Share of model vs share of voice
Share of voice counts how much of a category's media mentions you. Share of model counts how often AI engines name you. How the two differ and which one to track.
By Max Gillespie, founder of Oetzi
Share of model vs share of voice is the comparison between two visibility metrics: share of voice measures your portion of a category's advertising and media mentions, while share of model measures your portion of AI engine answers to that category's buying questions. Both express the same idea, how much of the conversation is about you, but they read different rooms. Share of voice reads publications and ad markets. Share of model reads what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, and Google AI say when someone asks what to use.
What share of voice measures
Share of voice began as an advertising ratio. Your ad spend divided by total category ad spend gave your share, and the classic finding was that brands whose share of voice exceeds their market share tend to grow. Social listening tools later extended it to earned mentions across news, blogs, and social platforms, counting posts that name you against posts that name any competitor. Its strength is that it is old, understood, and easy to explain to a board. Its weakness is that it measures noise as well as signal, and it never sees the buyer who asked a machine instead of reading a publication.
What share of model measures
Share of model counts the answers, not the mentions. You write a fixed set of buying questions, ask each engine on a schedule, and record the fraction of answers that name you. Tom Roach argued in Marketing Week that this is the metric of the AI era because models are becoming the first stop for recommendations. Its strength is that it measures the shortlist buyers actually receive. Its weakness is that it is young, engine answers vary between runs, and nobody fully knows the weighting behind them.
Which one should a founder track?
If you buy media, keep share of voice. If you are a founder with a product and no ad budget, share of model is the one that changes what you do tomorrow. The inputs to share of model are threads and pages you can show up in this week, and the share of model feature lists exactly which threads the engines cited. The inputs to share of voice are mostly budget. Many teams will end up tracking both, with share of voice describing awareness and share of model describing recommendation.
Questions
Does a high share of voice give you a high share of model?
Not automatically. Engines discount vendor self description and advertising, and they weight community threads, comparisons, and documentation. A brand can dominate the trade press and still be absent from model answers if nobody discusses it in the places engines retrieve from. The reverse also happens with small products that are loved in one subreddit.
Which tools measure share of voice?
Traditional social listening suites such as Brandwatch, Brand24, and Sprout Social report share of voice across social and news mentions. They count who is being talked about. They do not ask AI engines buying questions, so they report nothing about share of model. Newer AI visibility tools and Oetzi cover that second metric.
Is share of model replacing share of voice?
It is adding a layer rather than replacing one. Awareness still forms through media and word of mouth, and share of voice describes that. The recommendation step, where a buyer asks what to use, is moving into AI engines, and share of model describes that. A founder who ignores either sees only half the funnel.
Oetzi is an AI marketer for founders who need users. It finds the threads where people ask for a product like yours on seven platforms, checks whether the AI engines recommend you, and drafts replies, posts, and short video in your voice. You approve everything. 100 credits included, 10 free to try with no card, 50 bonus credits with the first payment.
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