FAQ

Each brand's Like count and PTAT comes directly from Facebook's API. The number is updated daily.

Subscribers will receive their Brand Portfolio Email on a weekly or daily basis, depending on their subscription level. Users can adjust the frequency of emails on their Brand Portfolio page.

At the moment, we are only allowing data from the last 100 days to be shown within your Brand Portfolio. We have a varying levels of data for different brands - if you are interested in more information, please let us know.

We can provide custom feeds, downloadable brand data, or pricing packages with additional reports if you contact us and describe your specific needs. We promise to get back to you within 72 hours with a package custom fit to you and your company!

“People Talking About This” is the number of unique users who have created a “story” about a page over the trailing 7 days. It corresponds not to how popular a brand is, but to how engaged its fan base is. The number comes directly from Facebook and it is updated daily.

Engagement, in our context is People Talking About This divided by Likes. To calculate the Optimal Index, we multiple the weekly engagement rate by 52 and cap the total annual engagement number at 100%. This means that extraordinarily high engagement rates will not overly influence the Index calculation especially for smaller brands. When a brand page gets new Likes, these new Likes are included in its People Talking About This count, but bursts of new fan acquisition without ongoing efforts to engage an audience will produce a temporary spike in engagement that won't last.

• Total Likes: The total number of people who have created a connection to a Page by clicking 'Like'
• Engagement: The average PTAT divided by average 'Likes' for the prior week
• Likes Change: The percent change in Likes week over week
• Engaged Change: The percent change in PTAT week over week

• Posts: Number of Posts published
• Engagement Points: The level of engagement for a Comment or Share is much greater than a Like. Therefore when calculating the Engagement Point of a post, we assign Shares 4 points, Comments 2 points, and Likes 1 point. These values are added together and divided by the total number of fans. To calculate the Engagement Points for the week, we add up all Engagement Points generated during the week.
• Post Likes: Total number of Likes received for the prior week
• Post Comments: Total number of Comments received for the prior week
• Post Shares: Total number of Post Shares for the prior week

• Engagement Points: As mentioned above, when calculating the Engagement Point of a Post, we assign Shares 4 points, Comments 2 points, and Likes' 1 point. These values are then added together and divided by the total number of fans.
• Post Likes: Total Likes the post received for the prior week
• Post Comments: Total Comments the post received for the prior week
• Post Shares: Total Post Shares the post received for the prior week

The amount of data available to analyze is growing exponentially. Optimal attempts to cover all brands, products, and companies with an official presence on various social networks. We welcome your suggestions: if your favorite brand or product is not represented, please make a suggestion on the Contact Us page.

Optimal is continually working to discover new brands and products. However, there are situations when our partners' data (such as Facebook or Twitter) may not be available when we are collecting information. If you have any questions or notice the data looks incorrect, please contact us!

Yes! While our current focus is on Brands and Companies, we are arranging data from these other categories in a meaningful and valuable way, and will notify all registered users when that data becomes available.

• Rank: Terms are ordered based on relevance to your entry
• Reach: The projected number of users a keyword will reach
• Duplicated Reach: Total reach, including users who may be targeted multiple times by different keywords
• Unique Reach: Total reach, excluding duplicate users

To run a sample Expander query, get started by first signing up here.

Yes! Paid subscribers can share their Expander results with all users, including non-subscribers. Non-subscribers will be able to view the same exact results, making teamwork and collaboration among clients and partners even better.

Customize your sharing capabilities by defining 'Max Shares' and link expiration date. Once configured, click on 'Get Sharing Link' to receive a short URL to pass along to your colleagues.

The default country for Optimal Expander is set to the United States. If you would like to set your Expander default to another country, please contact us, and we would be happy to help you make the adjustment!

Your Optimal Expander searches resets everyday based on Eastern Standard Time (EST). If you are interested in increasing your daily search allowance, contact us here.

Audience Matrix is an audience research tool, based on Optimal's proprietary analyses of millions of interests and topics and thousands of brands. Define your audience and learn about their Demographics, Interests, and Behavior.

Start learning about your audience and your competitors'. Signup with your email address to view the latest free data reports.

The addressable audience data comes from various social social networks (including Facebook and Twitter) for topic & interests, pages you own, plus 16 Million user segments updated daily.

Understanding your target audience is critical for creating strategies and media plans to meet business objectives. You can utilize Audience Matrix to research the audience composition of the following:

• Users associated with your Facebook Page
• Users interested in specific topics, interests, and brands
• Users grouped under Facebook's Broad Categories

Start creating better strategies and media plans by uncovering your target audience's penetration by country, age, gender, state, city, topic interests, and mobile device type.

The index provides a numerical point of comparison that helps you understand the relevance of an object versus the average Facebook population. For instance, if your report shows that 'Luxury Good's have an index of 437, this means that your target audience is 4.37x more likely to be interested in 'Luxury Goods' than the average Facebook user.

For example, assume on average that Facebook has 1000 total users and 100 users interested in Luxury Goods. If you have 1000 users and your users index 437 for Luxury Goods, this would mean that 437 of your users are interested in Luxury Goods.

Oftentimes, marketers will plan & buy media using targeting parameters that have high index values because they want to reach their target audience, as opposed to general Facebook users.

Available design parameters include: Keywords, Facebook Objects, Broad Categories, and Places.

• Keywords: Interests & topics you wish to research. The information returned is derived from Facebook's Insight data within the last 30-day period. Enter your target audience's favorite brands and hobbies to see what other targetable interests have a high degree of similarity.
• Objects: Pages & Apps associated with your Facebook ad account. The information returned is based directly on authenticated users engaged with Facebook objects you own - allowing for a more precise analysis versus a Keyword analysis by itself.
• Broad Categories: Groups of interests and traits as defined by Facebook, such as Autos, Cooking, Entertainment, Movies (Comedy, Drama, Romance), and Sports (Baseball, basketball, football).
• Places: City / State / DMA. Learn about the demographic profile for an area by entering a location.

After setting target parameters, you can customize your Audience Matrix metrics. Our report is designed to be flexible and "pivotable" across all these factors.


Depending on your subscription plan, users will have a finite number of Design Points allowed per Audience Matrix they create. Each factor selected corresponds to a number of Design Points, with certain selections potentially requiring additional Design Points.

	Additional levels of customization available for your report include having 'Male/Female' data split and the number of Keywords you would like your report to be indexed against. The 'Male/Female' split option is available for Keywords, Search Items, Countries, Topics, Categories, and DMA. The number of Keywords indicates the most popular Keywords you would like to analyze your audience against.
	Under Topics, you have the option to limit results to brands and topics. This is a great option to select, if you want to analyze other brands that interest your target audience.

Yes, our reports can also be downloaded in XLS and CSV formats. Sample reports are available once you create an account.

When you create your Audience Matrix, you can change the default country in the 'Country' menu. If you would like the ability to create a Matrix in additional countries, please let us know!

Click here to learn about pricing for the Optimal Analytics suite.

Understanding the relationship between different topics and interests can be challenging. Optimal Explorer is a fully interactive tool that enables marketers to visualize complex relationships. Register and begin identifying common points of interest and engagement.

Optimal Explorer maps out affinity correlation, and provides topics and interests most relevant to your input. Users with a free Optimal Analytics accounts have access to a limited number of queries across Facebook only. Users with paid subscriptions have access to millions of hashtags and keywords across Facebook and other leading social networks such as Twitter.

Access these enhanced features by upgrading your account.

Each node’s proximity to the initial entry (query/term) indicates affinity strength, while the size of each node represents the audience reach.