How many ads do people see every day? It’s a hard number to pinpoint, and even harder to figure how many they actually pay attention to, but one thing is for sure: brands that stand alone in the spotlight are easier to notice than those sharing the stage with dozens of their competitors.
La pubblicità è una competizione. I marchi vogliono raggiungere il proprio pubblico di riferimento, ovviamente, e farlo nel modo più economico possibile, ma devono anche distinguersi dagli altri per catturare l'attenzione, l'immaginazione e il portafoglio dei consumatori.
That’s where Share of Voice comes in. It’s a crucial metric used by brands around the world to size up their markets, competitors, and plot their next moves, yet it’s often mistrusted or outright misunderstood. Let’s clarify: what is share of voice, what isn’t it, and how can the right data make all the difference?
Lo share of voice non è davvero una questione di voce
A brand’s Share of Voice (SOV) refers to its media spending and is expressed as a percentage of all media expenditures in the category, in that market, on that channel and at that particular point in time.
So it’s not really about the brand’s voice, if we take voice to mean exposures, views, likes, product conversations or more upper-funnel constructs like brand familiarity, awareness or consideration. SOV doesn’t measure the impact of a campaign (there are other tools for that), but whether the campaign has the means to be competitive in the first place. In an ideal world, one would lead to the other (more media dollars, better outcomes) but a lot can go awry along the way: bad timing, poor creatives, poor channel choices, shifty targets, unexpected market changes, the list goes on. By taking any type of outcome out of the equation, SOV can tell marketers if their resources measure up before going into battle.
È anche importante notare che un marchio potrebbe scegliere di concentrarsi sul suo SOV su Instagram a febbraio, o sul suo SOV in TV a Phoenix nella settimana che precede il Memorial Day. I dati nazionali, su 12 mesi e su più canali, possono essere estremamente utili al momento del budget, come vedremo più avanti, ma anche le definizioni di SOV possono essere limitate. Ogni marchio, grande o piccolo, può scegliere il proprio campo di gioco e definire il SOV come meglio crede.
La quota di voce può aumentare la quota di mercato
You may have heard of the SOV rule: SOV and market share (SOM) are tightly connected, and a brand that sets its SOV above its SOM (that is, the brand has extra SOV [ESOV]) is likely to grow in the long term, while a brand that sets its SOV below its SOM is more likely to decline. Some researchers even ventured to quantify the correlation: Binet and Field, for instance, studied 171 campaigns across top categories between 1980 and 2010 and established that a brand’s SOM typically gained 0.5% for every 10% in ESOV.
Many practitioners have pointed to variations by channel and industry, differences between small, medium and large brands, long-term effects, cross-channel effects, or even the impact on a brand’s price elasticity. There are many nuances but the bottom line is this: SOV is and remains an invaluable resource for marketers planning their media budgets.
We’re big fans of SOV at Nielsen, and our Ad Intel clients have long had access to timely and comprehensive advertising intelligence to analyze spending trends and decode their competitors’ media strategies. To make these powerful insights available to a wider range of businesses, we just opened an online marketplace with à la carte trend reports and detailed SOV datasets covering millions of brands across all the top industries. Let’s examine a small slice of that data to illustrate the benefits.
SOV rivela le strategie mediatiche più efficaci tra i rivenditori di mobili
Oggi i retailer si affidano principalmente ai canali digitali per gestire le loro campagne di marketing, non solo quelli online, ma anche i negozi brick-and-mortar di tutti i giorni come Walmart, CVS o Gap. In media nel 2024 (dal novembre 2023 all'ottobre 2024), i retailer statunitensi hanno speso il 59% del loro budget pubblicitario sui canali digitali, il 29% in TV, il 7% in audio e il resto è stato suddiviso in modo relativamente equo tra stampa e outdoor.
Restringiamo il campo: Cosa possono dirci i dati Ad Intel di Nielsen sui rivenditori di mobili, nello specifico?
I rivenditori di mobili statunitensi hanno adottato un media mix molto più tradizionale, spendendo il 64% del loro budget pubblicitario in TV e il 25% in digitale. La Figura 1 mostra che l'allocazione del budget è quasi speculare a quella dell'intera categoria dei rivenditori.
Who were the dominant players? Figure 2 shows that four companies dominated the furniture category with more than half of all media spend in 2024: Wayfair, Sleep Number, Rooms to Go, e Ashley Furniture. They all had sensibly the same SOV, with IKEA e La-Z-Boy a distant fifth and sixth with SOVs of 7.8% and 4.5%, respectively.
Ma questo non significa che abbiano lo stesso media mix. Mentre gli stanziamenti di Wayfair erano in linea con la categoria nel 2024, la figura 3 mostra che Rooms to Go ha speso leggermente di più in TV e molto di più sulla stampa rispetto ai suoi colleghi, Ashley ha speso relativamente di più in digitale e Sleep Number in audio.
When we analyze channel-specific SOVs, we can see how much Sleep Number dominated the category in audio, and Rooms to Go in print. Meanwhile, Ashley Furniture led the way on digital channels to reach younger consumers and clearly outspent everyone else outdoors to capture impulse shoppers.
Ribaltate le carte in tavola rispetto ai vostri concorrenti
Are you ready to use SOV to assess your position in the market, optimize your media strategy, and outsmart your competitors? We’re here to help. The Mercato Nielsen has the trend reports and granular datasets you need to get started.
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