Earned media is coverage that a third party chooses to give you. A reporter writes about your company, a podcast host has you on, a customer reviews you, an industry newsletter mentions you. You did not pay for it and you do not control the words. That is what makes it worth more than an ad.
I know that definition by heart, but this week I had to explain it from scratch. My co-founder Carin and I got on a call with the CEO of an early-stage cybersecurity startup. His company finds vulnerabilities in the software everyone uses, the browsers and operating systems, and his team publishes line-by-line technical write-ups about what they found. The write-ups are excellent. They are also unreadable to anyone who is not a developer, and he knows it. Nobody on his team has ever done marketing or PR.
A few minutes in he said something I wish more founders said out loud. He asked us to treat him like a newbie on this and explain what we actually do.
So here is the explanation we gave him, cleaned up a little. If you are a technical founder who has never worked with a PR agency, this is the whole picture.
Earned media vs. paid media vs. owned media
Marketers sort every channel into three buckets. The buckets matter because they answer the founder’s first question, which is always some version of “do I pay you and then an article appears?”
Paid media is advertising. You buy the ad and it runs exactly where you want, when you want, saying what you want. It does what you tell it. It also arrives with a label on it that says you paid, and readers discount it accordingly.
Owned media is everything you publish yourself. Your website, your blog, your technical reports, your LinkedIn and X posts, your newsletter. You control every word, and you have to earn every reader.
Earned media is the third party talking about you. A staff writer at TechCrunch, a Wall Street Journal reporter, a trade publication in your vertical, a podcast, a customer review. You cannot buy it. Someone with no stake in your company decided you were worth their readers’ time.
The founder’s company had plenty of owned media (the technical reports) and no paid or earned media at all. That is a common shape for an early technical startup, and it is the reason the CEO who buys the product had never heard of them.
Earned media examples, using his own company
Abstract definitions did not land. His own news did. Here are the examples we walked through on the call, because they map to almost any technical company.
- Expert commentary on breaking news. The day before our call, a major vulnerability in a widely used web framework had hit the news and several companies had been breached. Every outlet covering it needed someone who could explain what happened, why it happened, and what companies should do now. His team could do that better than almost anyone. Getting him quoted in those stories is earned media.
- A trend story. A reporter is writing about how AI is changing vulnerability research. Your founder is one of three experts quoted. Earned media.
- Hard news. You announce a funding round, a new product, or a big customer, and a reporter chooses to cover it. Earned media. A press release you post on your own site is owned media. The article a reporter writes because of it is earned.
- A contributed article. A trade publication runs a piece under your founder’s byline on how a certain class of attack works and how to defend against it. The publication chose to run it, so it is earned, but you wrote every word. More on that below, because it was the part he found most useful.
- A podcast interview. The host invited you. Earned.
The pattern across all five is the same. Someone else’s audience, someone else’s editorial judgment, your expertise.
Is earned media the same as PR?
Almost. Earned media is the result, and PR, specifically media relations, is the work that produces it. The founder asked the question a different way. He wanted to know whether we would write his X posts and blog posts, or whether we would put him in touch with an editor at the Wall Street Journal.
The answer is that a PR agency’s core job is the second one. We figure out what you should be known for, turn that into story ideas, and then match those ideas to the publications and reporters whose readers you want to reach. Then we go pitch them.
Content for your own channels is a different service. Plenty of agencies, ours included, offer it, but it is owned media, and it is usually scoped separately from the earned media work. Knowing that distinction up front saves everyone a confusing first month.
What a PR agency actually does all day
This was the part of the call where the founder’s questions got specific, and specific questions deserve specific answers.
We monitor the news for you. Once a client signs, we set up alerts on the keywords and topics that matter to their industry, and we run our own tools that track what reporters are writing and where a story is about to trend. When something breaks in your space, we know before you do, and we already have a list of who is covering it.
We pitch. A pitch is an email to a reporter. It explains why you are the right person to talk to about this story, out of the forty other people who will email them today. Writing that email well is most of the job.
