EMV and CPM — why are they important and what to do with them?
Notorious KPI’s of the digital world explained in a simple way.
In this article, we are going to specifically focus on influencer marketing KPI’s. To understand EMV, we need to know CPM, and for that, we need to start with impressions.
Definitions:
Impressions — a number of times a publication is displayed. They show you how many times Instagram users have non-uniquely viewed a post or a story.
CPM — cost per mille — is the price influencers could charge for every 1,000 impressions received by their content.
It is a monetary benchmark for brands who work with influencers to estimate the costs of producing sponsored content.
However, not all influencer activations are sponsored. There is a lot of organic content generated on different social media platforms.
Which is where EMV (earned media value) comes into play. It estimates a monetary value that is associated with the content produced by the influencer.
EMV indicates an approximation of how much your brand would pay for an equivalent paid media to receive the same number of impressions, as it did from activating a particular influencer.
You can also view EMV as an indicator of how much your brand has gained by rolling out its influencer marketing strategy.
If you are a brand that works with influencers, then EMV helps you to:
- Analyse your influencers’ performance and compare them with each other.
- Get a bigger picture of the evolution of your brand’s visibility.
- See how impactful your campaign was.
- Measure organic content.
How to calculate EMV:
Short answer: → Multiply impressions by CPM.
A slightly longer example: if an influencer produces a sponsored content that accumulates 10,000 impressions, and your CPM is $15, then your EMV would be:
Impressions * CPM = EMV ($) = cost of / value gained from a campaign
10,000 * 15/1000 = $150
10,000 * 0.015 = $150
Hence, with a CPM = $15, having generated 10,000 impressions on the content that represents your brand, you have gained 150$ in media value.
To summarise:
EMV measures the increase in your brand’s visibility, whereas CPM indicates the cost of that increase.
Ready to track your EMV? Lefty is here for you then.
Based on our research at Lefty, the average impressions to like ratio on an Instagram post is 10-to-1. Thus, we estimate the number of impressions by multiplying the number of likes by 10 — for posts, and by 5 — for stories.
Furthermore, the average of what brands pay for 1000 impressions on Instagram is $15. Therefore, our default CPM = $15. However, you can set your own CPM that you use within your marketing department.
At Lefty, you can benchmark your brand against your competitors, in terms of influencer squad activated and the sorts of publications they post. We also track how much of your brand’s EMV is coming from each activated influencer and from which particular social media platform.
Is it an Instagram post, or a story that engages your audience the most? A YouTube video, or a tweet that has brought the most media value to your brand? Lefty shows you the performance of your influencers on each of these platforms.
By the way, are you aware of the growing influence of TikTok nowadays? You can search for them on our platform too!
Final tip: You want influencers tagging your brand in their posts to have as many likes as possible. Why? Because likes represent the actual reach of those sponsored posts and EMV indicates how valuable that reach is.
Curious to learn more about influencer marketing and track the performance of your influencer campaigns? Join us at Lefty — the leading global influencer marketing platform and book a demo!
