Impact of Paid, Owned

and Earned Media

Made by:
1.SatyaPrakash, Enroll-16119028

2. Vaibhav, Enroll-16119035
 Contents

1. Introduction
2. What is Paid, Owned and EarnedMedia?
3. Research Methodology
4. TargetAudience
5. KeyFindings
6. Conclusion
7. Annexure-A (Questionnaire)
 Introduction:

In this project, we try to analyze the impact of Paid Media, Owned Media and Earned
Media on the salesof products.With theadventof social anddigital media,a lot of new
avenues for marketing have opened up. Earlier, marketers relied mainly on Paid Media
but now Earned Media and Owned Media have also emerged as important ways of
marketing. It is also argued by many that from the generation of millennials onwards,
the role of Paid Media is going to get reduced and other forms of media are going to
take over due to the fact that they have been exposed a lot to Paid Media during their
childhood years and often view it as biased and unnecessary. This study aims to get a
greater insight into the thought process of consumers while purchasing a product,
particularly in the case of millennials. On the basis of those results, we have done a
comparative study between the different forms of media and then associated each of
these three forms of media to their role in the buying process of a consumer, thereby
giving suggestions on how marketers can use them for better results. This will enable
marketers to form acomprehensivemarketingstrategyusing all theforms of media in a
waythatbestresultsareobtained.

What is Paid, Owned and Earned Media?

Owned media

Owned media consists of the content company create and publish on a channel they
own. This includes their website and blog, any eBooks and white papers they publish,
andthe contenttheydistribute on their socialmediachannels.Theseassetsoffer a more
controlled - - but not overly promotional - - messageabout their company.
A big advantage of owned media isthat businesseshavefull control over their own
channels,and in addition, theseownedmediachannelsaremore costeffectivethan paid
advertising.

Paid media

Paid media is the simplest to understand of the three channels, consisting of any
marketing that you pay for. Traditionally this would include TV adverts, radio spots, and
print advertising. In the online world, paid advertising is the most common form of
company advertising.

Paying to promote content can help get the ball rolling and create more exposure.
Traditional banner ads and social media ads displayed on platforms such as Facebook
andTwitterareallconsideredto bepaid mediaasis searchengineadvertising(SEA) with
GoogleAdWords

Earned media

Earned media refers to media exposure you’ve earned through word-of- mouth.
Whether it was the fantastic content you've distributed, the influence of your SEO
efforts, the customer experience you've delivered, or a combination of all three,
earned media refers to the recognitionyou receiveasa result.

However,unlikepaid media, a companycannotpurchaseearnedmedia. Acompany can

only acquireit by providinghigh-quality,relevant,andentertaining content.
 ResearchMethodology:

An online surveywas carried out using Google Forms (the questionnaire is attachedas
Annexure-A) with the basic objective of finding out the impact of paid, owned and
earned media on buying behavior. The questionnaire was divided into two parts. The
first part dealt with the respondents’ recent purchases to see which form of media
played the most important role while the secondpart mainly dealt with examining the

respondents’ underlying beliefs and opinions regarding various typesof media.

TargetAudience:

As discussedearlier, the target audience for our researchismillennials mostly

consistingof college students.We havesurveyedasample of collegestudents.

Key Findings

Is Paid Media Irrelevant?

A good chunk of the respondents (44.6%) believe that Paid Media advertising makes
youaware of brandsyoudidn’t know aboutwhile 29.2% believe that it is a wasteof time
andspace.20% believethat it leads to unnecessary purchases who mightbelong to the
chunk of people that view Paid Media as highly biased. The results showthat

whileit iswrong to classifyPaidMedia asirrelevant but ithaslostsomeof itssheen.

