Trusted by 2,000+ brands and agencies across 25+ countries
This tool prices the reach a post delivered against a published advertising CPM with a stated sample. It will not hand you a per engagement earned media value, because no publisher states where its per engagement figures came from.
| Published CPM | Industry | CPM | Same reach costs |
|---|
The cost side of earned media value is the one part that a publisher reports with a sample and a period. The tool uses those figures and names them on screen.
Six published tables price a like between $0.10 at Brandwatch and $0.32 in the Ayzenberg index of October 2016, and a comment between $0.50 at Avalan and $3.82 in that same index. None of them says how those numbers were produced.
There is no good or bad earned media figure to measure against, so the tool does not invent a pass mark. It shows where your reach prices across the published industry range in the same report.
Earned media value puts a dollar figure on attention a brand did not buy. The usual method takes the reach a post delivered, divides it by 1,000 and multiplies by an advertising CPM, then often adds a dollar value for each like, comment and share. The output is presented as what the exposure would have cost to buy.
The body that sets the global standard for this kind of measurement has a published position on it. AMEC is the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication. Its Barcelona Principles are the reference most measurement teams work from, and version 4.0 was published in June 2025.
Principle 5, on page 19 of that document, reads: Invalid measures such as advertising value equivalents (AVEs) should not be used. Instead measure and evaluate the contribution of communication by its outcome and impact. The same page records that the 2010, 2015 and 2020 editions all said the same thing in slightly different words.
Page 21 goes further and lists the other names the same metric travels under. It names advertising cost equivalent, advertising space rate, equivalent advertising value, earned media value, editorial value rate, media advertising value and PR value, then says: These are all essentially variations of the same flawed metric and should be avoided.
That is the clearest published statement anyone has made about this metric, and it comes from the organisation whose job is to decide such things. It is worth reading before treating an EMV figure as a result.
AMEC does not pretend the figure will disappear. Page 21 sets two conditions for anyone who still needs to report the estimated cost of earned media. The first is to avoid the words value, impact or ROI when describing it. The second is to define the limitations of the metric and how it was calculated, and the document is explicit that this includes any multipliers used.
Almost no tool on the market meets either condition. The word value is in the metric's name. And the multiplier is the one thing none of them publishes.
Source: AMEC Barcelona Principles V4.0, published June 2025
Below is every per engagement figure this research could find published, with who published it and when. The right hand column is the one that matters. It asks whether the publisher says where the number came from.
The answer is no in every row. Not one of these publishers states a sample size, a period, a data set or a method that another person could repeat.
Two of them say so themselves. Brandwatch writes that There's no single industry-standard EMV formula. The values per engagement above are illustrative. Influencity's documentation introduces its own rate with the words Imagine that in California this is fixed as $0.01, which is a worked example rather than a published rate. Later publishes placeholder values and says the real ones it uses are different and change daily.
HypeAuditor, which runs the best known free EMV tool, attributes its estimate to a machine learning algorithm and publishes no coefficients at all. That is not a criticism of the model. It just means the figure cannot be checked, reproduced or compared with anything.
Reading the raw pages rather than their summaries turned up something worth recording. Nowadays.media publishes a per engagement table that prices a share at $1.00. Its first worked example uses $1.00 per share and reaches $620 for 620 shares. Its second worked example, on the same page and with the same 620 shares, uses $1.50 and reaches $930.
The page is titled as a set of 2026 benchmarks. It values the same engagement two ways in two places, and both figures are visible to any reader who scrolls.
Source: Ayzenberg Earned Media Value Index, published October 2016 · Brandwatch earned media value glossary, read 11 October 2026 · PostEverywhere EMV calculator, read 11 October 2026 · Clickstrike EMV calculator, read 11 October 2026 · Nowadays.media EMV guide, read 11 October 2026 · Avalan EMV calculator, read 11 October 2026 · HypeAuditor Instagram EMV tool, read 11 October 2026 · Influencity EMV documentation, read 11 October 2026
AMEC lists earned media value among the metrics it says should be avoided, by name, in the June 2025 edition of the Barcelona Principles.
Change the per comment figure from Avalan's $0.50 to the Ayzenberg index's $3.82 and the answer changes with it. The multiplier is not a detail of the calculation. It is the calculation.
The same post handed to six published tables comes back at $1,144.00 from Avalan and $4,018.80 from the Ayzenberg index of October 2016, both read 11 October 2026. Comparing an EMV figure from one tool against one from another compares the tables, not the posts.
Here is the test that settles the question. Take one post with 8,500 likes, 340 comments and 620 shares. Hand those identical counts to every published table in turn and read off what each one returns.
