The Power of Owned and Earned Media

The power of social media going forward is in integrated programs, not stand-alone, "earned" media programs. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that complimentary media - social (the new "earned" media), owned media (a brand's web presence) & paid media will produce a compound effect if they work together. And that is what Group M saw in their recent study.

A sister company of Ogilvy inside WPP, Group M, released a bit of interesting research a week back. Essentially, their study pointed to the positive effect of social media on the performance of search.

"...a 50% lift in click-through rates across the board when consumers had been exposed to social media and paid search."

"Every day consumers express their intent via search. Now, we better understand how that intent is established via social media and the interplay between the channels," says Chris Copeland, chief executive officer of GroupM Search for the Americas. "There is a valuable audience for advertisers to focus on who are engaged with brands through social media and search. The study further validates our view that media discovery -- specifically. a brand's owned and earned media -- is as important to success as the paid media we handle every day. Generating upper-funnel awareness and influencing consideration through social media can produce better down-the-funnel performance with paid media, such as paid search."

"The study reveals that people who search and engage with social media, especially those exposed to a brand's influenced social media, are far more likely to search for lower-funnel terms than consumers who do not engage with social media. Furthermore, consumers exposed to a brand's influenced social media and paid search programs are 2.8 times more likely to search for that brand's products compared to users who only saw paid search."

Comments

[Macala Wright]

John - This is a fantastic article. LuxuryLab.org recently release the Digital IQ Index of Luxury Brands and one the weighting factors was SEM/SEO aptitude. I'm going to incorporate "M's" findings in my write up. Thanks so much!