Many brands are struggling to measure the ROI of influencer marketing campaigns.
EMV can help. It reframes likes, shares, and mentions as a monetary value for comparison with other marketing efforts.
But with newer metrics emerging, is EMV still relevant?
In this article, we'll define why EMV is worth tracking, how to measure it, and how to use it to start getting a better picture of your campaigns.
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In the early days of social media, EMV was the go-to KPI for measuring the success of influencer campaigns. But as social media and influencer marketing mature, new, more concrete metrics emerge that measure campaign impact.
E-commerce and social commerce directly link influencers and conversions through promo codes and tracking links. More than two-thirds (70%) of brands running influencer campaigns track sales, according to the Kolsquare State of Influencer Marketing Report.
Plus, marketers now have access to a range of engagement metrics, such as shares, saves, plays, and views, that measure impact. Social listening tools can even evaluate share of voice and the sentiment behind social media conversations to chart the feelings campaigns inspire.
But as influencer fees rise and marketing budgets stretch, the pressure to pinpoint a tangible ROI is more intense than ever.
Earned media value estimates the value of the visibility and exposure that a brand gains from an influencer campaign and translates into how much it would have cost to generate through traditional digital marketing channels.
Earned media value is a term that was traditionally used by PR teams to value unpaid communications. It tracks organic mentions by people outside of the brand, including word-of-mouth recommendations, customer reviews, social media posts, media coverage or blog mentions.
Earned media value aims to assign a monetary value to the reach and engagement generated by sponsoring influencers to create social media posts. It estimates the equivalent amount of money that would need to be spent on traditional media to achieve the same impact.
For example, an Instagram post with 5k likes, 400 comments and 20k views may have cost £1k to generate on traditional digital channels.
For example, on the Kolsquare platform, we provide detailed EMV data for individual influencer posts and combine it to estimate the total EMV for a campaign. This helps brands quantify the value of their influencer marketing efforts.
EMV was popular during the early days of social media and influencer marketing when the primary objective was building brand awareness. But is EMV still a relevant indicator for calculating the ROI of influencer marketing campaigns?
Earned media value allows businesses to compare earned media and paid media activities. It assesses the worth of the reach and engagement an influencer provides. This comprehensive approach offers a more detailed understanding of the influencer's impact, enabling businesses to better gauge ROI, compare campaign results, and benchmark against competitors.
Earned media value is often compared to cost per mille (CPM) because they both help you to compare campaigns. However, they have different functions in marketing campaigns.
CPM tells you how much it costs to reach 1k people. It’s the average amount you spend to get seen, typically used in paid campaigns to compare cost-efficiency across platforms.
EMV, on the other hand, tells you how much the noise generated from a campaign would have cost through traditional marketing channels. It takes into account both engagements and reach.
For example, let's say that a brand sponsors a beauty influencer to create a video that receives 500K impressions and 30K likes, generating £50K in EMV. That means the brand would’ve had to spend £50K on traditional advertising for a similar impact. If that same post cost £1K to sponsor, the CPM would be £2.
To calculate EMV, you need to assign monetary values to indicators that most influencer marketers already track, such as likes, comments, shares, and impressions. But how much is each interaction really worth?
The truth is that brands and influencer marketing bodies debate how to calculate EMV formulas and what they reveal about campaign impact. In addition, social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube do not set or validate values for engagement metrics.
There is some confusion about how to estimate EMV. Yet, the best way is to follow a predefined framework. The US marketing firm Ayzenberg Group’s Earned Media Value Index is recognised as the first of its kind and widely accepted as a global industry standard.
Kolsquare uses the Ayzenberg Index algorithm to define EMV formulas. The algorithm incorporates media-buying data, Fortune 500 company reporting analytics, and third-party research to derive values for individual metrics, which are regularly updated to reflect market fluctuations.
Taking these complications into account, we have defined our own technique at Kolsquare. We calculate EMV for influencers and campaigns using the Ayzenberg Index as the base value.
EMV = The number of likes × the value of a like + the number of comments × the value of a comment + the estimated impressions of a post / 1,000 × value of 1,000 impressions
Let's walk through an example EMV formula and calculation.
As an example, we'll use the following values:
Now, let's plug these values into the formula:
The final part of the earned media value formula is totalling each element. As a result, in this example, the EMV would be £2,000.
This value indicates that this piece of content is likely to attract around £2,000 worth of attention and interest. This is not the exact ROI of the campaign; this value is simply a guide to the benefits from the increased viewership and share of voice from the marketing strategy.
Determining an average earned media value is inherently challenging due to significant variability across industries, individual campaigns, and calculation methods. There isn't a standardised average because each campaign's impact and engagement metrics differ widely.
Determining a good EMV is challenging, especially with little access to an average. It's highly dependent on the context of your campaign and the expected return on investment. However, there are some guidelines.
