Plot Research · Interactive tool

How much of your brand's conversation is untagged?

Start with the number your current tool reports. The estimate below scales it by category and platform to show roughly how big the whole conversation is, including the part your tool never sees.

By Plot Research

The blind spot

What “untagged” means

Tagged conversation is the visible slice.

A tagged mention is any post where the brand is @-mentioned, hashtagged, or named in a way a keyword search catches. An untagged mention is a video where someone holds the product, says the name out loud, shows it on a shelf, or writes it on screen, and never types it.

Video changes how people mention brands.

Tag-based tools see typed references. They miss the product shown in a morning routine, the name spoken in a review, or the logo visible in a Short. That second kind is where much of product conversation lives across TikTok, Reels, and Shorts.

Sourced signals

How big the gap is

Public vendor figures point in the same direction, but they are blended across categories. The coefficients in this estimator are provisional placeholders within that range and are pending replacement with Plot's measured tagged share from a monthly product pull.

Plot public claim

8×

more UGC discovery than tag-based tools on customer accounts, implying tags catch roughly one mention in eight.

View source

Nectar Social public claim

95%

of brand conversations happen outside tagged content, according to Nectar Social.

View source

Platform effect

Why video makes it worse

Text mentions are easy to tag because typing the brand is the natural way to mention it. In video, the natural way is to show it or say it. On video-first platforms the tagged share drops further, so the estimator applies a provisional platform multiplier: lowest for YouTube Shorts, then TikTok, then Reels.

TikTok

0.7multiplier

Instagram Reels

0.8multiplier

YouTube Shorts

0.6multiplier

Mixed platforms

1.0multiplier

These multipliers are provisional and are not presented as measured platform benchmarks.

A measured baseline

How to measure it for real

01

Choose the scope

Pick one product and one month so both tools read the same conversation window.

02

Count what is tagged

Record the tagged mentions your current social listening tool reports for that scope.

03

Read the video

Count every mention where the product is shown, said, or written on screen. Tagged mentions divided by that total is your measured tagged share.

Plot ran that kind of read on a single cultural moment and found 8,429 videos and 15,534 comments around one artist's tour, most of it never tagged to the brands involved.

Read The Hilary Duff Culture Report

Methodology

The calculation behind the estimate

Total mentions = tagged mentions ÷ (category tagged share × platform multiplier)
Untagged mentions = total mentions − tagged mentions

Category tagged share

Beauty
0.10
Food and beverage
0.14
Health and wellness
0.12
Other consumer
0.15

Platform multiplier

TikTok
0.7
Instagram Reels
0.8
YouTube Shorts
0.6
Mixed platforms
1.0

Status: provisional, derived from public vendor claims dated September 7, 2026, pending replacement with Plot product data. Estimates are order-of-magnitude, not counts.

FAQ

Questions before you use the estimate

Does this count comments?

No. It estimates posts and videos that mention the brand. Comments under those videos are a separate, usually larger, number.

Why is the beauty coefficient lowest?

Beauty conversation is overwhelmingly video, get-ready-with-me and review formats, where products are shown and named aloud rather than typed. Provisional; will be replaced with measured data.

Can I use this number in a board deck?

Use it to size the gap, not to report the gap. Then measure it on one product for one month and use the measured number.

Does Plot's own count of untagged mentions include false positives?

Yes, some. Any video read at scale produces misses and false matches; the methodology section of each Plot Research report states how they are handled.

Measure it for real

Get the measured number for your brand.

Size the gap here. Then run one product and one month through Plot to replace the estimate with evidence.

Schedule a demo