Total views or impressions on the post / mention.
Default CPM: $9 (Avg sponsored CPM).
Default multiplier: 3.5x (Authentic creator, smaller reach, higher trust).
Earned Media Value (EMV) translates organic mentions — a creator posting about your product, a journalist writing you up, a customer sharing a screenshot — into the equivalent paid spend it would have taken to buy that same reach. It's a budget conversation tool, not a pure measure of business impact.
EMV = (impressions / 1000) × CPM × multiplier
The CPM is what you would pay per thousand impressions to advertise on the same platform. The multiplier captures the “trust premium” — research consistently shows organic and creator content converts 3-6× better than paid for the same audience, so a dollar of earned media is worth more than a dollar of ad spend.
| UGC creator post | 3.5× | Authentic creator, smaller reach, higher trust |
| Press / news mention | 6× | Earned editorial coverage carries the most trust |
| Influencer macro | 4.5× | Mid to large creator paid placement |
| Owned social post | 1.5× | Your own brand account; modest earned premium |
| Paid ad equivalent | 1× | Same as a CPM buy — no earned premium |
| $9 | Avg sponsored CPM | |
| TikTok | $7 | Avg in-feed CPM |
| YouTube | $11 | Avg pre-roll CPM |
| X / Twitter | $6.5 | Avg promoted CPM |
| $5 | Avg promoted CPM | |
| $33 | Avg B2B CPM |
EMV is the right number for: justifying a UGC program to finance, in a deck for an investor or board, or quantifying ROI on a creator-marketing budget against a paid-media baseline. It is not a substitute for measured conversion, revenue, or LTV. Use it alongside, not instead of.
EMV is the dollar value of organic attention — how much you would have spent on ads to get the same reach. It's calculated by multiplying impressions, CPM, and a 'trust premium' multiplier that accounts for organic content converting better than paid.
Industry averages from creator marketing research over the past five years. UGC creators tend to convert 3-4× better than paid; press mentions 5-7× better because of the editorial trust premium. They're starting points; override if you have better data.
Ad-auction prices vary widely. LinkedIn CPMs are 3-4× Instagram's because of B2B targeting. TikTok and Reddit are cheaper. The defaults are 2025 industry averages from PlaceIt, Hootsuite, and LinkedIn benchmarks.
Yes, with a footnote noting the methodology and multiplier. EMV is widely accepted as a budget-equivalency measure in marketing reporting. Pair it with measured conversion data; never present it as a stand-alone revenue number.
Yes, but it varies by audience and category. Nielsen, Stackla, and Edelman Trust Barometer all show authentic content from creators or peers outperforms branded ads on both intent and conversion, typically by 2-6×. Use the conservative end of the range for skeptical audiences.
The number you just calculated is what happens once. UGC at scale turns that into a monthly compounding line item. Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, and press, run as one motion.