Table of Contents
- How the Calculator Scores Your Coverage
- Why Authority Beats Advertising Value Equivalency
- What Counts as Media Coverage Value
- See It in Action: Recent Fractl Campaigns
- Turn Coverage Into Authority That Compounds
- Media Coverage Value Questions
Key Takeaways
- Media coverage value is an authority score, not a dollar figure. The best way to value earned press is by the strength of the outlets that covered you, measured in Domain Authority, rather than a made-up monetary value.
- Advertising value equivalency (AVE) inflates the number. Pricing a placement as if you had bought the same space as an ad has been formally rejected by the communications industry, and it ignores what earned coverage actually does for your brand.
- Links at Domain Authority 70 or higher count double. Our calculator weights those placements at twice the value of everything else.
- Our benchmark comes from 2,002 scored placements. The tiers and weights are recomputed from eight client campaigns, so a publication you type resolves to a tier we have actually earned.
- The tool scores one outlet or a whole campaign. Enter a single publication for its tier, or paste a full list of placements for a campaign-level authority score.
Media coverage value is the worth of the press your brand earns without paying for the placement, and the best way to measure it is by the authority of the outlets that covered you. To calculate it:
- List every earned placement from a public relations campaign.
- Look up each outlet’s Domain Authority (Moz’s 0-to-100 measure of a site’s ranking strength) and sort each one into a tier.
- Count placements at Domain Authority 70 or higher as double value, because a link from a high-authority site does far more for your rankings and your credibility than a mention on a low-authority page.
- Multiply each outlet’s Domain Authority by its weight to get its authority points, then add them up for a campaign score.
That approach reflects what earned coverage delivers, which is:
 Durable domain authority |  Referral traffic |  Visibility in search engines and AI answers |
It also sidesteps advertising value equivalency, the discredited practice of pricing coverage as though you had bought an equivalent ad.
Our calculator below runs this method for you against our benchmark of scored placements. Type a publication to see the tier and authority weight we assign it, or paste a full list of placements to score an entire campaign.
How the Calculator Scores Your Coverage
We built this tool the way we score links for our own clients. Every earned placement is sorted into one of five tiers by Domain Authority, and each tier carries a weight. Links at Domain Authority 70 or higher count as double value, a rule our clients agree to in their scope of work because those placements drive the bulk of the ranking and brand exposure benefit. A publication’s authority points are simply its Domain Authority multiplied by that weight.
We computed the benchmark from 2,002 scored placements across nine client campaigns, spanning household-name outlets down to niche trade sites.
Here’s how earned links distribute across the tiers and the weight each one carries:
| Domain Authority tier | Median DA | Share of our earned links | Typical dofollow rate | Authority weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elite (DA 90 to 100) | 92 | 10.5% | 20% | 2x |
| Premium (DA 70 to 89) | 78 | 13.4% | 78% | 2x |
| Strong (DA 50 to 69) | 56 | 23.4% | 82% | 1x |
| Mid-tier (DA 30 to 49) | 42 | 28.0% | 83% | 1x |
About a quarter of the links we earn land at Domain Authority 70 or higher, and those are the placements that carry the double weight. Tracked this way, media coverage value becomes a key performance indicator (KPI) you can compare across campaigns, hold up against your other media relations goals, and tie back to the key messages you set out to place.
Why Authority Beats Advertising Value Equivalency
AVE puts a dollar sign on coverage; scoring on Domain Authority measures what that coverage actually does.
| AVE measures the wrong thing It prices a placement as if you had bought the same ad space or airtime, which is why the global standards body for communications measurement has launched a campaign to eradicate AVE. | A press mention isn’t a paid ad When a third party chooses to cover you, that earned coverage carries credibility no ad buy can replicate, often with a durable link that keeps sending referral traffic. |
| EMV and impact scores are dollar guesses in disguise Earned media value (EMV) stacks impressions and cost per mille (CPM) into a dollar estimate, and black-box scores from media monitoring tools ask you to trust numbers you can’t audit. | Domain Authority is transparent It is a third-party signal that tracks a site’s ranking strength, so anyone can verify the score behind your media coverage value. |
| Authority ties to outcomes you want Weighting by Domain Authority points a modern media strategy at stronger organic search performance and broader brand exposure, not a fictional dollar figure. | The payoff shows over time Return on investment (ROI) from earned press appears in rankings, qualified traffic, and conversions, not in a monetary value invented the week the coverage runs. |
What Counts as Media Coverage Value
Media coverage is any third-party mention of your brand that you didn’t pay to place. It belongs to the earned category alongside paid media (advertising you buy) and owned media (your own blog, newsletter, and social channels). When we score media coverage value, we count the earned placements that carry a measurable authority signal:
 News coverage and press coverage Articles, features, and quotes in online news outlets and trade publications, which are the placements a Domain Authority tier applies to most cleanly. |  Syndicated pickups A single story that runs across a network of regional sites, each of which carries its own Domain Authority and its own link. |
 Podcast and video mentions A podcast appearance or a video feature that includes a link back to your site earns authority the same way a written article does. |  Social shares and social media mentions These build brand awareness and share of voice, but because they rarely pass a durable link, we track them as reach rather than scoring them for domain authority. |
Not every output of a public relations program belongs in a value score. Press releases you distribute yourself, and the impressions attached to them, are activity rather than earned authority, so they inform your reporting without inflating the score. Media coverage value reflects what other people chose to publish about you, weighted by how much authority those outlets carry.
