Blog / Brand Management

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Author: Jagoda Winciorek

Updated: October 30, 2026

14 min read

9 Key Brand Awareness Metrics You Need to Measure in 2026

A green circle with three curved black lines and your favorite playlist at hand. You know exactly which brand I’m talking about, don’t you? That’s brand awareness at play.

Spotify comes to mind with just a few simple cues. But how do you know whether your own brand is just as recognizable? Here are the 9 brand awareness metrics to track, if you want to find out.

Why measure brand awareness

Like it or not, brand awareness can make or break your business. 

Sounds dramatic, I know, but that’s just how it works: in order to buy from you, people must know you. As in, know your brand even exists.

And sure, you can catch someone’s attention with a well-timed ad right when they’re about to make a purchase. They might even choose you then. But what about the next time?

When people need something you offer, you want your brand name to come up naturally, without having to pay for their attention every single time.

Brand awareness is what keeps you top of mind long after the ads run their course.

And building that kind of recognition takes work. Campaigns, strategies. So, of course, you’re gonna wanna measure that.

Here’s what tracking brand awareness can help you do:

• Evaluate and validate your marketing efforts (i.e., see which campaigns performed best and get budgets for future projects)
• Understand the place your product or service has in the market (hear what your customers have to say about your offer vs. your competitors’ and adjust accordingly)
• Get closer to your customers and build brand loyalty (understand what matters to them and build a stronger bond based on shared values and trust)
• Identify partnership opportunities (spot creators that could help you reach new audiences)
• Become the brand people think of first (build strong brand awareness and make your brand the go-to choice in your category)

I’m gonna walk you through the 9 most important brand awareness metrics to track if you wanna stay well-informed about your brand recall, benchmark vs. your competitors, and more.

Cause at the end of the day, there’s no point pouring money into brand awareness campaigns if you have no idea whether they’re even working.

9 Brand Awareness Metrics To Track

Brand awareness is a tricky thing to measure, ’cause you can’t exactly put a single number on how well-known you are.

There are several metrics to consider, depending on your goals and KPIs (key performance indicators). There are also quite a few tools for measuring them.

So, just to get that out of the way, here’s a quick overview. And after that, we’re diving right into the metrics themselves!

01 Brand Mentions

You wanna know if your brand is the talk of the town? Brand mentions will tell you just that.

They include everything from tagged Instagram posts to Reddit discussions where someone casually recommends your product.

And yes, those untagged mentions count, too!

Generally speaking, the more mentions your brand gets, the more attention it’s attracting. Tracking them over time helps you see whether it’s becoming a bigger part of the conversation.

But, as with most things in life, there’s a catch. More mentions don’t automatically mean better brand awareness. A successful campaign can send your numbers soaring, but so can a PR crisis.

That’s why I personally always dig in to see what caused a surge in mentions, just to be safe. Or join in on the fun!

So, a word of advice… Don’t stop at your total mention count. Compare it with previous periods, investigate unusual spikes, and check whether the conversations are positive or negative. That’s how you’ll find out what’s driving the attention.

How to track brand mentions?

You can access your mentions through your native social media analytics, but this way, you’ll only get to the ones with a direct @tag.

To track both tagged and untagged mentions across social media, news sites, forums, and other online sources, you’ll need a social listening tool.

Now, remember how I brought up Spotify at the beginning of this article? That wasn’t just for show. 

I’m gonna use Brand24, my social listening tool of choice, to see how its online visibility compares with Deezer, a smaller competitor in the music streaming industry.

I’ll use these two brands as examples throughout the guide to see what different brand awareness metrics reveal about an established market leader vs. a smaller challenger.

You can take these as a benchmark of sorts: comparing the two will help you understand how much the numbers can differ depending on a brand’s size and market position. It can also help you set realistic KPIs for your own brand.

So, starting with brand mentions:

Data collected over the last 14 days (October 15–29, 2026).

Of course, Spotify is the more established brand, so we’d expect it to attract more mentions overall. What genuinely surprised me here is the difference in their growth rates!

Compared to the previous period, Spotify’s mentions increased by 34%, while Deezer’s jumped by a whopping 61%!

So, despite having a much smaller share of the conversation, Deezer is actually growing faster percentage-wise. That suggests its brand awareness is growing. But before I make that judgment, I wanna take a look at some of the other metrics, too.

02 Social media and non-social reach

You might get mentioned hundreds of times, but if those conversations stay within a small audience, they’re not doing much for your brand awareness.

On the other hand, a single mention from a major publication or a popular creator could put you in front of millions of new people.

