Good Question- Panerai certainly have a huge Following- Even I have just bought one (delivered in 4 weeks hopefully).
The Price of Panerai is fairly similar to that of Rolex but they only produce around 40,000 watches a year approximately whereas Rolex produce over 1 million these days.
Panerai are certainly more exclusive in terms of Ad's here in the UK and in number of each model available (not Daytona level).
I think they are not at rolex level due to the numbers produced , but they are in my eyes more exclusive