See It in Action: Recent Fractl Campaigns
To show what the scores look like at campaign scale, here are eight of our own campaigns and the authority each one earned.
| Campaign | Links earned | Links at DA 70+ | Authority points | Placements |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Would You Let ChatGPT Choose Your Career? (about AI and career choices for an online education brand) | 247 | 162 | 32,428 | Yahoo (DA 95), MSN (DA 94), Economic Times (DA 94), AOL (DA 93) |
| Airbnb Confessions and Best Practices (about short-term rentals for a home services brand) | 142 | 29 | 7,758 | Yahoo (DA 95) and its international editions (DA 94) |
| Porch Pirates in the Height of Home Deliveries (about package theft for a home security brand) | 76 | 22 | 5,641 | Yahoo (DA 95), MSN (DA 95), News.Yahoo (DA 94) |
| The Life of a Female Truck Driver (about trucking careers for an insurance and bonds company) | 129 | 19 | 5,532 | Business Insider (DA 94), CNBC (DA 93), Yahoo Finance (DA 93) |
| Perceptions of Med-PaLM 2 and GPT-4 (about AI in medicine for a healthcare software company) | 81 | 22 | 5,197 | Mashable (DA 93), Inc. (DA 92), Fortune (DA 92) |
| Electric Trucks (about electric pickups for an automotive brand) | 75 | 13 | 3,738 | MSN (DA 95), Investing.com (DA 91), Benzinga (DA 87) |
| Distracted Driving: iPhone vs. Android Drivers (about phone use behind the wheel for an automotive brand) | 68 | 13 | 3,581 | PhoneArena (DA 90), Android Headlines (DA 85), TechTimes (DA 84) |
| Which Cars Get Pooped On the Most? (about bird droppings and cars for an auto care brand) | 35 | 15 | 3,400 | New York Post (DA 93), SFGate (DA 93), Gizmodo (DA 93) |
A handful of Elite and Premium placements drive most of the authority points, which is exactly why a value model built on Domain Authority beats one built on volume or a flat advertising rate.
Turn Coverage Into Authority That Compounds
A dollar figure fades the week it’s calculated. Authority compounds because every high Domain Authority placement keeps strengthening your rankings and your standing in AI-generated answers long after the news cycle moves on. That’s the outcome we build campaigns around, earning the kind of coverage that raises your domain authority instead of padding a slide with an invented number.
Ready to earn coverage that builds lasting authority for your brand? Partner with Fractl to earn coverage that keeps working.
Media Coverage Value Questions
How do you calculate media coverage value?
List every earned placement, look up each outlet’s Domain Authority, and multiply that score by 2 for placements at Domain Authority 70 or higher and by 1 for everything below. Add the results for a campaign-level authority score. The calculator on this page runs those steps against our benchmark automatically.
What is a good EMV?
There’s no universal earned media value benchmark, because most EMV figures rest on advertising value equivalency, which the industry has rejected. A more useful quality bar is the share of your coverage that clears Domain Authority 70. In our data, about a quarter of earned links reach that level, so a campaign beating that share is performing well.
What is considered media coverage?
Media coverage is any earned third-party mention of your brand you didn’t pay to place, including news coverage, trade features, quotes, syndicated pickups, and podcast or video mentions. It is distinct from paid media you buy and owned media you publish yourself. Social shares build brand awareness but rarely pass a durable link, so we track them separately.
What’s the difference between EMV and MIV?
Earned media value (EMV) usually converts coverage into a dollar estimate using impressions and an advertising rate. A media impact value is a proprietary score sold by some media monitoring platforms that blends reach, sentiment, and placement quality into a single number you can’t fully audit. Both try to compress coverage into one figure; our approach keeps the signal transparent by scoring on Domain Authority you can verify yourself.
Is advertising value equivalency still used?
Some teams still report advertising value equivalency out of habit, but the global standards body for communications measurement has formally advised against it, and it overstates the worth of earned coverage by pricing it like a paid ad. We recommend an authority-based score instead.
