PESO Model
The PESO model is a framework for categorising marketing media into paid, earned, shared and owned channels, helping teams plan how content reaches audiences.
The PESO model is a marketing communications framework that organises media channels into four categories: Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned, providing a structure for planning how brands distribute content and reach audiences across different channel types.
What PESO Model Means in Marketing
Before the PESO model, marketing media was commonly categorised into three types: paid, earned and owned. The rise of social media created a fourth category that did not fit cleanly into the original three, leading to the addition of “shared” to reflect distribution through social platforms and community channels that are neither fully owned by the brand nor earned through editorial coverage.
The PESO model gives marketing teams a shared vocabulary for discussing channel mix and a framework for planning integrated campaigns. By mapping planned activity against all four categories, teams can identify where they are over-reliant on one channel type and where they have opportunities to diversify reach.
The four categories:
- Paid media: channels where reach is bought through advertising or sponsorship
- Earned media: coverage and sharing received from third parties without direct payment
- Shared media: distribution through social platforms and communities where the brand contributes but does not control the distribution algorithm
- Owned media: channels the brand controls directly, including website, email list and branded content properties
How PESO Model Works
The PESO model is applied as a planning lens during content strategy development and campaign planning. For any major piece of content or campaign, teams map their distribution plan against each category.
Paid: which channels will receive budget to amplify this? Search ads, social ads, sponsored newsletter placements, content promotion networks.
Earned: what efforts will generate coverage? PR outreach, journalist briefings, influencer seeding, research designed to attract media attention.
Shared: how will the brand use social and community channels? Social posts, community forum contributions, content designed to be shared by others.
Owned: where will the content live and how will the existing audience be activated? Blog publication, email send, podcast episode, direct notification to existing subscribers.
The model is descriptive (what channels exist) and prescriptive (what channels should be included in this plan). Teams use it to avoid defaulting to only one or two channel types and to plan the interactions between channels intentionally.
The integration of channels creates compounding effects: paid media can amplify earned coverage; owned content generates the assets that PR teams pitch for earned coverage; shared content builds the social presence that supports organic discovery; earned backlinks improve owned channel SEO performance.
PESO Model Example
A cybersecurity company releases a report on the state of business data security. Their PESO plan: the report is published on the owned website and announced to the email list (owned). The marketing team uses paid LinkedIn promotion to reach CISOs and security professionals in their target company size (paid). The PR team pitches the report to technology journalists and security publications, generating three editorial features with backlinks (earned). Employees share the report findings on their personal LinkedIn profiles and the company’s community forum (shared). The combination drives downloads and press coverage that the company tracks as part of its quarterly campaign measurement.
Why PESO Model Matters for Marketers
The PESO model matters because channel siloes are common in marketing organisations, where SEO teams, PR teams, social teams and paid media teams often work without coordinating their activities. The model provides a shared framework that makes integration the default expectation rather than the exception.
For content marketers specifically, thinking in PESO terms builds distribution planning into every piece of content from the start. A piece of content with a plan across all four categories reaches a much larger and more diverse audience than the same content distributed only through whichever channels the team defaults to.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does PESO stand for?
PESO stands for Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned. Paid covers channels where the brand pays for placement (advertising, sponsored content, paid social). Earned covers coverage received from third parties without direct payment (press mentions, reviews, organic backlinks). Shared covers distribution through social platforms and communities where the brand shares content but does not fully control the channel's reach mechanics (social media posts, community content). Owned covers channels the brand controls entirely (website, email list, podcast). The model was developed as an evolution of the traditional paid-earned-owned framework by adding shared as a distinct category to reflect the rise of social media.
How do the PESO channels work together?
The channels are most effective when used in combination rather than in isolation. A content marketing programme might publish a research report on the owned website (owned), send it to the email list (owned), share it on social channels (shared), use paid promotion to amplify it to a new audience (paid), and earn press coverage and backlinks from its findings (earned). Each channel reinforces the others: paid can accelerate the distribution of owned content; earned coverage drives traffic to owned properties; social sharing extends the reach of earned coverage. Integrated planning across all four categories produces more compounding results than optimising each in isolation.
Is the PESO model still relevant given changes in media and platforms?
The PESO model remains a useful planning framework because the fundamental distinctions between buying reach, earning it, sharing on third-party platforms and owning the channel directly are still meaningful strategic questions. The specific channels within each category have evolved: programmatic and connected TV have expanded paid; social media has fragmented shared; newsletters have risen in importance within owned. The model is a categorisation lens rather than a tactical prescription, which is why it retains value even as the media environment shifts.
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