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Evidence · Advertising

Share of voice and media planning: reach, frequency and budgets

Brands whose share of voice exceeds their market share tend to be the growing ones, and small brands usually spend above their share while large brands spend below it; but exact budgeting ratios come mainly from award case databases and one research group, and a reinvestigation questions their usefulness. Firmer findings are that advertising effects carry over for months rather than years, that brands which stop advertising lose share steadily, and that keeping advertising up in recessions pays off.

Definition

Share of voice is a brand's share of all advertising spend or weight in its category. Excess share of voice is share of voice minus share of market; a positive gap is often read as a signal of future growth. Media planning decides how that weight is spread: how many people are reached, how often each is reached (frequency), and whether spend runs continuously or in bursts.

What the research finds

Share of voice and share of market move together

Single-source data across many packaged-goods categories confirm that smaller brands tend to have a share of voice above their market share and larger brands one below it, with the pattern shifting by how heavily the category advertises and how competitive it is. In 880 IPA award cases, a high share of voice relative to market share was among the features of the most effective campaigns; an IPA industry book builds its budget guidance on the same databank.[1][2][3]

Budget rules of thumb deserve scepticism

A reinvestigation across 11 countries, two categories and several media re-examined the link between brand size and ad spend, and tracked market share for five years after brands deviated from equilibrium share of voice. It questions how useful the share-of-voice-equals-share-of-market rule and the related advertising intensiveness curve are for actually setting budgets.[4]

Reach has to extend far beyond regular buyers

For 55 leading advertised brands in 12 packaged-goods categories, a brand's buyer base roughly doubles when the window moves from a quarter to a year and roughly doubles again over several years. Just to hold market share, advertising must therefore reach a much larger and shifting pool of light and occasional buyers than the brand's current regulars.[5]

Repetition keeps paying for longer than minimalists assume, in the lab

A meta-analysis of experimental studies finds that attitudes peak at about ten exposures, while recall keeps rising up to at least the eighth exposure. Low involvement and spaced exposures strengthen repetition effects on brand attitude, and all repetition effects fade over time.[6]

Media channels compete for audiences the way brands compete for buyers

Duplication and double-jeopardy patterns known from brand buying hold across TV, radio, outdoor and social media, both between media types and between platforms within one medium, with a few named exceptions and a check sample from Finland. In single-source data, adding online advertising to a TV campaign mostly reached people TV had already reached, and no sales synergy beyond the separate effects was found.[7][8]

Effects carry over for months, and going dark costs share

A meta-analysis of more than 900 carryover estimates finds that the long-term share of the total effect is about .52 for mass media advertising, .65 for targeted advertising and .69 for personal selling, with median 90% duration of 3.4, 2 and 12.6 months. Some advertising can shift a sales trend permanently, which short-term models miss. Among 365 US brands that stopped advertising for at least a year, market share fell at a steady rate, more so for small brands and brands already losing share.[9][10][11]

Holding advertising in recessions pays

Across 37 countries, advertising spend swings with the business cycle far more than the economy does, and countries where it swings most show slower ad-industry growth and faster private-label growth. Among 1,175 US firms over three decades, raising advertising share during contractions did more for profit and market share than doing so in expansions. In UK data for 150 brands, long-term advertising elasticities rose during expansions.[12][13][14]

How strong is the evidence?

Carryover and repetition findings rest on meta-analyses of many brands and studies, though the repetition results come from lab experiments rather than markets. Share-of-voice rules and the split between brand building and activation rest on IPA case databases and on one research cluster (IPA and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute): the direction is well supported, exact ratios are not. The going-dark, reach and media-competition studies also come mainly from that group, the last in a smaller journal. The size of advertising elasticities, which determines what any budget can buy, is covered under how advertising works, and attention-adjusted reach is argued in books rather than tested.

Claims tested against the evidence

References

  1. Flemming Hansen, Lars Bech Christensen (2005). Share of voice/share of market and long-term advertising effects. International Journal of Advertising.
  2. Les Binet, Peter Field (2009). Empirical Generalizations about Advertising Campaign Success. Journal of Advertising Research.
  3. Les Binet, Peter Field (2013). The Long and the.
  4. Nick Danenberg, Rachel Kennedy, Virginia Beal, Byron Sharp (2016). Advertising Budgeting: A Reinvestigation of the Evidence on Brand Size and Spend. Journal of Advertising.
  5. Charles Graham, Rachel Kennedy (2021). Quantifying the Target Market for Advertisers. Journal of Consumer Behaviour.
  6. Susanne Schmidt, Martin Eisend (2015). Advertising Repetition: A Meta-Analysis on Effective Frequency in Advertising. Journal of Advertising.
  7. Rachel Kennedy, Erica Riebe, Paul Ward (2026). How Channels Compete in the Modern Media Environment. Revista de Comunicación.
  8. Jennifer Taylor, Rachel Kennedy, Colin McDonald, Laurent Larguinat, Yassine El Ouarzazi, Nassim Haddad (2013). Is the Multi-Platform Whole More Powerful Than Its Separate Parts?. Journal of Advertising Research.
  9. Christine Köhler, Murali K. Mantrala, Sönke Albers, Vamsi K. Kanuri (2017). A Meta-Analysis of Marketing Communication Carryover Effects. Journal of Marketing Research.
  10. Marnik G. Dekimpe, Dominique M. Hanssens (1995). The Persistence of Marketing Effects on Sales. Marketing Science.
  11. Peilin Phua, Nicole Hartnett, Virginia Beal, Giang Trinh, Rachel Kennedy (2023). When Brands Go Dark: A Replication and Extension. Journal of Advertising Research.
  12. Barbara Deleersnyder, Marnik G. Dekimpe, Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp, Peter S.H. Leeflang (2009). The Role of National Culture in Advertising's Sensitivity to Business Cycles: An Investigation across Continents. Journal of Marketing Research.
  13. Jan‐Benedict E.M. Steenkamp, Eric Fang (2011). The Impact of Economic Contractions on the Effectiveness of R&D and Advertising: Evidence from U.S. Companies Spanning Three Decades. Marketing Science.
  14. Harald J. van Heerde, Maarten J. Gijsenberg, Marnik G. Dekimpe, Jan-Benedict E. M. Steenkamp (2013). Price and Advertising Effectiveness over the Business Cycle. Journal of Marketing Research.

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Related topics

A synthesis of 14 studies, written by ScholarSignal. Last reviewed 2026-09-26.

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