The spread runs from $1,144.00 at Avalan to $4,018.80 in the Ayzenberg index of October 2016, a factor of 3.51. Counting only likes and comments, which all six price, it runs from $1,020.00 at Nowadays.media and Avalan to $4,018.80 in that same index, or 3.94 times.
Nothing about the post changed between those rows. Only the table changed. An EMV figure therefore tells you which vendor produced it before it tells you anything about the content.
The same counts of 8,500 likes, 340 comments and 620 shares appear word for word on two unrelated publishers' pages. Brandwatch prices them with an $8.50 CPM and a $1.00 comment and reaches $3,820. Nowadays.media prices the same counts with a $7.50 CPM and a $0.50 comment and reaches $3,840.
One worked example has been copied and re-parameterised, and the two totals land close together by coincidence rather than by agreement. The inputs underneath them differ by a factor of two.
An independent comparison reaches the same conclusion from a different direction. viral.app, updated 2 October 2026, reports that 100,000 TikTok views come out at $408 to $3,065 of EMV, depending on the formula, and states plainly that Per-engagement prices are proprietary, so the same post gets different EMVs in Later, HypeAuditor or a spreadsheet. That page also says of itself that viral.app does not calculate EMV.
Source: Ayzenberg Earned Media Value Index, published October 2016 · PostEverywhere EMV calculator, read 11 October 2026 · Brandwatch earned media value glossary, read 11 October 2026 · Clickstrike EMV calculator, read 11 October 2026 · Nowadays.media EMV guide, read 11 October 2026 · Avalan EMV calculator, read 11 October 2026
Several vendors point at the same authority. Brandwatch describes the Ayzenberg Earned Media Value Index as widely recognised as a global benchmark. Kolsquare says it uses that index as its base. It is the closest thing the field has to a shared reference, so it is worth looking at directly.
The only retrievable edition is dated October 2016 and is hosted by a trade publication rather than by its author. Its platform list includes Vine and Tumblr. It has no TikTok at all, which is unsurprising for 2016 and awkward for anyone pricing a TikTok engagement from it in 2026.
Its Instagram table gives $0.32 per like, $3.82 per comment, $0.12 per view, $0.57 per follower and $250.00 per post. Cost per thousand impressions is listed as not available. So the commonest earned media formula, which multiplies impressions by a CPM, cannot be run on Instagram from this index either.
On its own method the report says: All data points were weighted and normalized based on Ayzenberg's proprietary methodology. There is no sample size anywhere across its 25 pages.
The most quotable line in the whole document is on page 4, and it is the authors writing about their own work: Clearly, there is no perfect formula for calculating these values and it would be impossible for the industry to agree upon one perception of what the various interactions and endorsements are worth.
The index also has no public home in 2026. The domain aemvi.com returns an empty page. The EMV subdomain on the author's own site returns a 403. The author's homepage does not mention earned media. The standard that vendors point to is a decade old and effectively out of print.
Source: Ayzenberg Earned Media Value Index, published October 2016
Save 50% on annual billing across paid plans.
None of this means every number here is unusable. The cost side of the calculation, the advertising CPM, is reported by publishers who state a sample and a period. That is the part this tool uses, and the only part.
Those figures carry what the EMV multipliers do not: a stated number of brands, a stated window and a named publisher with a revision date. The TikTok report also gives the prior year figure of $5.71, so the direction of travel is visible rather than implied.
Two cautions belong with them. The Meta figure counts Facebook and Instagram together, in the publisher's own words, so it is not an Instagram only number and should not be presented as one. And the TikTok report contains a small internal disagreement: its table states a year on year change of 24.48 per cent while the prose on the same page says 28.48 per cent. The move from $5.71 to $4.08 is a fall of 28.55 per cent, so the prose is the closer of the two. Both appear on the publisher's page.
There is also a provenance note worth making. The publisher's site refuses automated requests, so these figures were read through a text proxy of the publisher's own pages rather than retrieved directly. The wording is the publisher's. The retrieval was indirect.
Source: Triple Whale TikTok Ads Benchmarks, published 24 March 2026, updated 20 August 2026 · Triple Whale Facebook Ad Benchmarks, published 11 November 2024, updated 17 August 2026
If a client or a manager asks for this number, you can still give them something defensible. It just has to be narrower than what most tools hand over.
It is not revenue. It is not profit. It is not attribution. A post can produce a large earned media figure and no sales, and the figure will not move. The reason AMEC pushes teams toward outcomes is that the cost of equivalent advertising says nothing about whether anybody did anything.
Treat it as one line in a report that also carries tracked revenue, and the number does no harm. Treat it as the result and it will quietly replace the measurement you needed.
Source: AMEC Barcelona Principles V4.0, published June 2025
"We tested three platforms before landing on Flinque. The creator data is more reliable. The filters actually work. Our team spends half the time finding the right influencers now."