That’s what reach helps you estimate: how many people come across your brand, your campaigns, social media posts, and so on.

You can track two different types of reach:

• Social media reach: The estimated number of people who could have seen your brand mentioned on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn.
• Non-social reach: The potential exposure your brand gets from websites outside social media, including news publications, blogs, and online forums.

How to measure social media reach?

Native analytics can show you the reach of your own social media posts. To find out how far conversations about your brand spread beyond your accounts, circle back to your social listening tool.

Here’s how Spotify and Deezer’s reach stacks up according to Brand24:

Remember how Deezer’s mentions grew by 61%? Well, its reach is not doing so hot.

Despite the increase in mentions, Deezer’s total estimated reach actually dropped by 31%, with social media reach down 30% and non-social reach down 39% compared to the previous period.

Meanwhile, Spotify’s total reach increased by 19%.

So, while more people are talking about Deezer, those conversations aren’t generating as much exposure as before. This could mean that its recent mentions are coming from smaller accounts or lower-reach sources.

And that’s exactly why I never judge brand awareness by mention volume alone. More conversations don’t necessarily mean more people are seeing them!

03 Social media engagement

Now, are people just talking about you, or are they also interacting with you?

Engagement is a great indicator of just how effective your social media campaigns are. Measured in the number of likes, shares, and comments, it can tell you how well your content resonates with your target audience.

And the thing about engagement is that it can help your content reach new audiences.

Social media algorithms often consider interactions when deciding which posts to recommend, so a lively comment section or a post getting shared around could bring even more attention to your brand.

How to track social media engagement?

Native social media analytics let you see how people interact with your own posts. 

I recommend looking at engagement rate alongside total interactions to judge performance relative to your audience size or content reach.

You can also use social listening tools to see how people engage with mentions of your brand beyond your own accounts.

04 Website traffic

People who already know your brand are more likely to visit your website directly. That’s as simple as it gets.

There are three different traffic sources to keep an eye on, which can all reveal something different about how familiar people are with your brand and how they’re landing on your site.

• Direct: Includes visitors who type your URL into their browser or use a bookmark. An increase in direct traffic can suggest growing awareness, but keep in mind that GA4 also counts visits with unknown sources as such.
• Organic: Shows how many visitors find you through search engines. What you wanna look at here are branded searches, ’cause they indicate people are actively looking up your brand.
• Referral: Comes from links on other websites, such as online publications or industry blogs. It can help you identify which external sources are sending people your way and boosting your awareness.

How to track website traffic?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is your go-to tool here!

Head to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition to see where your visitors come from and how much traffic each channel generates.

Similar to the other metrics, it’s best to compare numbers over time, especially before and after major awareness campaigns.

05 Brand search volume

When people actively search for your brand by name, that’s a strong indicator of brand awareness. They already know you exist, and now they’re looking you up.

Brand searches include your brand name itself, as well as queries like “Spotify Premium” or “Deezer subscription.”

How to track brand search volume?

SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush can show you the estimated monthly search volume for keywords containing your brand name.

You can also use Google Search Console to check how often your website appears in search results for branded queries and how many clicks those searches bring.

And since we’re already comparing Spotify and Deezer, let’s see how much interest each brand attracts on Google!

To check this, I used Ahrefs Keywords Explorer.

Well, that’s quite the gap! Spotify generates roughly 267 times as many branded searches as Deezer.

And looking at the trends, it’s pulling even further ahead. Its search volume has grown by 6% over the last 12 months, compared to just 1% for Deezer.

But! There’s also some geographical context worth considering. Deezer is a French company, and France still accounts for the largest share of its branded searches (45%).

The remaining 55% come from other countries, with Brazil and the US leading the way. That’s a good indication that Deezer’s brand recognition extends well beyond its home market.

06 Share of voice

Okay, we know Deezer is pretty far behind Spotify in brand mentions and search volume.

But what if we compared the two with a wider range of competitors? That would give us a much better idea of where they stand in the market.

And that’s exactly what share of voice (SOV) is for!

It measures what percentage of online conversations your brand has compared to its competitors. The higher your SOV, the bigger your share of the conversation.

How to track Share of Voice?

You can calculate it yourself using the following formula: SOV (%) = Your Brand Metric ÷ Total Industry Metric × 100

Or… Save yourself the math and use a tool to automatically compare your Share of Voice with your chosen competitors.

This is how it plays out according to Brand24:

Well, Spotify still takes the biggest piece of the pie. Literally!

Spotify accounts for roughly 78% of all conversations across the five brands. Deezer has the smallest share at just under 3%.

