What is Paid Media?

In online marketing, more particularly in the Social Web, there are three different types of media, including the Owned Media, Paid Media, and Earned Media.

They all are meant to reach a specific audience, and together, they form an essential part of a company’s online marketing strategy.

Owned media describes a company’s communication channels, such as an Instagram account or website. The advantage of Owned Media is that it creates additional value to the consumer. Earned media on the other hand refers to the advertising that must be “earned” (in the most real sense of the word). Here, users willingly share information about a product, in the form of customer reviews or a non-affiliated mention in a blog post. Since the customer’s recommendation does not come from the company itself, the credibility of the products is higher than with Paid Media.

Paid Media = Paid Advertisement

Paid media is the term used to describe all chargeable marketing measures used by a company. For this reason, paid media is often referred to as the “classic advertising type.” Paid advertising includes display advertising as well as search engine advertising (SEA) and advertising on other classic communication channels such as print, radio or television

It is possible to pay for different communication channels, for example using Influencer Marketing. One should always evaluate which communication channel is the most effective to reach the desired target group in the best way and whether the content message fits the platform. Often, paid media is used to spread one’s content and make it quickly visible to generate Earned Media. However, paid to advertise may lose its authenticity and requires a considerable financial investment. Nevertheless, the use of paid media is nowadays almost a must, since it is more and more about the fast distribution of content, and the content often does not reach the desired target group without paid advertising. Besides, this type of paid advertising are easily scalable, quick to produce, and its results usually controllable.

Paid Media on Amazon

On Amazon, there are several possibilities to use Paid Media as an advertising strategy. For example, one can achieve a lot with Amazon Advertising. For instance, if one launches a new product, the use of Paid Media may be especially relevant during a product launch and remains relevant in the mid and long run. The purpose of this type of marketing on Amazon is to gain exposure, selling more products and consequently, positioning the product in a higher ranking. This “selling system” must take place with the support of many tools such as sponsored brands, product display ads, and the opportunity to buy reviews. For example, one can use the Amazon Vine program, where the retailer pays a certain amount to Amazon Vine and receives an independent review for it. This makes sense because several reports increase the credibility of the product and are rated favourably by Amazon.

Conclusion on Paid Media

In a nutshell, we can state, that the use of Paid Media is becoming more and more relevant today and should be used, especially in the field of online marketing together with Owned Media. Nevertheless, we recommend the combination of all three media types, the so-called Converged Media.

So, here is precisely where the Amazon SEO agency Intomarkets comes into play. As marketing experts, we prepare your products for Amazon in such an optimal way, that they offer added value to the user while being systematically optimized, therefore increasing the product sales exponentially.  You can find more information about Amazon Optimization here: https://www.intomarkets.com/amazon-optimization/