Share of Voice
A brand's proportion of visibility within its category.
Industry Term
Full explanation
Share of voice is the proportion of visibility, mentions, or citations a brand holds within its category, relative to its competitors, across a defined set of channels.
The measure predates AI search — share of ad spend and share of press coverage are older versions of the same idea. Adapted to AI search, the channel changes: instead of ad impressions or press clippings, the count is answers, citations, or mentions across AI systems for a defined topic and time window.
The number only means what it claims to mean if every competitor in the comparison is measured with the exact same questions, the same models, the same run count, and the same period. Change any one of those quietly and the number moves without anything in the market having actually shifted.
Why this matters
It is a familiar marketing measure that transfers reasonably well, as long as the channel set and time period are stated rather than implied.
Example
If four brands compete for visibility on a topic and, across one hundred AI answers, one brand is mentioned in forty, a second in twenty-five, a third in twenty, and a fourth in fifteen, each brand's share of voice is its count divided by the total mentions — so the leader's share of voice is 40%.
Where this sits
Share of Voice belongs to Measurement & AI Visibility, one of the seven layers of the Aingworth Glossary. How to know whether recognition is improving. Aingworth defines these plainly and does not adopt proprietary-sounding scoring language that belongs to other tools.
Continue with: AI Visibility Is a Range, Not a Number.
Related terms
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