On this page9
- Definitions, with startup examples
- The PESO model, briefly
- How each type compounds over time
- Recommended splits by stage
- Worked example: a seed-stage AI startup
- How to flex the split around big moments
- Web3 and crypto: where the split looks different
- Signals that your split is wrong
- Where a PR operator fits in the mix
Earned, Paid and Owned Media: How Startups Should Split Budget
Earned media is coverage and mentions you don't pay for directly (press, podcasts, analyst notes, organic word of mouth). Paid media is anything you buy placement for (ads, sponsorships, paid influencer posts). Owned media is what you control (your site, blog, newsletter, docs, social accounts). For most pre-seed and seed startups, a sensible starting split is roughly 50 to 60% owned, 20 to 30% earned and 10 to 25% paid, shifting toward paid once you have a proven conversion path and toward earned around funding and launch moments.
Those numbers are a starting point, not a law. The right split depends on your stage, how you sell, and whether you've proven that paid traffic converts. What matters more is understanding how each type compounds, because that's what decides where the next dollar should go.
Definitions, with startup examples
| Type | What it is | Startup examples | Who controls the message |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earned | Attention you win, not buy | Tier-1 article, podcast interview, analyst mention, customer referral, organic social reshare | The journalist, host or customer |
| Paid | Attention you rent | Google and LinkedIn ads, sponsored newsletter slots, conference sponsorship, paid KOL or creator posts | You, within the platform's rules |
| Owned | Channels you own outright | Website, blog, docs, newsletter list, community server, founder's social accounts | You, fully |
| Shared (PESO) | Social distribution and engagement | Reposts, community discussion, user-generated content | Shared between you and the audience |
The PESO model, briefly
The PESO model (paid, earned, shared, owned) was popularized by PR strategist Gini Dietrich as a way to plan these channels together rather than in separate silos. The useful insight for a startup isn't the acronym. It's that the four types feed each other:
- Earned coverage gives your owned content credibility and backlinks.
- Owned content gives journalists and AI assistants something solid to cite.
- Paid media amplifies the best earned and owned pieces to precise audiences.
- Shared distribution spreads all three for free when the content is good.
In practice, the strongest startup programs I've seen treat one funding announcement as a single campaign across all four: an exclusive (earned), a founder essay on the blog (owned), paid promotion of that article to a target account list (paid), and a founder thread that gets reshared (shared).
How each type compounds over time
This is the part most budget conversations skip. The three types have very different decay curves.
Paid stops the day you stop paying. It's the fastest to start and the most predictable, but it doesn't build an asset. Its value is speed and testing.
Owned compounds slowly. A good comparison page or technical guide can drive search and AI-assistant traffic for years, and your newsletter list grows with every launch. The cost is time to build and patience.
Earned compounds through credibility and citations. A single strong article keeps getting found, linked and quoted by AI assistants long after publication, and it makes every sales conversation and investor meeting easier. It's the least controllable and the hardest to forecast.
| Type | Speed to results | Longevity | Predictability | Credibility signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid | Days | Ends when spend stops | High | Low |
| Owned | Months | Years | Medium | Medium |
| Earned | Weeks to months | Years | Low | High |
A healthy mix uses paid for speed, owned for compounding, and earned for credibility. Leaning entirely on one is how startups end up either invisible (all owned, no distribution) or dependent (all paid, nothing left when budget tightens).
Recommended splits by stage
This is how I'd think about the split at each stage, as a share of the non-headcount marketing budget. These are illustrative ranges based on common patterns, not a benchmark study.
| Stage | Owned | Earned | Paid | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-seed | 60 to 70% | 15 to 25% | 5 to 15% | Founder content and site first; earned via founder story; paid only for small tests |
| Seed | 45 to 55% | 25 to 35% | 15 to 25% | Funding news is your biggest earned moment; start finding one paid channel that converts |
| Series A | 30 to 40% | 20 to 30% | 30 to 45% | Paid scales once CAC is proven; earned shifts to category leadership and founder profile |
| Series B | 25 to 35% | 15 to 25% | 40 to 55% | Paid and events grow; earned focuses on analysts, tier-1 business press, executive visibility |
For a dollar view based on your own numbers, run them through the startup marketing budget calculator. It allocates across channels, people and tools and estimates CAC and payback. If you prefer a spreadsheet, the marketing budget template does the same in Excel.