"Flinque replaced two tools we were paying for separately. Creator discovery and performance tracking in one place. And the data is actually accurate."
"Our campaign turnaround time dropped significantly after switching to Flinque. What used to take a full day of research now takes under an hour."
The calculator at the top of this page takes the impressions a post delivered and prices them against a published advertising CPM. It shows four rows: the lowest published industry median, the all industry median, the highest and the prior year figure from the same report. Each one names the publisher, the date and the sample.
The result is labelled as the estimated cost of buying the same reach. It is deliberately not labelled as a value, which follows the AMEC guidance on page 21 rather than the naming convention the rest of the market uses.
Enter likes, comments or shares and the tool does not price them. It shows what each of the six published tables would return, with the publisher and the date on every row, then states the spread as a multiple and stops.
That is the honest output. Picking one of those tables would mean choosing a number with no stated derivation and presenting it as a result. Averaging them would be worse, because the average of six unsourced figures is a seventh unsourced figure with the disagreement hidden inside it.
If you need a figure that can be defended line by line, use the reach side, name the CPM and leave the engagement side as a range.
Source: AMEC Barcelona Principles V4.0, published June 2025 · Triple Whale TikTok Ads Benchmarks, published 24 March 2026, updated 20 August 2026
Flinque shows audience quality, fake follower scoring and real engagement across more than 10 million creator profiles, so the reach you are pricing is reach that exists.
Earned media value puts a dollar figure on attention a brand did not pay for. The usual method divides the reach a post delivered by 1,000, multiplies by an advertising CPM, then often adds a dollar value for each like, comment and share. The result is presented as what that exposure would have cost to buy as advertising. It is an estimate of replacement cost rather than a measure of money received, and the figure depends almost entirely on which multiplier the tool applied.
No. Brandwatch states that there is no single industry standard EMV formula and labels its own per engagement values illustrative. The Ayzenberg Earned Media Value Index, which several vendors describe as the industry standard, says in its own October 2016 report that there is no perfect formula for calculating these values and that it would be impossible for the industry to agree upon one. Those are the two sources most often cited as the authority, and both of them say the authority does not exist.
Because the per engagement multiplier is the calculation, and every tool uses a different one. Across six published tables read on 11 October 2026 a single like is priced between $0.10 at Brandwatch and $0.32 in the Ayzenberg index of October 2016, and a single comment between $0.50 at Avalan and $3.82 in that same index. Hand all six the same post of 8,500 likes, 340 comments and 620 shares and they return $1,144.00 from Avalan at the low end and $4,018.80 from the Ayzenberg index at the high end. That is a spread of 3.51 times with no change to the post at all.
Yes, and it names the metric directly. Page 21 of the Barcelona Principles version 4.0, published in June 2025, lists earned media value alongside advertising value equivalent and five other names, then states that these are all essentially variations of the same flawed metric and should be avoided. Principle 5 of the same document says invalid measures such as advertising value equivalents should not be used, and that the contribution of communication should be measured by its outcome and impact instead.
Only published figures with a stated sample. For TikTok it uses Triple Whale's median CPM of $4.08 across over 5,900 brands, updated 20 August 2026, with the lowest and highest published industry medians of $3.46 and $4.61. For Meta it uses Triple Whale's median of $15.06 across over 40,000 brands, updated 17 August 2026, with industry medians from $14.01 to $21.80. Both cover 1 August 2025 to 31 July 2026. The Meta figure counts Facebook and Instagram together in the publisher's own wording, so it is not an Instagram only number.
Because no publisher found in this research states how its per engagement figures were derived. Not one gives a sample size, a period or a repeatable method. Choosing one of them would mean presenting an unsourced number as a result, and averaging them would hide a disagreement of more than three times inside a single figure. Entering engagement counts instead shows what each of the six published tables would return, each with its publisher and date, so you can see the range rather than a false answer.
Not meaningfully, unless you know both figures came from the same table. Brandwatch notes that differing methods make cross company benchmarking unreliable, and viral.app states that per engagement prices are proprietary, so the same post gets different EMVs in Later, HypeAuditor or a spreadsheet. Comparing two EMV numbers of unknown origin compares the vendors rather than the campaigns.
Report the observed reach with the date you collected it, then price it against one named CPM and print that publisher, date and sample beside the result. Show the same reach at the lowest and highest published industry CPM so the reader sees how wide the estimate is. Call it the estimated cost of equivalent paid reach rather than a value, which is what AMEC's own guidance asks for, and keep tracked revenue in the same report as a separate line.
10M+ verified creators across 4 platforms, 12 filters and a fake-follower score on every profile. No card.