in a much lar­ger orches­tra of tactics. 

By dove­tail­ing paid efforts with oth­er media types, organ­isa­tions can extend the reach of their mes­saging, com­ple­ment­ing tra­di­tion­al advert­ising with the authen­ti­city and engage­ment offered by earned, shared, and owned media.

Earned Media

Earned media refers to pub­li­city gained through meth­ods oth­er than paid advert­ising. It includes news fea­tures, reviews, and any oth­er form of cov­er­age that an organ­isa­tion doesn’t dir­ectly control. 

Earned media is often seen as a wild card due to its unpre­dict­ab­il­ity. However, coher­ent and integ­rated com­mu­nic­a­tion activ­it­ies can help shape the nar­rat­ive and cre­ate the con­di­tions for pos­it­ive cov­er­age, allow­ing organ­isa­tions to take advant­age of the cred­ib­il­ity earned media provides.

Shared Media

Shared media rep­res­ents a new­er but no less sig­ni­fic­ant sphere of PR. Encompassing social media plat­forms and oth­er user-gen­er­ated con­tent, shared media fosters dia­logue and engage­ment. The PESO mod­el acknow­ledges its grow­ing influ­ence, and its inter­sec­tion with oth­er media types is crucial.

Organisations can boost engage­ment, feed­back, and vir­al­ity by shar­ing owned con­tent or pro­mot­ing paid media on social plat­forms, turn­ing audi­ences from pass­ive recip­i­ents into act­ive participants.

Owned Media

Owned media refers to the chan­nels con­trolled by the organ­isa­tion, such as web­sites, blogs, news­let­ters, and more.

While owned media provides unpar­alleled con­trol over the mes­sage, the PESO mod­el recog­nises that it’s most effect­ive when stra­tegic­ally integ­rated with the oth­er three types. For instance, owned con­tent can extend the life of earned media cov­er­age or serve as a launch­pad for paid and shared media campaigns.

A Great Model — But Not Perfect

The PESO mod­el under­scores the inter­con­nec­ted nature of mod­ern pub­lic rela­tions. Rather than view­ing each media type in isol­a­tion, it encour­ages a hol­ist­ic approach that aligns and integ­rates vari­ous media strategies.

I prefer to use the mod­el to under­score the crit­ic­al dif­fer­ences between mar­ket­ing (paid media) and pub­lic rela­tions (earned, shared, and owned media). Others prefer to use the mod­el to show­case how pub­lic rela­tions could ven­ture into paid media channels.

In a time where the lines between pub­lic rela­tions, mar­ket­ing, and advert­ising con­tin­ue to blur, the PESO mod­el offers a ver­sat­ile and adapt­able frame­work that mir­rors the com­plex­ity of the mod­ern media landscape.

In short: The PESO mod­el is imper­fect but use­ful when ana­lys­ing the mod­ern media landscape.

PR Resource: The PESO Paradox

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The PESO Paradox

According to the PESO mod­el, there are four types of media channels:

• Paid media chan­nels. Example: Advertising.
• Earned media chan­nels. Example: Third-party publicity.
• Shared media chan­nels. Example: Social media publishing.
• Owned media chan­nels. Example: Website publishing.

How do you cat­egor­ise these four types of media chan­nels? A pop­u­lar approach is to divide them based on cor­por­ate function:

Function: Marketing

• Paid media chan­nels. Example: Advertising.

Function: Communications

• Earned media chan­nels. Example: Third-party publicity.
• Shared media chan­nels. Example: Social media publishing.
• Owned media chan­nels. Example: Website publishing.

Another approach is to divide the PESO media chan­nels based on cor­por­ate UIX control:

Brand Experience: Full Control

• Owned media chan­nels. Example: Website publishing.

Brand Experience: Partial Control

• Paid media chan­nels. Example: Advertising.
• Shared media chan­nels. Example: Social media publishing.

Brand Experience: No Control

• Earned media chan­nels. Example: Third-party publicity.

A third but cent­ral approach to the PESO media chan­nels is based on conversion/​monetisation strategies:

Value: Awareness

• Paid media chan­nels. Example: Advertising.
• Earned media chan­nels. Example: Third-party publicity.
• Shared media chan­nels. Example: Social media publishing.

Value: Transactional

• Owned media chan­nels. Example: Website publishing.

The vari­ous above per­spect­ives force organ­isa­tions to face prob­lem­at­ic paradoxes:

The PESO para­dox = paid, earned, shared, and owned media chan­nels can be grouped in dif­fer­ent ways that are equally and sim­ul­tan­eously true but also stra­tegic­ally con­flict­ing, which cre­ates a meas­ure­ment prob­lem (com­par­at­ive valid­ity) for organisations.

How do you set up a reli­able pro­cess to accur­ately determ­ine how to dis­trib­ute your media chan­nel investments?

Applications of the PESO paradox:

• Should we invest in social media advert­ising to boost the algorithm for increased organ­ic con­tent success?
• Should we pri­or­it­ise our web­site, where we con­trol the brand exper­i­ence, or social media, where our key pub­lics reside?
• How do we com­pare the return on invest­ment (ROI) of dif­fer­ent media chan­nels when they are pro­foundly dif­fer­ent and seem to defy any such comparisons? 
• How do we value aware­ness-type media chan­nels if the long-term cost is pro­por­tion­al to cut­ting away pieces of our busi­ness in a way that will weak­en the organ­isa­tion and strengthen the social networks?
• How do we fun­nel organ­ic aware­ness into trans­ac­tion­al value when third-party plat­forms work against us and the pub­lic is unwill­ing to switch media channels?

Please note: The PESO mod­el has “fuzzy edges” due to vari­ous hybrid media forms. For example, you can run cam­paign ban­ner ads or social for­ums on your web­site or add advert­ising spots with­in edit­or­i­al social media content.

Learn more: The PESO Paradox

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