From Share of Voice to Share of Trust: Rethinking Measurement in Modern Marketing

Although a brand can be seen, mentioned, searched etc., it does not establish any significant value to the organisation’s bottom line or perform any business impact. The conversation around marketing measurement and communications is also evolving from ‘how many people saw us?’ To a more relevant question of ‘did we create influence/trust/business value?’ through our presence?

This change was evident at IMAGEXX Summit & Awards 2026 by Adgully held on 3rd June at the Sheraton Hotel, New Delhi, with a theme of ‘Beyond Vanity’ — ‘Trust’, ‘Growth’, and ‘Speed’. The purpose of the summit was to bring together corporate leaders in the areas of communication, branding, and marketing, to define what 21st-century PR and marketing should now do. The summit featured a discussion led by Deepti Sethi, CEO PRCAI, with Mridula Bhatt representing Apptrove (as the CM) as part of the panel for the topic of Measurement 2.0: Share of voice → share of influence → share of trust (what boards want).

The topic of measurement is essential for today’s marketers. As budgets are scrutinised more closely, and as management boards demand accountability on measurement, marketers must move on from using only vanity metrics as a measurement value. Boards no longer just want the answer ‘was the brand visible?’; rather they want to know if the visibility developed credibility, customer confidence, and growth.

Share of Voice has no longer been the complete picture.

For many years, Share of Voice has been an important metric for PR and marketing measurement, allowing brands to gauge the extent of their visibility compared to other brands, including mentions in traditional media, social media conversations, industry publications, and digital formats.

But visibility isn’t enough.

A brand can have a high Share of Voice simply due to a lot of promotional activity, announcements, or a large budget for their campaign, and that doesn’t mean they’re a trusted brand. It doesn’t tell us that consumers are more aware of its brand than it was before. It won’t show us how that communications have impacted buying behaviour, retention of their customers, or supported revenue generation.

This is where traditional measurement becomes limited.

Modern day businesses need to gain a better perspective on the quality of their communications (not just the volume), and whether they are delivering to the correct audience, or creating the desired perception, and contributing to their desired business outcomes.

Just because something was mentioned, doesn’t mean there was an influence. Just because someone clicked doesn’t mean there was an intent. Just because you had reach doesn’t mean you had trust.

This is why Measurement 2.0 is important.

From Share of Voice to Share of Influence

Share of influence reaches much farther than just having visibility. It is about determining if the brand is creating a meaningful impact on the conversation.

To illustrate, if a fast-growing company is competing against other suppliers in a technology category, just having that company’s name mentioned would not be adequate. The company should also be playing a role in defining that category, identifying challenges for their customers, and providing insights or best practices for their customers to use as they consider what products to purchase. Influence will develop when audiences associate that company with being an expert, providing insight and relevance to their situation.

When it comes to B2B marketing, evidence of influence will appear in many different forms. For example, when prospective customers start using the company’s words and terms in sales conversations; when journalists request the company’s perspective on industry trends; when customers are using the company’s educational content when deciding which product(s) to buy; and when partners view the company as a trusted resource within that category.

Though it is more difficult to quantify the impact of influence versus impressions, influence certainly has a much greater value than impressions.

For marketers and communicators, the objective is to connect the dots between what the company does to promote itself through its various communication channels and how this affects a company’s perception, level of engagement and overall decision-making. To do this effectively requires better coordination and relationships between the organization’s PR, Content, Performance Marketing, Product Marketing, Sales and Analytics teams.

The Shift to Trust as an Important Factor for Business Performance

In today’s competitive environment, businesses that have established brand loyalty through trust will have an advantage over their competition. 

Increasingly, consumers have more choices, more accessible information about those choices, and more reasons to doubt marketing claims (particularly in the technology space). Consequently, making a purchasing decision can often involve long-term implications regarding data, growth, reporting, budgets and customer relationships.

