Advertisers tend to break up audiences into groups of folks or markets, if you will. In a wonderful demonstration of our industry myopia, we call the particular market segment we re thinking about a universe . The share of voice represents the percentage of impressions your ads comprise within your competitive category s media spending against a particular audience universe. The share of market represents the percentage of use your client s product receives versus the competition within the audience universe. This is normally where an explanation of ratings, ratings points, GRPs, TRPs, and the like would come in.
Ratings are one of the measures used to determine SOV in broadcast media.
I m going to save that for a coming column, however, so we can spend the proper amount of time making fun of it. To tide you over, Tom Hespos intelligently approached the issue last week . But it doesn t always work that way, and you can usually bet your next expense check that the company that sees its share of market erode well past its share of voice will fire the agency in the next couple of quarters. I know a guy who actually trades the stocks of agencies specifically with this in mind. And he doesn t do too badly.