Worked example: a seed-stage AI startup
Say you run a seed-stage AI tool for finance teams with $15K a month of non-headcount marketing budget and a sales-led motion. An illustrative split:
| Line item | Type | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Content production: two in-depth guides and a comparison page | Owned | $4,000 |
| Website and conversion improvements | Owned | $2,000 |
| Newsletter and email tooling | Owned | $500 |
| Founder content support (posts, essays) | Owned | $1,000 |
| PR support for announcements and founder commentary | Earned | $4,500 |
| LinkedIn ads to target account list | Paid | $2,000 |
| Sponsored slot in one niche finance newsletter | Paid | $1,000 |
That comes to $7,500 owned (50%), $4,500 earned (30%) and $3,000 paid (20%). The paid spend is deliberately small and focused on promoting earned and owned pieces to known accounts, not cold traffic. Once one paid channel shows a reliable cost per qualified meeting, that's when you'd move budget toward it.
One honest caveat: a senior fractional PR retainer can cost more than this example's whole earned line. Mine run $5K to $12K a month, which is why many seed teams use a launch sprint for the funding moment instead of an ongoing retainer.
How to flex the split around big moments
A fixed monthly split is fine for steady state, but startups don't live in steady state. Funding rounds, launches and market entries are when earned media is cheapest to win, because you finally have real news. Plan to flex the mix for the six weeks around each one.
| Window | Shift | What the money does |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks -4 to -1 | Owned up | Press kit, launch page, founder essay, comparison page ready before news breaks |
| Week 0 | Earned up | Exclusive or embargoed outreach, founder interviews, podcast bookings |
| Weeks +1 to +2 | Paid up | Promote the best coverage and the founder essay to target accounts and lookalikes |
| Weeks +3 to +6 | Back to baseline | Repurpose coverage into owned content, sales enablement and newsletter issues |
The logic is simple. Owned assets must exist before the news so coverage has somewhere to send people. Earned media peaks on the day. Paid then extends the life of the best earned pieces to exactly the audience you want, which is usually far cheaper per qualified view than cold ads.
If you're still deciding the total budget before the split, start with how much a startup should spend on marketing.
Web3 and crypto: where the split looks different
Crypto adds a fourth heavy line item: paid creator and KOL campaigns. Many Web3 teams overspend here because results look instant on X and Telegram. I walk through that trade-off in detail in KOL vs earned PR in crypto.
The short version: KOL spend is paid media, and it decays like paid media. It's useful for launch-day activation when it's sequenced properly and audited for fraud, but it doesn't replace the tier-1 coverage that exchanges, institutional investors and AI assistants reference later. Teams that put 70% or more of their comms budget into KOLs often discover after TGE that there's no credible coverage anyone can point to.
Signals that your split is wrong
- Traffic drops to near zero whenever ad spend pauses. You're over-reliant on paid.
- Your site and docs get traffic but nobody outside your bubble has heard of you. You need more earned.
- You get press but nobody converts. Owned is weak: landing pages, product pages or follow-up content are missing.
- AI assistants don't mention you for your own category queries. You need both earned coverage and better owned explainer content.
- Sales says prospects "haven't heard of us" in late-stage deals. Earned and founder visibility are underfunded.
- You've written 40 blog posts and none rank. Owned is being produced without distribution or links, which earned helps fix.
Where a PR operator fits in the mix
Earned media is the hardest of the three to do yourself well, because it depends on relationships, timing and story judgment rather than budget alone. You can learn it, and plenty of founders start with a DIY approach to their first announcement.
A senior operator earns their place when you have a big moment coming (a round, a launch, a market entry) or when you want consistent earned coverage that compounds into AI citations and category authority. That's the work I do on AI startup PR: picking the moments worth spending on, and making sure the earned coverage is built to feed your owned and paid channels rather than sitting in a press page nobody visits.
Paid buys you attention for a month. Owned keeps it for years. Earned decides whether anyone believes you.
Want a second opinion on how your budget is split? Book a 30-minute teardown.