Glossary

Share of voice (SOV)

A brand's advertising presence, such as spend or impressions, expressed as a percentage of the total for its category.

Also called: SOV

Share of voice measures how much of the advertising activity in a category or competitive set belongs to one brand, calculated as SOV = brand's advertising volume / total category advertising volume, where volume can be measured in spend, impressions, or gross rating points depending on the medium and data available.

Share of voice is an input metric about advertising presence, not an outcome metric: it does not by itself say whether that presence changed how people feel about the brand, which is what brand lift measures, or whether it moved actual market share. A related but distinct signal, share of search, measures a brand's share of category search interest rather than ad spend, and is sometimes used as an earlier, cheaper proxy for where market share is heading.

Marketers track share of voice because a long-observed relationship in advertising, sometimes summarized as the excess share of voice effect, holds that brands whose share of voice consistently exceeds their share of market tend to grow share over time, and vice versa. The relationship is a general pattern from category-level studies, not a guarantee for any individual brand or campaign, and share of voice figures depend heavily on which competitors and channels are included in the comparison set.

Last reviewed September 22, 2026

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Related terms

Brand lift The measurable increase in brand awareness, favorability, or purchase intent caused by an ad campaign. Share of search A brand's share of total category search volume, used as a fast-moving proxy for market share and brand awareness. Reach and frequency Reach is how many unique people saw an ad; frequency is how many times, on average, each of them saw it. Gross Rating Point (GRP) A measure of total advertising exposure, calculated as reach multiplied by frequency, expressed against a target population. Market share The percentage of total sales in a market or category captured by a specific company, product, or brand.

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