Brands that are visible but lack consumer trust often struggle to convert attention into actual purchases. Conversely, brands that have established trust will have greater opportunities to form long-term relationships with their customer base, increase the rate of adoption and promote greater levels of customer confidence. 

Thus, measuring “share of trust” in relation to measurement of brand awareness and purchase intent is becoming increasingly relevant. In other words, the following questions will help gauge how much consumers trust a brand vis-a-vis their purchasing decision: 

Do consumers believe in the brand?

Can potential customers view the brand as credible?

Is the brand associated with some level of expertise by the market?

Do users have confidence in any given product and/or the associated data being presented?

Is communication creating more ambiguity than providing clarity?

These types of questions have a direct correlation to what app marketers need in the mobile marketing ecosystem to allow for the use of data to guide their growth strategy. App marketers are reliant upon their ability to accurately measure which marketing campaigns are running successfully, which types of users are generating value for them, which marketing channels are generating quality leads and which types of actions should be scaled. 

Without brand trust in measurement, app marketers are executing on growth based upon “educated guesses”.

What Do Leadership Boards Want from Marketing Metrics? 

It is not enough for a Board or leadership team to receive lengthy reports containing a plethora of numbers that appear unrelated. They want to understand their overall view of marketing as a function of the business. 

They want to understand how marketing initiatives can deliver on business success through the following functions:

– Creating Demand

– Establishing Brand Credibility

– Reducing Customer Confusion

– Creating Pipeline Support

– Establishing Long-Term Growth

Although not every type of business activity must result in immediate revenue, building brand equity and reputation through trust with your customers is key; however, the ability for leadership to demonstrate an understanding of the role of each of these functions against business value is essential.

Examples of good Board level metrics for marketing include:

– Is the brand becoming more trustworthy in the correct market?

– Am I communicating with the correct audience versus just a larger audience?

– Are my campaigns bringing in quality users versus just many?

– Are we improving our customers’ loyalty, engagement or conversion quality?

– Am I establishing credibility in the areas where I want to build for future growth? 

Mobile marketing is a perfect example where larger metrics actually hide poor marketing performance. Having a large number of installs and a high level of reach can appear impressive, but if the customer is the wrong audience, the end business outcome will not be what was expected.

What Do Leadership Teams Seek in Terms of Marketing Metrics? 

A Board or Leadership Team Is Looking for More Than Just Long Reports Filled With Numbers That Don’t Seem To Relate To Each Other. They Are Looking For An Overall View Of Marketing As A Business Function To See How/What Marketing Initiatives Will Bring Success To The Business.

In Relation To Business Success, Leadership Teams Are Looking To Understand How Marketing Initiatives Create Demand, Establish Brand Credibility, Reduce Customer Confusion, Create Pipeline Support, And Provide Long-term Growth.

While Not Every Type Of Business Activity Needs To Create Immediate Revenue, Creating Trust With Customers To Build Brand Equity And Reputation Is Extremely Important For Leadership; However, It Is Key That Leadership Demonstrates Understanding Of How Each Function Relates To Value Of The Business.

Examples Of Good Metrics At The Board Level For Marketing Include: 

Is Our Brand Trusted In The Correct Market? 

Are We Communicating To The Right Audience, Not Just A Bigger One? 

Are Our Campaigns Generating Quality Users, Not Just Quantity? 

Are We Improving Customer Loyalty, Engagement And/Or Conversion Quality? 

Are We Building Credibility In Areas We Want To Develop For Long-term Growth?

Apptrove’s Importance in the Measurement 2.0 Discussion

Apptrove is part of an industry where measurement transparency is foundational to business success, and it enables app marketers to measure campaign effectiveness through user journey analysis, campaign attribution, and business results.

This clearly aligns with the overarching theme of this panel. If boards of directors demand more than only transparency from their marketing departments, marketing departments require measurement tools or platforms that demonstrate to boards of directors beyond merely reach. They must also demonstrate which campaigns generated valuable users, which sources drove quality, and which expansion efforts produced business results.

