Unmetric adds Earned Media
Value to social posts

Peter Claridge
September 5, 2019 • 3 min read
Updated on September 19, 2019
How much is your engagement worth? It’s a question that has baffled social media managers and their bosses since brands first began posting on social networks.
Ayzenberg, a leading agency based in LA with a large number of household brands as clients, was determined to answer that question. From their research, the Earned Media Value Social Index (EMV) was born.
Ayzenberg’s EMV uses a range of data points to create a constantly updating index to determine the value of user interactions such as a comment, click or a video view, right down to advertising metrics such as the value of your reach and impressions.
Since each user interaction is given a value determined from real-world data, it helps inform brands and agencies the areas of their social strategy they should be focusing on. Furthermore, the values are updated on a daily basis to reflect the changing nature of social media.
No one particularly wants to be advertised to (thank you, ad blockers), and yet there are brands that publish content which thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people engage with. Chris Strawser, VP Digital Platforms and Partnerships at Ayzenberg, calls this user-declared data. “It’s users telling you (the brand) how they want to be advertised to, and using the EMV to measure and evaluate your content is the best way to achieve the goal of advertising to people in the way that they want.”
Unmetric’s primary mission is to help marketers create better content that engages and entertains their audience. That’s why we have integrated Ayzenberg’s EMV score into the Unmetric platform and made it available to all users.
Proving social media ROI
We believe that evaluating your engagement beyond just a percentage ‘engagement rate’ or simply counting the number of interactions doesn’t give you the full story. By using the EMV to calculate the dollar value you are earning from your content, you can begin to understand the ROI you are getting from social.
For example, Starbucks recently announced the launch of their pumpkin spiced latte on Facebook. Based on the user interactions (likes, comments, and shares), the post earned over $33,000 in media value.
Starbucks followed up on this post with two more promotions about the pumpkin spiced latte which earned them an additional $20,769 and $9,537.
In total, for the pumpkin spiced latte announcement campaign on Facebook, Starbucks can report that they earned over $63,000 in earned media value.
The next step for Starbucks could be to compare the 2019 announcement to 2018’s and see if the earned media value went up or down.
Get earned media values for your content
If you want to start seeing earned media values for your content, just login to your Unmetric account and update your engagement calculation settings.
Not an Unmetric user yet? Take a demo and we’ll get you set up with a free trial so you can access your EMV data right away.