How to Measure Brand & Advertising With Share of Search

By Digital Marketing 28/11/2022 Articles, brand-equity, Digital Advertising, digital-marketing, google-search, measuring-brand-health 0 Comments

I have been thinking about how to accurately measure brand and advertising. After attempts at overly complicated frameworks, I stumbled on a video by Les Binet (which can be found at the bottom of the post) and think it’s a simple and effective framework to go about it. I’m going to break it down for readers here: You can estimate your market share based on your current share of searches (share of organic Google search queries).

Share of searches = “searches for brand X” divided by “searches for all brands in category”. Because the share of search is a leading indicator, you can predict market share fairly reliably. But there’s more.

Also, he illustrates the link between advertising and Google’s share of searches very well. You may not be familiar with Share of Voice (SOV): It is a measure of how much market share your brand owns compared to your competitors. It will immediately affect your share of search — and as explained, it will likely increase your market share overall.

You usually see the short-term effect in about one month if you invest in a 10% SOV ad burst. However, there is a measurable long-term effect that lasts way beyond one month. Furthermore, he finds that 40% of organic searches result from short-term effects compared to 60% in the case of sustained advertising on 10% of SOV.