We get you interviews. The founder asked what “interview” meant in practice, which is a fair question. It means you get on the phone with a reporter and talk about the topic. Before the call, we send you a briefing book with the questions they are likely to ask and we rehearse the answers with you. During the call, someone from our team listens in and takes notes. After the call, the reporter writes the article. You never write a word of it, and that is the point. It is their story about you.
We write contributed articles. For topics that are not breaking news, like the lessons learned after an attack or how a certain exploit chain works, we draft a bylined article in your voice, you approve it, and we place it with a publication that accepts contributed pieces. You get credit as the author. Your bio links back to your site. We control every word, which makes it the earned media format closest to owned media.
We meet weekly. Thirty minutes, senior people only. Not a status report. We come with what we are seeing in the news, what we think you could comment on, and what story ideas we want to pitch next. You come with what is happening inside the company. The next round of pitches comes out of that conversation.
We measure against KPIs you set. Which publications you want to be in, which podcasts, how many interviews a quarter. Then we report against that.
Here is what a retainer usually does not include, because it was the founder’s next question. Advertising is a separate line item. Wire distribution for a press release is a separate cost. A standalone LinkedIn program for the CEO is a separate program. A research study is quoted separately. When an article runs, most agencies will happily draft the LinkedIn post that promotes it, because that is our news too.
Earned media and AI search
This is the part of the explanation that is new since 2024, and it changed the founder’s expression.
When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI mode which companies do what you do, the answer is assembled from what the model can find and trust. Third-party coverage is the heaviest input. A founder quoted in three trade publications and one national outlet shows up in those answers. A founder with a brilliant blog and no coverage usually does not.
So earned media now does double duty. It still builds reputation with the humans who read the article. It also teaches the machines who you are. If you want to be found by a CISO who asks an AI for a shortlist, you need other people to have written about you. More on that in how to get discovered in LLMs.
An earned media strategy for a technical founder
If you are in the same position as the founder we talked to, here is the order of operations we would suggest. It is the same plan we gave him.
- Decide what you want to be known for. Pick two or three topics where you have a real point of view and real proof. For him, it was the hacking background. Nobody else on the call had a team that finds the bugs before the attackers do, and that is a story.
- Build the monitoring. Alerts on your topics, a list of the reporters who cover them, and a habit of reading the news every morning.
- Start with expert commentary. Breaking news is the fastest route to a first placement, because the reporter already has the story and only needs a source. Be the source.
- Follow with contributed articles. Once you have been quoted a few times, pitch the longer piece on what happens next and what the lessons are.
- Save hard news for when you have it. A funding round or a big customer is a reason for a reporter to write, but it is not a strategy on its own.
- Promote every placement on your own channels. The article is earned. The LinkedIn post about the article is owned. Use both.
The founder’s last question was whether he could just hire someone in-house to write the technical posts in plain English. He could, and he probably should. That person would be running his owned media. The earned media is still the part he cannot buy, and the part that puts him in front of the CISO before the CISO knows to look for him.
Want to talk through what earned media could look like for your company? Book a call with us. More on how we do tech PR.
FAQ
What is an example of earned media?
A reporter quoting your CEO in a story about a breaking news event, a trade publication running an article under your founder’s byline, or a podcast inviting you on. In each case someone else chose to feature you, and you did not pay for the placement.
Is earned media the same as PR?
Not quite. Earned media is the result. PR, and media relations in particular, is the work of pitching reporters and preparing spokespeople that produces it.
What is the difference between owned and earned media?
Owned media is anything you publish on channels you control, like your website, blog or social accounts. Earned media is published by someone else, like a news outlet or podcast, who decided you were worth covering.
What is the opposite of earned media?
Paid media. With paid media you buy the placement and control the message. With earned media you cannot buy the placement, which is why readers trust it more.
Can a PR agency guarantee earned media coverage?
No. Reporters decide what they write. What an agency can do is find the stories reporters want, get them in front of the right people, and prepare you to be a great source.