Research

LLM Share of Voice by Industry 2026

Industry-level benchmarks for LLM share of voice across major AI platforms in 2026. Category leaders, concentration ratios, and the gap between top and bottom.

By Ramanath, CTO & Co-Founder at Presenc AI · Last updated: May 2026

LLM Share of Voice by Industry 2026

This report benchmarks LLM share of voice across 14 major industries in 2026, based on systematic prompt testing across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Grok. The benchmarks are useful for brands evaluating their AI visibility position relative to category peers and for marketing science teams setting AI search targets.

Methodology

For each industry, we tested 80-150 category-relevant prompts across the major AI platforms with three runs per prompt for stability. Brands cited in the responses were counted; SOV is the share of category-relevant mentions for each brand, weighted by platform usage among the industry's buyer audience.

Industry SOV Concentration

IndustryLeader SOVTop 3 CombinedLong Tail Share
Cloud Infrastructure34%72%28%
B2B SaaS (Project Mgmt)22%54%46%
DTC Beauty14%34%66%
Wireless Carriers31%74%26%
Auto Insurance28%68%32%
CRM Software41%78%22%
EV Vehicles26%61%39%
Athleisure Apparel19%47%53%
Wealth Advisors17%42%58%
Mortgage Lenders14%38%62%
Streaming Services38%81%19%
Smart Home Devices24%57%43%
Travel Booking Platforms32%71%29%
Cybersecurity Vendors21%53%47%

What Drives Concentration

Categories with high concentration (top 3 over 70%) tend to be those with strong incumbent brands, mature category definition, and dense third-party content (review sites, comparison platforms). Categories with low concentration are typically fragmented markets with weak category definition or rapidly evolving competitive landscapes.

The Long-Tail Opportunity

Categories with high long-tail share (over 50%) offer the greatest opportunity for newer or smaller brands to build AI visibility. DTC beauty, wealth advisors, mortgage lenders, athleisure all have long-tail shares above 50%, meaning the bulk of AI mentions go to brands outside the top 3. Smaller brands can capture meaningful AI visibility through focused investment in niche category prompts.

Platform Variance

SOV varies substantially across AI platforms within the same category. The same brand can be a leader on ChatGPT and barely mentioned on Perplexity. Cross-platform consistency averages 44% across industries, meaning brands that are leaders in one platform are leaders in another less than half the time. This variance is the operational target for AI visibility programs.

How Presenc AI Helps

Presenc AI provides ongoing LLM share of voice tracking with industry-specific prompt set templates. Brands measuring their SOV against category benchmarks use Presenc to identify gaps versus the leader and to prioritize the prompts where the gap is widest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Depends on category concentration. In concentrated categories (top 3 over 70%), a 15%+ SOV is meaningful; in fragmented categories, the same SOV would put a brand in the top 5-7. Benchmark against the leader and the relevant peer set, not absolute thresholds.
Variable. Concentrated categories show top 3 above 70%; fragmented categories show long-tail above 50%. Most categories show top 5 capturing 55-75% of AI mentions, with the rest distributed across the long tail. The fragmentation profile is one of the most important strategic inputs for AI visibility planning.
Different training corpora, different RAG retrieval, different prompt patterns from users. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Grok each have different brand association patterns for the same category, often based on which content sources each platform weights more heavily. Cross-platform consistency averages 44%.
In fragmented categories, yes; in concentrated categories, only over a multi-year investment horizon. The right strategy in concentrated categories is to lead in specific use-case sub-prompts where the long-tail share is larger, rather than competing head-to-head on category prompts where incumbents dominate.

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