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Marketing

What is SOV (Share of Voice) and How to Calculate it

MM
Matt Montenegro Founder & CEO
18/11/2021 3 min
TL;DR

Share of Voice (SOV) is your brand's share of category media spend in a defined market, channel, and period. Nielsen and Wikipedia both frame the core ratio as spending share of total category media expenditure.

  • Why it matters: it shows whether your media weight can compete in that scoped contest.
  • How it works: divide your spend by total category spend and express it as a percentage.
  • By the numbers: scope must name category, market, channel, and time window.
  • Reality check: a spend-share SOV figure is not a campaign-impact score by itself.
  • The bottom line: use SOV to plan competitive weight, then measure outcomes separately.

Some brands don’t understand how important it is to take note of what their competitors are doing and how well their tactics are performing for them.

However, insights into your competitors can really help you get a leg up on them and create a digital marketing campaign that works effectively.

One way to measure how you are performing in comparison to your competition is by calculating Share of Voice, which covers all of your online visibility, including PPC performance, social media, and organic search.

Digging into Share of Voice isn’t just some marketing lingo you’re supposed to toss around. There’s something oddly satisfying about seeing how your brand stacks up in real numbers, even though, let’s be honest, sometimes those numbers can feel like a punch in the gut. Still, knowing that your competitor has owned, say, 35% of the conversation in your space (yep, that’s a made-up figure, just for effect) gives you a pretty clear idea of who’s winning and where you might want to double down.

If the idea of keeping track of all this starts to seem overwhelming, don’t sweat it too much. Plenty of tools out there—SEMrush, Ahrefs, even some pretty barebones spreadsheets if that’s your style—can help you piece together the picture. It’s not about obsessing over every single data point but noticing the trends: was there a spike when your competitor dropped that weird new ad, or did people actually care when you published your last case study?

If you’re like “huh?,” don’t fret! We will discuss what Share of Voice is, why it’s important, how you can measure it, and how to improve it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does SOV mean in advertising?

Nielsen defines a brand's Share of Voice as its media spending expressed as a percentage of all media expenditures in the category, market, channel, and time period. Wikipedia describes the same spend-share idea for a product or category. Always state the scope before comparing numbers. Otherwise two SOV figures are not about the same contest.

How do you calculate Share of Voice?

Take your media spend in the chosen scope and divide by total category media spend in that same scope, then express the result as a percentage. That matches the spend-based definitions from Nielsen and Wikipedia. Use comparable currencies and dates. If a competitor's spend is unknown, label the figure as an estimate and narrow the channel where data is stronger.

Is SOV the same as social share of conversation?

Not under the spend-based advertising definition. Nielsen and Wikipedia define SOV through media expenditures in a scoped category contest. Conversation or mention share can be useful elsewhere, but it answers a different question. Name which construct you mean in dashboards so teams compare like with like.

What should marketers use SOV for?

To judge competitive media weight inside a named category, market, channel, and period. The Nielsen and Wikipedia definitions give a spending percentage against total category media expenditure. That helps you see whether budget share matches the fight you intend. Pair the planning read with separate outcome KPIs for results.

MM Matt Montenegro

Matt Montenegro

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