The PESO channel audit: paid, earned, shared and owned on one grid

The PESO channel audit is a grid with four rows (paid, earned, shared and owned media) and five columns: the channels used, the job each does in the plan, its budget or effort, its owner and its KPI. Filled in honestly, it shows in one look where the plan is thin, where two teams do the same job, and where everything depends on one kind of media. The model is in the glossary.

The PESO model was created by Gini Dietrich, founder and chief executive of the agency Spin Sucks, and launched officially in 2014 with her book Spin Sucks¹. It sorts media into four types (paid, earned, shared and owned) and asks how they work together². The audit adds the columns an integrated plan needs: the role of each channel, the money or effort behind it, who owns it and how it is judged. The IPA's best-practice guide to communication strategy covers how those roles are chosen³.

The KPI column follows the measurement bodies. AMEC launched its Integrated Evaluation Framework in 2016 as a free tool to put the Barcelona Principles into practice⁴, and the principles state that advertising value equivalents (AVEs) are not the value of communication⁵; the Chartered Institute of Public Relations pledged to ban AVEs⁶. Earned media is judged by who saw it, what came through and what changed, not by what the space would have cost.

1. List every channel in use, including the ones nobody thinks of as media: packaging, the invoice, the customer-service inbox, the founder's own social account.
2. Put each in one row. A creator post you paid for is paid; one they made unprompted is earned; a reshare of your own post is shared.
3. Write its job in a verb phrase (build memory, earn trust, start conversations, convert, keep).
4. Add the budget or effort, the owner and the KPI.
5. Read across and down: gaps, duplicated jobs, over-reliance, missing owners.

Illustrative: the fictional Ourika Roasters before its subscription launch.

• Paid boosted social posts; job, none written down; owner, the founder; KPI, likes. Finding: give paid a job (reach café regulars' neighbourhoods) and a reach KPI.
• Earned a food blogger's review last year; job, credibility; owner, nobody. Finding: assign PR, plan a launch story.
• Shared an Instagram account; job, show the roasting; owner, café manager; KPI, comments and saves.
• Owned cafés, packaging, a basic website; no email list. Finding: the subscription needs an owned retention channel, so build email from the first order.

• Auditing only what has a budget Owned and earned touchpoints are often unbudgeted and unowned.
• Arguing over the row The boundaries blur; the job and the KPI matter more than the label².
• Channel-habit KPIs Likes for everything, whatever the job.
• AVEs for earned media The measurement industry rejects them^5, 6.

• Spin Sucks on the PESO model¹ and a publisher's summary of the four types².
• The IPA's communication strategy guide³; AMEC's framework⁴ and the Barcelona Principles⁵; the CIPR on AVEs⁶.
• On IMC Report: the IMC models and which mix for which objective.