Owned Media Is More Loaned Media

Anyone working in digital marketing or for an advertising agency will use the words Paid Media, Owned Media, and Earned Media. But is Owned Media really Owned Media?

PEO Model – should Loaned Media be part of the mix?

I was reading an old Forrester blog post last week on Paid, Earned and Owned Media, and the author split Owned Media into ‘fully-Owned Media’ (your website, your blog) and ‘partially-Owned Media (your Facebook fan page, your Twitter account etc).

Owned Media is essentially something you control as a person or as a brand. I would argue that much of Owned Media is actually Loaned Media. Most blogs are powered by Blogger or WordPress. If either of those platforms makes a significant change or ceases to exist, your blog will be affected. Thus, you don’t control it. Same with Facebook or Twitter or other ‘Owned Media’ platforms.

Loaned Media – the new model?

Therefore you don’t control those platforms outright, you simply control the parts that are loaned to you. Go on, throw Loaned Media into the mix, you know it makes sense.