Share of Voice in

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

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-book reader or e-book device, is a mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and periodicals. Any device that can display text on a screen may act as an e-read ...

, 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 (American English) or stock (British English) refers to 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 the shap ...

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 A target audience is the intended audience or readership of a publication, advertisement, or other message catered specifically to said intended audience. In marketing and advertising, it is a particular group of consumer within the predetermined ...

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 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 units would have a ...

. 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 publishing, digital publishing, or online publishing) includes the digital publication of e-books, Online magazine, digital magazines, and the development of digital library, digital libraries and catalo ...

. 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. Pay-per-click is usually ...

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 or ...

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 mus ...

(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 comm ...

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

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

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

advertisement Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

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, Klick and Klik may refer to: Airlines * Click Airways, a UAE airline * Clickair, a Spanish airline * MexicanaClick, a Mexican airline Art, entertainment, and media Fictional characters * Klick (fictional species), an alien race in the g ...

, or Pay to Play tactics (

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

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 th ...

, 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 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 ideas, beliefs, and conc ...

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 good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...

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

market segment In marketing, market segmentation is the process of dividing a broad consumer or business market, normally consisting of existing and potential customers, into sub-groups of consumers (known as ''segments'') based on some type of shared charact ...

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

poster site A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both typography, textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or w ...

s etc.

References

{{reflist Advertising Audience measurement