In Rival IQ, you'll see averages used in metrics and benchmarks throughout your dashboards. This article will walk you through them and explain how we calculate each.

In your Overview and Leaderboard dashboards, you'll see that your numbers are compared to the Competitor Average.

This Competitor Average is the average for companies in this landscape excluding the focus company. It is most useful for comparing the focus company to the average of other companies in the landscape, and it is not affected by the focus company's performance at all.

If we expand this graph to examine all of the companies, we'll see that same Competitor Average of 640k used as a reference line.

In your Overview, Leaderboard, and Custom Dashboards, you have the option to change your benchmark to be the Landscape Average.

This Landscape Average is the average for companies in this landscape including the focus company. It is most useful for generating the average of all companies in the landscape. If you're analyzing a set of handles you manage, a set of collaborating handles, or are working to describe an industry in general, Landscape Average is for you.

As a comparison to the previous graph, you'll note that when we expand the full set using Landscape Average, New Belgium has pulled the benchmark, Landscape Average, up to 705k.

In Social Posts, you'll see that we've updated the labels for the comparison number for your engagement metrics to Post Average.

The Post Average represents the weighted average of all posts that match the current search criteria (e.g., keyword, channel, tag, company filter, etc). Engagement rates are weighted by follower count (i.e., larger handles affect the calculation in proportion to their follower counts). Engagement total per post calculations are weighted by the number of posts.

In addition to the At-a-Glance panel, the engagement rate (by follower) and engagement total per post metrics throughout the Social Posts dashboard are calculated in a similar manner.

For example, in the hashtags report above, the engagement total per post is not computed at the company level (add up each company's value and divide by the number of companies). Rather, it is computed at the post level, adding up the total engagement earned by each of these posts and divide by the number of posts.