share of voice
Share of voice is a brand's presence in the market relative to competitors — measured by mentions, search visibility, and conversation volume. It's a leading indicator of market share. Brands that are growing their share of voice tend to grow their share of customers next.
What is share of voice?
Share of voice (SOV) measures how much of the relevant conversation in a market your brand owns compared to competitors. If your category generates a total of 10,000 brand mentions in a given period and 2,000 of them are about you, your share of voice is 20%.That number matters for a specific reason. Research consistently shows that brands with a share of voice above their share of market tend to grow. The excess presence translates into awareness, consideration, and eventually purchase. Brands below that threshold tend to lose ground over time, slowly and then quickly. SOV isn't just a media metric. It's a growth predictor.The channels that feed into share of voice have expanded significantly. Paid and earned media remain relevant, but search visibility, social conversation volume, review presence, and branded content all contribute to a brand's overall competitive presence. A brand can have high share of voice in one channel and near-zero in another — which is why a complete picture requires looking across all of them.Share of voice is also one of the clearest ways to understand brand awareness in competitive context. Knowing that 40% of your target market recognises your brand tells you something. Knowing that your two main competitors are at 65% and 58% tells you considerably more. Relative standing is what drives the strategic decision about where and how much to invest.
How to measure share of voice
SOV is calculated by dividing a brand's metric — mentions, impressions, search clicks, ad spend — by the total for the category or competitive set, then expressing it as a percentage. The metric used depends on the channel being measured and the question being answered.For earned media and social, monitoring tools track brand mentions and competitor mentions across platforms over a defined period. For search, share of voice maps to share of clicks for relevant keyword sets — the proportion of available search traffic a brand captures versus its competitors. For paid media, it can be measured by share of impressions or share of spend within a given market.The most useful SOV analysis combines channels rather than measuring each in isolation. A brand with strong search share of voice but low social presence has a different challenge than one with the inverse. Understanding where competitive presence is strong and where it's weak is what makes the metric actionable rather than just descriptive.Tracked alongside brand awareness data and market share figures, share of voice becomes one of the most instructive inputs to brand strategy — revealing where investment in visibility is working and where it's being outpaced by competitors.
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If your competitors are louder in the market than you are, they're building awareness and consideration at your expense. Share of voice is one of the clearest measures of whether your brand is gaining or losing ground. We can help you understand where you stand and what it would take to shift it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Market share measures commercial performance — the percentage of sales or revenue a brand captures in its category. Share of voice measures presence — the percentage of relevant conversation or visibility a brand owns. The two are related: excess share of voice tends to drive future market share growth. SOV is the leading indicator. Market share is the lagging result.
They're closely connected. High share of voice drives brand awareness by increasing the frequency with which target customers encounter the brand. Brand awareness, in turn, feeds back into share of voice by generating more organic mentions, more branded search, and more earned coverage. The relationship is self-reinforcing when it's working — and self-eroding when it isn't.
Monthly tracking gives a useful operational view and surfaces shifts in competitive presence quickly enough to respond. Quarterly analysis provides the strategic context — longer-term trends, category growth or contraction, and changes in the competitive set. For brands running active campaigns, more frequent measurement during the campaign period helps assess whether spend is translating into visible presence.
Context-dependent. The useful benchmark isn't an absolute number — it's the relationship between your SOV and your market share. If your market share is 15% and your share of voice is 25%, you're in a strong position to grow. If the inverse is true, you're likely losing ground. The goal is to build and maintain excess share of voice relative to your current market position.
Yes, particularly in specific channels or segments. A smaller brand that dominates share of voice in a niche audience or a specific search category can build meaningful brand recognition and competitive presence without matching a larger competitor's total spend. Focus beats breadth when resources are limited — the mistake is spreading presence thinly across all channels rather than building a concentrated position in the ones that matter most.
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