IPA: Share of Search represents 83% of a brand’s Share of Market

Share of Search (SoS) can make up 83% of a brand’s Share of Market (SoM), according to IPA think-tank data released today.

Unveiled last year, the SoS metric is touted as a simple and free method of monitoring a brand’s performance by comparing a company’s branded search volume to that of its competitors.

As part of this week’s IPA EffWorks Conference, the SoS think-tank data released today demonstrated the idea that Share of Search is a strong indicator for the consumer-driven part of SoM.

However, the think tank found this to be a dynamic correlated relationship rather than a causal one.

Meanwhile, broadcast and mass reach media also appeared to have a greater impact on SoS than more targetted approaches.

These findings apply across categories, countries and languages as the IPA SoS think tank looked into 30 case studies across 12 categories and seven countries.

The Share of Search metric was first presented last year by Les Binet and James Hankins at IPA’s Effworks 2020.

Hankins defined Share of Search as the number of searches for a brand, divided by the searches for all competing brands.