Share of Voice & ESOV Calculator
This calculator computes your Share of Voice and Excess Share of Voice — the gap between your SOV and your current market share — using the framework from Binet and Field's research on how advertising investment drives market share growth. It is designed for brand planners and marketing strategists who want to set media budgets with a principled link to business outcomes rather than working backwards from last year's spend. The tool shows how your ESOV target translates into a recommended media investment range.
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How this is calculated
Enter your estimated market-level advertising spend, your own media investment, and your current market share, and the calculator produces your SOV, your ESOV, and an interpretation of what that ESOV implies for market share trajectory based on the Binet-Field relationship.
Every model runs locally in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
What is Excess Share of Voice and why does it matter?
Excess Share of Voice, or ESOV, is the difference between your share of advertising voice in a market and your current share of that market. Binet and Field's analysis of the IPA Databank found a consistent empirical relationship: brands with positive ESOV — spending a greater share of category advertising than their market share — tend to grow market share over time, while brands with negative ESOV tend to decline. ESOV provides a principled basis for setting media budgets in relation to growth ambitions.
How do I calculate share of voice?
Share of voice is your advertising spend in a category divided by the total advertising spend in that category, expressed as a percentage. If your brand spends $2 million on media in a category where all competing brands together spend $10 million, your share of voice is 20%. Calculating total category spend requires either a paid competitive intelligence tool or reasonable estimates from industry sources, which is one reason this metric is more commonly used by larger brands with access to spend data.
What ESOV do I need to grow market share?
The Binet and Field research suggests that each 10 percentage points of positive ESOV translates to roughly 0.5 percentage points of market share gain per year, though this relationship varies by category, brand size, and market dynamics. New brands and brands in growing categories tend to show stronger market share response to ESOV. Established brands in mature categories may need sustained positive ESOV over multiple years to see measurable share movement.