Earned Media Value (EMV) is an estimated price you would pay for all your unpaid mentions by others (e.g., influencers, news sites, etc.) across social media and the internet.
It’s a great help in estimating the value of earned media to justify the return on investment (ROI) of your PR efforts and prove the quality of your work.
💡Good to Know: EMV is an estimate, not a real monetary figure. It helps compare performance over time, across platforms, and against competitors, but does not replace revenue or ad spend data.
How Does Mentionlytics Calculate EMV?
We took a scientific approach, conducted research, and built a calculator based on a mix of volume and quality metrics. Our calculation system is not a black box, and we’re about to publish a scientific paper about it, so you’ll be able check exactly how we’re doing it.
In short, we take into consideration different criteria, such as:
Impressions (visibility of the content in which you are mentioned)
Engagement (likes, comments, shares)
Website traffic (the traffic of the website your mention appears on)
Sentiment (positive, neutral, negative)
Reach (how many people the mention reached)
Platform type (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, or others)
Source credibility and trustworthiness ("Is the source considered credible?", "Is its Domain Authority (DA) high or low?", "Does the influencer have 1000+ followers or lower?", etc.)
Backlinks (whether the mention has a link that helps people take action or not)
Each mention is evaluated individually, combining visibility and quality to produce a realistic EMV estimate.
For calculations, we use the Mention Quality Index (MQI), which provides a measure of the quality of your mentions. You can add it to your StatBoxes along with EMV if you’re an Advanced or higher-tier plan user.
The MQI score ranges from 1 (the lowest quality) to 10 (the highest, and most impactful mentions).
What's the Correlation Between MQI and EMV?
MQI is our way of measuring how impactful a single brand mention really is, not just how many people might have seen it.
Instead of treating all mentions as equal, we score each one on a 1–10 scale based on a few clear factors:
How people engaged with it (likes, comments, shares, or website traffic)
Whether the mention is positive or negative
How credible the source is (e.g., a trusted publisher or a well-established influencer)
How visible the mention is (including whether it appears in prominent positions in Google search or environments that LLMs use to get data)
Whether it creates a clear path for action, such as a link
Each factor is measured separately and transparently, then combined into a final MQI score. This means a highly positive mention from a credible source can score much higher than a low-quality or negative mention, even if both reach a similar audience.
EMV turns that quality score into a monetary value that is easy to understand and compare.
We start with reach, just like traditional media metrics, and then apply a standard advertising benchmark called CPM, which stands for cost per thousand impressions.
Note: CPM is a widely used industry measure that represents how much a brand would typically pay to show an ad to 1,000 people on a given platform. For example, if the CPM is $10, it means it would cost $10 to reach 1,000 people through paid advertising.
In the EMV model, we calculate what it would have cost to reach the same audience through paid media using CPM, and then adjust that value using the MQI score.
In simple terms, reach tells us how big the audience is, CPM tells us what that audience would cost in advertising, and MQI tells us how good the mention actually is.
A low-quality mention with a large reach may produce only a modest value, while a highly positive, credible, and visible mention can be worth significantly more.
What Can You See Within The Earned Media Value (EMV) Metric?
Since Mentionlytics’ EMV has an extended function, you can see:
EMV for each platform, once you hover over it, such as Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Web, and Other Platforms
💡Tip: To see the EMV for a specific other channel, you may adjust your filters and check the sum metric. For example, if you want to see EMV for TikTok, check only TikTok in the channel filters and have a look at the EMV sum.
Total EMV with owned media included in the calculation.
Total EMV without owned media included in the calculation.
Competitors’ EMV based on publicly available mentions.
To get competitors’ EMV, you have to tick out the Brand Monitoring box (to leave out your mentions) and tick the Competitors’ box only. If you want to find EMV for a specific competitor, just filter for that competitor in Mention Trackers.
Also, you can switch currency from USD ($) to Euro (€) and vice versa in Settings → Account Configuration, by toggling between the currencies.
Where Can I Find EMV in Mentionlytics?
To view your Earned Media Value in Mentionlytics:
Log in to your account.
Go to the Performance Dashboard from the left-side menu.
Find EMV in the top-right section, alongside:
Total Mentions
Social Engagement
Social Reach
EMV is automatically updated as new mentions are collected and can be analyzed at channel levels.
How Can I Create a Custom EMV Dashboard?
If you are a Pro or higher-tier plan user, you can create a custom dashboard only for EMV or add EMV to your custom dashboard:
Click on the three dots at the top left corner (beside the date range).
A drop-down menu will open.
Click “Create new” on the “Custom” section.
Click the + (plus) sign within Section 1, and a pop-up will open.
Choose to add a "Stat box".
On the left side of the pop-up, you’ll see the setup.
Click on “Mentions” in the “Box Metric”, and choose "EMV" from the drop-down menu. You may also add the MQI metric if you want.
Click "Add Component" or "Add Component and Close", depending on whether you’re continuing to add sections or you've finished.
Who is EMV Most Valuable For?
EMV is especially useful for:
PR teams: to demonstrate the value of earned media
Marketing teams: to evaluate brand visibility across channels
Agencies reporting to clients: to translate awareness into a familiar, monetary metric that senior executives can understand
EMV shows both the overall value and the value per channel (such as Instagram, Facebook, X, and web sources including blogs, media outlets, and forums).
Thanks to its advanced functionality, you can also compare the value generated by owned media (your own channels) with that of earned media (mentions from others), making client reporting clearer and more persuasive.
All you have to do is tick off owned media from your Brand Monitoring Trackers to see only mentions that are generated by other accounts.
How to Use EMV Effectively
For best results:
Track EMV trends over time to measure campaign impact.
Compare platforms’ EMV to identify high-performing channels.
Benchmark your brand against competitors.
Combine EMV with sentiment and reach for better context.
🤓 EMV works best as a comparative and directional metric, not a standalone KPI.
Understand the Limitations of EMV
While Earned Media Value is a useful benchmark, it’s important to understand what it measures and what it does not:
EMV is an estimate, not actual revenue or advertising spend.
It reflects visibility and impact, not conversions or sales.
Sentiment is factored into the EMV calculation, meaning positive, neutral, and negative mentions do not contribute equally.
Niche audiences and smaller communities may generate lower EMV despite being highly relevant.
For best results, EMV should be used as a directional metric, combined with sentiment analysis, reach, engagement, and qualitative insights from mentions themselves.