Share of Voice in

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...

is a measurement model within advertising. Share of voice measures the percentage of media spending by a company compared to the total media expenditure for the product, service, or category in the market. For example, if an electronics brand were to invest $5,000,000 advertising their latest

e-reader An e-reader, also called an e reader or e device, is a Mobile computing, mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and Periodical literature, periodicals. Any device that can display text on ...

, but $100,000,000 worth of advertising was spent advertising e-readers across the entire market for this shared category, then the 5 million dollar investment would equal a 5% share of voice. Share of Voice can be calculated by taking your advertising spend and dividing it by the total of all market advertising spend for the same type of product or category. Share of Voice is used to "represent the relative portion of ad

inventory Inventory (British English) or stock (American English) is a quantity of the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation. Inventory management is a discipline primarily about specifying ...

available to a single advertiser within a defined market over a specified time period."

Theory

The goal of advertising is to make your

target audience The target audience is the intended audience or readership of a publication, advertisement, or other message catered specifically to the previously intended audience. In marketing and advertising, the target audience is a particular group of cons ...

aware of your brand, product, or service and influence them to act. Therefore, having a high share of voice can lead to increased awareness, and ultimately, increased sales and

market share Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a Market (economics), market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those ...

. From the perspective of publishers and those selling ad space, Share of Voice capitalizes on the concept of exclusivity. By limiting the number of ad space available on websites, email newsletters, and other media, ads are more likely to be seen by their target audiences. When you limit a website, for example, to 10 advertisers in each ad position with each paying equally, on average each advertiser will be seen at least once every 10 rotations. Share of Voice is designed to create a mutually beneficial relationship between the advertiser and the

web publisher Electronic publishing (also referred to as e-publishing, digital publishing, or online publishing) includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogues. It also includes the edit ...

. The advertiser is willing to pay a premium for exclusivity and less competition for their target audience's viewership. The publisher no longer has to rely on volume and can attract advertisers that want to specifically reach the publisher's audience. Because the Share of Voice method values quality of ads over quantity of ads, publishers are perceived to have higher levels of credibility and interaction. When high quality content is presented, high quality advertisers tend to follow.

Benefits versus pay-for-performance models

The share of voice advertising model is contrary to

pay per click Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked. This differs from more t ...

cost per impression Cost per impression (CPI) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) are terms used in traditional advertising media selection, as well as online advertising and marketing related to web traffic. They refer to the cost of traditional advertising o ...

and/or

pay to play Pay-to-play, sometimes pay-for-play or P2P, is a phrase used for a variety of situations in which money is exchanged for services or the privilege to engage in certain activities. The common denominator of all forms of pay-to-play is that one mu ...

(see

brokered programming Brokered programming (also known as time-buy and blocktime) is a form of broadcast content in which the show's producer pays a radio or television station for air time, rather than exchanging programming for pay or the opportunity to play spot com ...

), which are pay-for-performance models that generate

revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of product (business), goods and services related to the primary operations of a business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some compan ...

for the publisher (typically, the website owner) only if the

advertisement Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...

is clicked or viewed. The publisher is incentivized to seek out as many advertisers as possible, often on a bid-based system. Furthermore, Share of Voice bypasses the ethical dilemmas that come with PPC and CPI models, which are subject to abuse by

click fraud Click fraud is a type of ad fraud that occurs on the Internet in pay per click (PPC) online advertising. In this type of advertising, the owners of websites that post the ads are paid based on how many site visitors click on the ads. Fraud occurs ...

, or Pay to Play tactics (

advertorial An advertorial is an advertisement in the form of editorial content. The term "advertorial" is a blend word, blend (see portmanteau) of the words "advertisement" and "editorial". Merriam-Webster dates the origin of the word to 1946. In printed pub ...

product placement Product placement, also known as embedded marketing, is a marketing technique where references to specific brands or products are incorporated into another work, such as a film or television program, with specific promotional intent. Much of t ...

, news coverage in exchange for ad purchases, etc) that are not always transparently paid ads. When content is compromised for ad dollars, the level of reputation and respect for the publisher can dwindle as readers become disenfranchised and advertisers see less return on their initial investment.

Share of Voice models

Share of Voice models can be contract models where ad placement and content are pre-negotiated. This way, advertisers have the option to have longer

advertising campaign An advertising campaign or marketing campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication (IMC). An IMC is a platform in which a group of people can group their ide ...

s where content does not need to change based on the availability of advertising space. Additionally, the publisher's non-ad content, i.e. in the case of a news publisher, is independent of the advertiser's marketing campaign, regardless of other sponsors or advertisers that work with the web publisher. Share of Voice can also be employed to maximize a

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...

or group of brands' exposure via advertising weight expressed as a percentage of a defined total market or

market segment In marketing, market segmentation or customer segmentation is the process of dividing a consumer or business market into meaningful sub-groups of current or potential customers (or consumers) known as ''segments''. Its purpose is to identify pr ...

in a given time period. The weight is usually defined in terms of expenditure, ratings, pages, poster sites etc.

References

{{reflist Advertising Audience measurement