Like on any other digital channel, the EMV of your marketing strategy should exceed the cost of your campaign. For example, if you invest £10,000 and achieve an EMV of £50,000, your marketing efforts were worthwhile.
You should also ensure that your current campaigns have higher EMV than past campaigns, as this can also provide a benchmark for success. It's also important to consider that you will have other gains from your campaign, such as increased sales or sentiment analysis.
EMV assigns an aggregate value to the KPIs you’re already tracking—likes, comments, shares, etc. In doing so, it attempts to measure the nebulous concept of ‘brand awareness’ generated by an influencer's social media posts or influencer marketing campaigns.
Being able to assign a monetary result to brand awareness generated by a social media campaign enables marketers to justify investments and activities. For C-level managers who are less likely to be involved in the day-to-day operations of an influencer marketing campaign, an analysis of EMV across campaigns helps inform decision-making.
“Often people who’ve worked in American companies love this KPI because it speaks the same language as advertising; you’ve got €50,000 – €100,000 a year for influencer marketing, and EMV is great because opposite that, it shows you’ve earned X-amount with your campaign. Where it is useful is not to use it as a one-shot metric but to compare how well different campaigns have worked,” Omnicom PR Group Head of Digital and Influence Anne-Laure Barieraud told influencer marketing professionals at the Influencer Marketing Klub in Paris.
“[But] in the last 10 years, we’ve done a better job at proving that influencer marketing works. More qualitative KPIs can tell us if we’ve had an impact on purchasing behaviour, on the audience and perception of the product. It goes further than EMV.”
Those who dispute the value of EMV as an indicator argue it is popular because it provides a simple answer to a complex question, allowing marketers to draw concrete conclusions when there may not actually be any.
Detractors also argue that EMV does not measure the variety and tonality of interactions and whether they are bringing meaningful connections or consider the difference between a spontaneous message and an advertisement.
“Moreover,” warns the French Union of Public Relations Specialists, “this method consists of artificially attributing a market value to the spontaneous reactions of an audience. It’s the digital equivalent of the Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE), which tries to assign a market value to an item by comparing it to the value of advertising space.”
However, EMV is just one indicator among many that can be used to draw conclusions about the performance of an influencer or an influencer marketing campaign. Its value as an indicator resides in how it is applied to the reporting and analysis process.
As with any influencer marketing campaign, the first and most crucial step is to establish your specific goals; if sales or conversions are the goal, EMV may not be the most important indicator of performance.
But if the goal is generating awareness and reach or competitor benchmarking and analysis, EMV can be a useful aggregator and one of the better ways to judge whether you've impacted your target audience. You can also use an adjustment factor to ensure it fits your goals.
Secondly, and equally importantly, transparency around the baseline calculation of EMV is paramount. So is ensuring all team members—internal and external—are working off the same baseline values and calculations. Anything less will render comparable analyses unreliable.
There are plenty of agencies that can help you measure EMV, including:
Agencies handling EMV in NYC:
Agencies handling EMV in London:
Agencies handling EMV in London:
While agencies are helpful for gauging EMV, they're costly. Consider an influencer marketing platform like Kolsquare. You can automatically track the EMV of individual influencers, posts, and your overall campaign.
So, to EMV or not to EMV? That is the question. While this metric isn't ultra-reliable, it's a useful benchmark. And while new ways to measure ROI emerge, there's still value in analysing the connections and awareness generated by your influencer marketing strategy.
Let’s give the last word from Kolsquare Founder and CEO Quentin Bordage.
“In an ideal world, one day the industry will have a standardized method for calculating EMV that is validated by the platforms,” he says. “EMV is not perfect, but it’s the only relevant aggregated indicator. Valuation of engagement can be challenged and personalized, and calculation should be more transparent in the market to allow comparison."
There's no single industry standard formula, but the most widely accepted approach uses the Ayzenberg Group's Earned Media Value Index as its base. Kolsquare applies this by calculating EMV as: (number of likes × value of a like) + (number of comments × value of a comment) + (impressions ÷ 1,000 × value per 1,000 impressions). These per-metric values are drawn from media-buying data and updated regularly to reflect market fluctuations, rather than fixed at a flat rate.
The following top influencer marketing platforms all calculate EMV:
Here are four popular influencer marketing platforms, plus their features:
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, offering a data-driven solution that empowers brands to scale their KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing strategies through authentic partnerships with top creators.
Kolsquare’s advanced technology helps marketing professionals seamlessly identify the best content creators by filtering their content and audience, while also enabling them to build, manage, and optimize campaigns from start to finish. This includes measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors.
With a thriving global community of influencer marketing experts, Kolsquare serves hundreds of customers—including Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, Lush, and Hermès—by leveraging the latest Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning technologies. Our platform taps into an extensive network of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers across 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat.
As a Certified B Corporation, Kolsquare leads the way in promoting Responsible Influence, championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations that inspire positive change.
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