The ‘New Listening’ of Marketing: An Extinction-Endangered Art, Yet More Vital Than Ever

By Roger Darashah, Co-founder and Director of LatAm Intersect PR

“Get ready to start paying for all the free online services and data you take for granted.” If the latest leaks, tweaks, and online grumblings are anything to go by, this is the not-so-subtle hint coming from Google and Meta, owners of the three largest platforms (Facebook, Youtube, Instagram) and the three most popular websites (Google, Youtube, Facebook) in the world. The leak: Google is reportedly planning to charge users for its AI-enhanced search option. The tweak: Facebook cut off

third-party access to platform groups. And the grumblings seek to block Meta’s controversial “consent or payment” approach to our cookieless future. In short, the Big Techs find themselves once again in a bind and want to pass the buck – namely

– to us, as users, brands, and data analysts.

Whatever the reasoning behind the data lockdown on third-party usage and the trend towards a fully monetized web, these new attitudes pose problems for brands wanting to know what their customers are thinking. Traditional market research remains costly and time-consuming, third-party data is on the brink of extinction, and academics still view AI-based solutions as a road to travel before providing accurate market research data. Delta Analytics, a company specializing in data-driven empathy optimization, presents a new, 100% non-invasive and downstream solution for this impending data capture. It’s called ‘Share of Find’ or SoF, for short.

Much like the popular ‘Share of Search’ developed by Google Trends, SoF uses anonymous and large-scale user search data. But instead of relying on Google’s “black box” algorithm and proprietary brand trend forecasting – because who knows when they’ll start charging for that? – SoF collects search results – the findings! – showing brands exactly what users are seeing when they search, rather than the narrower results of what they’re searching for in the first place.

After all, keywords rely on consumer knowledge about a particular brand – or at least, the relevant product category, but this is just a subset of your potential audience. The latter also includes consumers who may not be aware of the name or category of the product whose search is based on more general, location-specific, price, or time-specific search queries. We make these searches all the time: “What’s the best toothpaste for coffee drinkers?”, “What’s the cheapest electric vehicle in Spain?”, “What movies are showing at the cinema near me tonight?”. As a more

sophisticated version of “Share of Search,” SoF tracks named searches and these broader contextual search results, helping brands to remain relevant in both narrower and broader searches. For example, if you choose to run a SoF for ‘Black Friday’ in Mexico using popular mobile search terms, you can quickly see how often, compared to your rivals, your specific smartphone brand is appearing for users who may not even know which phone they want in the first place.

Compare this to the cumbersome Google Trends search sharing, where each brand would have to be manually entered, and where the available data is scarce, to say the least!

If you wanted to run a SoF for “trusted” travel agents during Holy Week, you could then see if your brand is mentioned and how often, as well as whether your SoF has increased or decreased over time and from country to country.

Google’s Share of Search reveals what users are typing: a useful insight and a measure of marketing efforts to control the agenda. Share of Find, on the other hand, reveals what users are actually seeing… courtesy of Google, of course! A much more valuable view.

Being dynamic, instantaneous, and 100% non-invasive software, SoF can be used to track product categories and brand names continuously, as well as ad hoc issues such as crises, emergencies, or unique events. These unique reactive snapshots, virtually impossible to obtain by any other method, give brands a fantastic edge over the competition. The resulting metrics are all organic, as well as country- and language-specific, which can also help brands to adjust and measure their SEO efforts. And finally, SoF is future-proof. Because while Google and Meta may start charging for services and restrict access to user data, the last thing they’ll hide from us is the results of our searches.

SoF is the SEO equivalent of listening. An endangered art, but no less vital for any