What is owned media in the 2020s?

When I start work on a new marketing project — a new job or a new client — one of the first things I do as I try to wrap my head around their owned media landscape.

To me, it’s a sensible place to start: owned media properties like your website and your email list are the foundation all other marketing efforts are built on.

But the standard definition of owned media is misleading in 2021 (and has been for a while). There’s a BIG difference between the channels typically bundled into the “owned media” bucket and as a marketing leader, I believe it’s important to have clarity about these differences.

But before getting into the nuances, let’s back up.

What’s the traditional definition of owned media?

If you’ve ever worked on a marketing strategy, you have probably looked up definitions of paid, earned, and owned media.

This three-part structure can help make the dizzying array of possible digital marketing channels feel more manageable. Run a Google image search and you’ll turn up images like this one, describing the “digital marketing trifecta:”

“Paid, owned, earned Venn diagram” Image Credit: Smart Insights

The general idea is that owned media is any marketing channel under your direct control. In contrast, paid media involves paying to deliver content to an audience, and earned media involves working to persuade others to cover your work.

In this framework, owned media is often defined as your website, your email list, and your social media channels. Ask Google this question and today, at least, I see a featured snippet from Campaign Monitor that delivers this exact message:

Screenshot: a Featured Snippet displayed on the Google SERP for the query “What is owned media?”

What’s the problem with this? It’s the word “controlled.” Let’s dig into what is being controlled in your owned media landscape, and by whom.

Owned media: Who controls what?

Disclaimer: I’m not the first one to say this. It’s not new news. Mark Bonchek wrote an article for Harvard Business Review back in 2014, but for many marketers (and the C-suite execs we interact with) the message hasn’t quite landed yet.

Let’s take this one owned media channel (or property) at a time.

• Your website. Yes – you own this. You control where it’s hosted and what technology is used to build it. You control what it looks like, and what content you publish there. (I’m including your blog in your website, since most brands’ blogging happens with their websites at this point.)

• Your email list. Yes – you own your email list. You control what you send to your subscribers, and when you send it. You control what your emails look like, and you can choose an email service provider that meets your needs (hopefully).

• Your SMS list. (This one might be a surprise, but I’d argue it should be included alongside an email list since that list of opted-in cell numbers is a direct line of communication to your audience.) Again, yes — you own this list and control the content, timing, and technology used.

• Your social media channels. No – you do not own these! Yes, you control the content you post to your social media profiles, but do not be under the illusion that these are a true owned media channel. At best, following Mark Bonceck’s analogy, your social media channels are “rented” media. Facebook is an owned channel for Facebook (or now “Meta,” I guess). LinkedIn is an owned channel for Microsoft. You just get to claim some space on there for yourself and use it as a space to connect with the portion of your audience that has done the same. But you don’t own your social channels.

This doesn’t mean keeping up a robust social media presence is a waste of time. Not at all. You should absolutely be where your audience is, even if it means renting some digital real estate to so.

But you should be clear-eyed about the lack of control you have over social media as a channel.

We saw this very clearly with Facebook over the past decade. Brands were encouraged to build out Facebook Pages, and were rewarded with strong organic reach into the vast audience of Facebook users, for free. Then Facebook pulled that reach back, adjusting the algorithm to sink the organic reach of Page posts, leaving many brands willing to pay to increase reach because they felt dependent on Facebook engagement as part of the marketing strategy.

Here’s what Mark Bonchek wrote in 2014:

Most social media is rented, not owned. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are your landlords and you just lease the space. It’s true that you own your accounts and profiles. That’s like having your name on the mailbox. But as your landlord, they can enter your apartment at will, renovate the building whenever they like — and keep the profits resulting from improvements you make to the property.

Feels about right in 2021, huh?

Owned media and controlling distribution

So is this nuance about who controls distribution of your owned media content?

For me, yes, it’s about distribution. And that’s what leads me to extend the critique above concerning social media into the website and email list space, because these owned media channels aren’t immune to distribution challenges now either.

Yes, your website will always be there for anyone that knows the URL and loads it in a browser.

But now, in the 2020s, we need to consider how the majority of people get to your website. The answer to that question may well be opening their Chrome browser, typing your brand name into the multi-purpose URL-and-search bar, and actually running a Google search for your brand. Then, as a second step, they click through to your website — assuming you’ve done a good job owning the search engine results page (SERP) for your branded search terms.

See what’s happened here? Google has snuck in as an intermediary in your user’s journey to your website through the leading market share of the Chrome browser. Now this means you need to pay extra close attention to what that branded SERP looks like. A user that might previously have navigated directly to your website might now be distracted by whatever else Google displays on that branded SERP, whether it’s press coverage about your brand, related information from the knowledge graph, ads displayed above the organic results, or review sites that compare your brand to your competitors.

Similar challenges may emerge with your email list. Yes, you control the content and the message delivery, but you’re still relying on your audience members’ email providers to allow messages into their inboxes. For example, the rise of GMail’s separate inboxes for news and promotions is another layer to navigate in what used to be a more direct line to your audience’s inbox (provided you could avoid the Spam filters).

What to do with owned media in the 2020s?

I have a couple of takeaway messages here.

First, be clear-eyed about who truly owns your owned media properties. Be aware of the differing levels of risk involved as you develop a reliance on owned media properties and allocate financial or person-hour resources to these.

Second, pay close attention to shifts in exactly how the connection gets made between an audience member and an owned media property. Stay on top of exactly how users are getting to your website; how your emails are being delivered into inboxes; how much organic reach your carefully-crafted social posts get.

Third, and most importantly, stay focused on the quality of the content you produce. Quality content that provides value to your audience will be rewarded with engagement from a loyal audience. Search engines still reward quality content, and social platforms still reward engagement.

On final note: quality content won’t get far without distribution. And that’s where the other pillars come in. Earned media is your key to distribution (and paid too if you really need it). A good marketing strategy will weave all these threads together.

Where would you put your owned media Xs on this range?