In mobile marketing, the distinction between quantity and quality of app installs is very important. A campaign might generate installs, but not every installed app has the same benefit to your business. Some users will uninstall quickly. Some users may never perform a significant user action after download. Some of your installs will be from non-quality sources. Other installs will eventually give you loyal, high-quality customers.

All of these distinctions are lost when you don’t have the ability to analyze your apps and attribute them appropriately.

Apptrove fills this gap by bringing together these signals to provide app marketers with the right information to make better decisions. The focus is not only on measuring activity, but also on measuring effect.

The Role of Apptrove in the 2nd Measurement Discussion

Measurement transparency is a requirement in industries with successful business practices; Apptrove is part of this measurement industry. It allows marketers to determine the effectiveness of their ad campaigns and how users interact with them, as well as their overall results.

This perfectly matches up with the overall theme of this panel. Marketing departments need tools or platforms for measuring ad campaigns, so that they may present to the board of directors beyond just reach; marketing departments must also provide the board of directors with evidence of which ad campaigns produced valuable users, which sources of users purchased high-quality products and which changes or expansion activities had financial success.

In mobile marketing, the distinction between quality and quantity of app installations is a crucial part of measuring ad campaign success. A specific ad campaign may yield a number of app installations, but not all combinations of app installations and users will have the same value to a company’s bottom line. For example, some users may uninstall after just a few days; others may download the app but not take any kind of meaningful action after downloading; and, finally, some installations may come from an unqualified source. Still others could be high-quality, action-oriented users and ultimately become loyal to a company’s products.

Apptrove provides app marketers with the necessary information to make more effective decision, as it consolidates these metrics (or signals) to ensure app advertisers have all the information necessary to make the most effective marketing decisions. Therefore, it focuses not only on measuring how many things happened, but also on measuring how those things affected the respective businesses.

The IMAGEXX Summit & Awards of 2026 highlighted a significant change in how marketing and communication teams will communicate and hold each other accountable. Reporting on visibility alone will no longer suffice; share of voice is still relevant, but now brands need to determine their share of influence and, more importantly, their share of trust.

For mobile-first companies this is particularly important as growth teams require reliable data, clear attribution, privacy-centric analytics, and performance insights that correlate marketing activity to business results.

Brands that can provide answers to the questions, “How many people saw us?” “Did we earn their trust?” “Did we influence their decision?” and “Did we create measurable value?” will define the future of measurement.

Modern mobile measurement has established itself as a core principle for Apptrove. Clarity breeds growth.

Learn how Apptrove assists app marketers to measure the performance of their campaigns, user journeys, and growth results with improved clarity.

FAQs

1. What does share of voice mean?

Share of Voice, also known as Share of Mind, is a measure of how visible a brand is as compared to its competitors within a particular media, search marketing, social media platforms or other communication channels.

2. Is share of voice alone enough for modern marketers?

While Share of Voice represents visibility; it does not provide insight into whether consumers trust the brand or what value they see in the product or service. Marketers in modern times consider measuring brand influence, consumer trust in the brand, quality of engagement and business results.

3. What does share of trust mean?

Share of Trust is an indicator of how much trust customers, prospects, partners and the market have in an organization’s credibility, knowledge and reliability. The Share of Trust metric will help marketers measure the effectiveness of their communications programs in building trust not just attention.

4. How does mobile attribution help improve measurement for app marketers?

Mobile Attribution allows app marketers to accurately identify which campaigns, channels and partners are generating installs, app activity, purchases and subscriptions as well as retention. It aligns marketing activity with the behaviour of users and eventually impacts business results.

5. Why is Measurement 2.0 valuable to app marketers?

Measurement 2.0 offers app marketers an ability to go beyond basic metrics such as installs and impressions. It gives them the ability to focus on users’ quality, campaign performance, retention, fraud orientation, ROI, and long term growth potential.

from Apptrove https://apptrove.com/from-share-of-voice-to-share-of-trust-measurement-2-0/
via Apptrove