Who Actually Owns the Conversation

For years, the communications industry has measured success through media mentions, reach, sentiment and share of voice. These metrics matter, but they don't necessarily tell us whether visibility is translating into influence.

A company can generate the most coverage in its industry while a competitor earns more authoritative media, builds stronger executive voices and becomes more closely associated with the ideas shaping the market. Being talked about isn't the same as owning the conversation. That distinction was the starting point for the Luna Mindshare Index.

The Luna Mindshare Index is our framework for measuring a company's influence within the conversations that matter to its business. It looks beyond how often a company is mentioned to understand where it appears, what it is known for, how it is perceived, how easily it can be discovered and how its position compares with competitors.

Beyond Share of Voice

Share of voice tells us how much of a relevant conversation a company captures. Mindshare looks at the bigger picture.

A company may dominate coverage because it announces more frequently, spends more on campaigns or is experiencing a crisis. Another may have fewer mentions but consistently appear in more authoritative media, have executives journalists regularly turn to for commentary and be strongly associated with an important industry narrative.

We think about influence as a progression:

Presence → Perception → Authority → Ownership

First, a company needs to be visible. Then what people think about it begins to matter. Over time, credibility and authority can build until the company becomes strongly associated with particular ideas, conversations or even an entire category.

That is when visibility starts becoming mindshare.

How the Luna Mindshare Index Works

Every company receives a Mindshare Score from 0 to 100, measured against a relevant competitive set over the same period.

The Index uses five pillars, weighted according to their role in building and measuring influence.

Each pillar uses a small number of defined metrics so the Index can be measured consistently over time.

1. Visibility: 25%

Visibility measures how present a company is within relevant industry conversations. We look primarily at media share of voice and digital share of conversation, benchmarked against the same competitor set.

This establishes whether a company is capturing attention, but volume alone isn't enough. Twenty relevant mentions in influential places may ultimately matter more than hundreds of low-quality mentions.

Key signals: Media mentions, share of voice, digital mentions and competitive visibility.

2. Authority: 25%

Authority measures whether that visibility carries weight. Media coverage is weighted by quality, with Tier 1 coverage carrying more value than lower-authority mentions. We also measure executive authority through signals such as expert commentary, interviews, bylines, relevant podcasts and speaking appearances.

This helps distinguish between a company that simply generates a lot of coverage and one whose brand and executives are becoming credible voices within their industry.

Key signals: Media quality, Tier 1 coverage, expert commentary, executive visibility, interviews, podcasts and speaking opportunities.

3. Narrative: 20%

Narrative measures what a company is becoming known for. Before measurement begins, we identify the key conversations that matter within the category and the strategic messages the company wants to communicate.

We then measure how frequently the company is associated with those topics compared with competitors, and how consistently its strategic messages are appearing externally.

This allows us to map Narrative Ownership and understand which companies are becoming associated with the ideas shaping their market.

Key signals: Topic ownership, key message penetration, thought leadership and competitive narrative share.

4. Reputation: 15%

Visibility isn't automatically valuable. A company experiencing a crisis can dominate share of voice while its reputation deteriorates, which is why attention without trust isn't necessarily influence.

We analyze positive, neutral and negative sentiment alongside the broader context surrounding the company. This helps us understand whether a brand is being associated with qualities such as trust, innovation and leadership, or with more negative themes.

Key signals: Sentiment, reputation themes, trust signals and positive or negative associations.

5. Discovery: 15%

Discovery measures how easily a company can be found and understood through search and generative AI.

We use a standardized set of category-specific searches and AI prompts to test whether the company appears, how prominently it is surfaced, what it is associated with and whether the information presented is accurate. The same questions are tested across competitors and repeated over time.

AI results can vary, so this is treated as a standardized snapshot of visibility at a specific point in time rather than an absolute measure of every possible AI response. The original Mindshare framework identified this shift in discovery as an increasingly important part of communications measurement.

Key signals: Search visibility, AI visibility, accuracy, category association and competitive discovery.

How We Calculate It

The methodology is designed to be practical enough to repeat quarterly across clients and competitors.

Quantitative data is combined with qualitative analysis where context matters. Media coverage, for example, can be weighted by tier, while narrative and reputation analysis can use AI-assisted classification followed by human review.

The same methodology, competitor set, topics, prompts and measurement period are used wherever possible to keep comparisons consistent.

The detailed scoring formula remains proprietary and can evolve as media, data and discovery behaviour change.

One Score, Five Signals

The overall Mindshare Score provides the benchmark. The five pillars underneath it show why a company is winning or losing mindshare.

Scores are illustrative.

A competitor might generate more coverage but have weaker authority. Another might perform well in traditional media but barely appear across AI discovery. The overall score shows where each company stands, while the breakdown shows what needs to change.

Tracking Mindshare Over Time

Mindshare isn't static, so the Index is designed to be repeated. Rather than creating a separate momentum score, we track how the overall Mindshare Score and its underlying pillars change quarter by quarter.

Scores are illustrative.

This helps separate activity from impact. More media coverage, content or campaigns don't necessarily mean communications is working if the company's competitive position isn't improving.

Finding Narrative Whitespace

One of the most useful outputs of the Mindshare Index isn't simply identifying who owns a conversation today. It's identifying what nobody owns yet.

We call this Narrative Whitespace.

By comparing topic ownership across a competitive set, we can identify important or emerging conversations where no company has established a strong position.

Example is illustrative.

If an important topic is growing but every major competitor has weak ownership, there may be an opportunity to build authority around it early. Sometimes the biggest communications opportunity isn't taking attention away from a competitor. It's getting to the conversation first.

From Measurement to Strategy

The Luna Mindshare Index isn't designed to become another number buried in a monthly PR report. Its purpose is to show where communications strategy should focus next.

Low Visibility may require greater media and digital presence. Strong Visibility but weak Authority suggests the issue is quality rather than quantity. Weak Narrative can indicate that a company is generating attention without becoming known for anything distinctive, while weak Discovery can show that its reputation isn't translating into search and AI environments.

By looking at all five pillars together, we can understand the problem before deciding on the strategy.

What a Mindshare Analysis Includes

The aim is to make the output useful at a glance. A CEO or CMO should be able to understand where the company stands, why and where the biggest opportunities sit without reading through a 50-page media report.

Measuring What Actually Matters

The communications landscape has changed, and the way we measure influence needs to change with it. Media coverage, reach, sentiment and share of voice still matter, but individually they only tell us part of the story.

The Luna Mindshare Index brings these signals together to understand whether people are seeing a company, what they associate it with, whether credible audiences trust its voice, how easily it can be discovered and how its position compares with competitors.

The goal is simple: to understand whether communications is generating visibility or actually building influence.

Because being seen is one thing. Owning the conversation is another.