Trust on Sources of Information

Suggestionsfrom friends/family and Online Reviews topped thelist with average scores
of 3.937 and 3.953 respectively though, Social Networking profiles of Celebrities and
Influencers fared very poorly. The major reason could be that their profiles may be
viewed more as Paid Media by people like brand endorsements rather than genuine
advice. while Owned and Paid media both seem to fare equally poorly in this
department and have average scores hovering around the 2.5-3 range. It is also worth
mentioning here that there seems to be a division within the different forms of Owned
Media. Company Websites and Blogs seem to betrusted more than other conventional
forms of paid media. On the other hand, socialnetworkingpagesand
profiles seemto be trusted just about asmuchaspaid advertisements.However,
emailsfrom companydid extremelypoor in this aspectandwere hardly trusted with an
average scoreof just 2.14

Perception of different types of media – Word Association

The graph shows how people responded when they were asked to associate a word
among “Informative”, “Catchy” and “Influential” to different forms of media. The results
show aclear trend. Paid Media forms were recognized ascatchy bymost of the people.
Earned Media forms were perceived as the most informative andinfluential

whileOwned Media forms seemto offer amixof bothworlds.

Thegraphs below describeopinions about the different forms of media

Paid Media
Owned Media

Earned Media
It canbe seenthat Paid Media playsa major role in informing about the product and
creating apositive feeling for the product. However, it isperceived asbiased and does
not play amajor role in persuading or supporting the decisionto buy the product.

Owned Media performs somewherein betweendoing fairly wellin creating a positive

feelingfor thebrand andstrengthening the decisionto buya product. However,itis also
perceived asbeing biasedalthough not asmuchasPaid Media

EarnedMedia has themostfavorable responsesparticularlyin creating apositive feeling

for the brand, informing about the product and strengthening the decision to buy a
product.

Theresultsof theANOVA testare asfollows:

Sincethep-values for Sample, Columns aswellasinteractions <0.05, thismeansthat
the null hypothesis canbe rejectedand the resultsare statisticallysignificant.

On the basisof the resultsobtained till now, weformulate a hypothesis as follows:

“Paid Media and Earned Media play a significant role in creating awareness and

drawing attention towards a product while it is Earned Media that is most influential in

the buying process ”

To testthis hypothesis, wemakeuseof the responsesto Part-1 of our questionnaire
whichconsistsof responsesregarding people’s recentpurchases.
As can be seen from the ANOVA one way test, p-value between groups is less than
0.05 when we consider Retail/Ecommerce asseparate which means null hypothesis can
be rejected and there is statistical significance. While if we consider Retail/Ecommerce
amongtheir popularly believed forms of media, the p-value>0.05,

implying that the null hypothesis cannotbe rejected.

For this study, we prefer to keep Retail/Ecommerce as separate because webelieve that
marketerscanhaveseveralwaysto usetheseplatformsand should usethem innovatively
in future asa part of their efforts and thus they should not be classifiedas one particular
form of media. For example, Ecommerce in addition to Earned Media also has a great
potential for Paid Media advertising in the form of improving product visibility. Similarly,
for multi-brandretailstores,EarnedMedia canalsobecomean important factor.
Thus,the alternate hypothesis isacceptedwithanaddition that Retail Stores and
EcommerceWebsitesalsoplay avery important role in creating awarenessand
influencing the decision to buy aproduct

Conclusion

On the basis of our study, we can conclude that among the three forms of media, it is
mainly Earned Media that plays the most significant role in influencing the buying
decision. However, due to the major role played by Retail Stores and Ecommerce
websitesparticularlyin somecategoriesinshaping thepurchasedecision,webelieve that
other than the conventional forms of Earned Media, marketers need to smartly utilize
these platforms aswell because they also have a tremendous potential to become the
most important factors in influencing the decision making process. Paid media definitely
seems to have lost some of its sheen butstill wecannot categorize it asuseless or waste
of timeevenin the currentscenario or consideringthe current generation because itstill
has a major role in drawing attraction towards a particular product consumers may be
unaware of. However, it plays very little to zero role in influencing the decision. Owned
Media paints a mixed picture. Its direct role in creating sales seems to be very little.
However,further analysis revealedthat Owned Media doesplay an important role in the
intermediary steps between first seeing a product and then choosing to buy that
product. It was rated as somewhere in between Earned Media and Paid Media. These
results convey that Owned Media is still not widespread and popular and has a lot of
untapped potential which can be creatively used by marketers in shaping and
strengthening consumers’perception about a product.
 Annexure-A

Thequestionnaire isasfollows: