Glossary → Share of voice
Your brand’s visibility in a market relative to competitors, across channels like search, social and advertising.
Share of voice (SOV) measures how visible your brand is in a market relative to your competitors. Originally an advertising metric, it now spans channels including search, social media, news coverage, paid advertising and online conversation. A higher share of voice means a larger slice of the attention in your category belongs to you.
Share of voice can be measured in several ways depending on the channel:
The metric is useful because attention often precedes market share. Brands that dominate the conversation in a category tend, over time, to win a disproportionate share of the customers, so a rising or falling SOV is an early indicator worth watching.
Because share of voice is relative, it only means something in comparison to competitors. RivalDesk helps by watching rivals' marketing activity, content and advertising over time, giving you a sense of when a competitor is ramping up its presence and starting to crowd you out of the conversation.
RivalDesk puts a team of AI analysts on your competitors so the concepts in this glossary become a weekly briefing, not a research project.