Reach looks very similar. Spotify dominates, while Deezer accounts for only 2%.

07 Earned media value

Getting people to talk about your brand without paying them to do so? That’s no small achievement!

Earned media coverage is difficult to secure, especially when you’re aiming for major publications. But it also happens to be incredibly valuable for building brand awareness and credibility.

Think news articles featuring your brand, independent product reviews, or organic recommendations from creators.

Earned media value (or EMV, for short) helps you estimate what all that unpaid publicity is worth in monetary terms, so you can put a number on the exposure your brand earns.

How to track EMV?

Start by collecting your earned mentions. This will help you see which publications and creators are talking about your brand, along with the estimated reach of their content.

Then, estimate how much you’d have to pay for similar exposure through advertising.

You can use this simple formula:

EMV = (Earned media reach ÷ 1,000) × CPM

Here, CPM stands for cost per thousand impressions. Ideally, use the average CPM from your own paid campaigns targeting a similar audience.

08 Customer surveys

By now, you might already know that people are talking about your brand online or even seeking it out by visiting your website directly.

But that doesn’t give you any idea of what they actually think of it.

To get unfiltered feedback, right from the source, you may wanna turn to customer surveys.

And you can learn quite a bit more than whether people like your brand!

For example, surveys can help you measure brand recall and recognition, giving you a better idea of how familiar your target audience is with your business.

How to track customer feedback?

You can create a simple survey using tools like SurveyMonkey, Typeform, or Google Forms and distribute it through email or social media.

Ask questions that elicit unaided brand recall (for example, “Which music streaming platforms come to your mind first?”) and aided brand recognition (“Which of these music streaming platforms have you heard of?”).

You can also explore brand associations by asking which products, characteristics, or messages people associate with your brand.

And here’s a little tip: don’t limit your surveys to people who already follow or buy from you. Chances are, they know your brand pretty well already!

Include people from your broader target audience to get a more realistic picture of your brand awareness.

09 AI visibility

More and more consumers are turning to AI chatbots for product recommendations. In fact, according to IBM and the National Retail Federation’s 2026 research, 41% of surveyed consumers use AI assistants to research products.

So if you put some attention to that part of your online presence, you’re likely to get your brand in front of people who might never have considered it otherwise.

To go back to our Spotify vs. Deezer comparison: the first will likely come up every time someone asks an AI chatbot about a music streaming platform. Will the latter?

Well, it did when I asked ChatGPT about it. And that’s exactly the kind of opportunity smaller brands should be looking for.

Even if someone on the other side of the screen doesn’t choose Deezer right away, they’ve now discovered a brand they might not have known about before. 

And if Deezer keeps appearing in relevant recommendations, it has more opportunities to become a familiar name.

That’s why I recommend tracking AI visibility: how often your brand appears in AI-generated answers, which questions bring it up, and how frequently it’s recommended compared with competitors.

How to track AI visibility?

You can start by asking ChatGPT or other AI assistants questions that your potential customers might ask, and checking whether your brand appears in their responses.

But since AI responses can vary between platforms and even from one prompt to another, it’s much more efficient to use a dedicated tool.

My pick for this is Chatbeat, which tracks brand visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek. 

It lets you measure your AI share of voice, see which prompts trigger mentions of your brand, and compare your visibility with competitors.

But do keep in mind that growing AI visibility doesn’t automatically mean growing brand awareness. It’s more of an indicator of how often potential customers encounter your brand through AI.

Conclusion

So there you have it! 9 brand awareness metrics to help you understand how recognizable your brand really is.

And if there’s one thing I hope you take away from my Spotify vs. Deezer comparison, it’s this: if you want to asses your brand awareness correctly, you need to look at more than one metric.

Deezer’s mentions grew much faster than Spotify’s, but its estimated reach actually dropped. That’s how misleading a single metric can be.

And just quickly, before you go, here are a few more things I’d recommend keeping in mind:

• Choose your brand awareness KPIs based on your marketing strategy; e.g., if you want to reach new audiences, turn your focus to mentions and reach.
• Always look at the bigger picture. Compare metrics over time and investigate the causes of any major changes.
• Keep an eye on your competitors. You don’t have to be the biggest brand in your industry to make progress. Growing your own share of the conversation is a win, too!
• Don’t overlook AI visibility. People are discovering brands through AI recommendations, so make sure you’re tracking that part of your online presence.

And finally, don’t get discouraged if your numbers seem small compared to industry giants. What matters is whether you’re moving in the right direction.