Who sorted media into owned, earned and paid?
They were popularised in December 2009 by Sean Corcoran, an analyst at the research firm Forrester, in a post titled "Defining earned, owned and paid media". The labels stuck because they sort every marketing activity by a single question: who controls it?
Gini Dietrich later added a fourth letter in the PESO model (paid, earned, shared, owned), giving social media a category of its own, because a post on someone else's network sits awkwardly in all three.
Is a Facebook page owned media?
Only partly. You control what you post, but Meta decides who sees it, can change those rules at any time, and can restrict or remove the page. Treat a social page as rented space. Your website and your email list are the two things you hold outright, which is why the strongest small business marketing keeps bringing people back to them.
How did a cheese maker's month split three ways? (example figures)
A cheese maker in the Barossa sells at its cellar door and online. One month's marketing, sorted the three ways:
| What happened | Cost | Result | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owned | One email to 3,500 subscribers, and a new recipe page on the website | 3 hours | 45 orders, $2,800 |
| Earned | A feature on a food blog, and 14 new Google reviews | $120 of samples | 600 visits, 30 orders, $1,900 |
| Paid | Meta ads for a Christmas gift box | $1,000 | 55 orders, $3,600 |
The rows lean on each other. The Meta ads added 160 people to the email list, so next month's owned email reaches more of them. The blog feature sent readers to the recipe page, and some of them later left reviews, which make the next ad more believable. A cheese maker that only ran ads would pay for every one of those sales, and one that only emailed would never grow the list.
Which should a small business build first?
Owned, in CoraVision's view. A website that turns visitors into enquiries and an email list you can reach without paying are the base the other two pour into: paid media sends people there, and earned media needs somewhere to land. A business with a weak website and no list pays full price for every customer, every time.
Earned media is the hardest to plan, because other people decide whether it happens, but it can still be asked for: a review request after every order, a sample sent to a local food writer, a story offered to the regional paper when there is news worth telling.
Which of the three can CoraVision see?
Some of each: CoraVision sees the three side by side through Google Analytics 4, which it reads every night once connected: visits by channel separate the direct and email visits that come from what you own, the referrals and organic search that much earned attention produces, and the paid search and paid social your ads buy. The paid side it reads in more detail from Google Ads and Meta, where Gage and Mira are the specialists. Which mix suits you is a plan decision, made against the one number your 12-month strategy is built around and checked weekly.
Questions
Where do social media posts fit?
Your own posts are owned content on a channel someone else controls, shares by customers are earned, and boosted posts are paid. The PESO model gives social its own letter, shared, for exactly that reason.
Which of the three is cheapest?
Owned and earned cost time more than ad money, but they are slower and harder to switch on when you need customers next week. Paid is the quickest to start and to measure, and its results stop when the spending does.