FAQs: Overlap Reports
Overview
Follow this guide for short answers to the questions that come up most often and that are specific to Overlap Reports. Questions that apply to Demand Intelligence as a whole, entity allowance, sharing, downloads, data refresh cadence, what happens when you run out of entities, live in the general Demand FAQs.
How many accounts can an Overlap Report include?
Between two and five. You need at least two accounts to compute any overlap, and the cap is five to keep the matrix readable. See Creating an Overlap Report for the basket-building flow.
Which channels does Overlap support?
Four: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X. Each Overlap Report runs on one channel, the choice is locked in early in the creation flow, before you add accounts. To compare the same accounts on two channels, run two reports.
Can I mix accounts from different channels in the same report?
No. An Overlap Report is single-channel, you pick the channel during creation and every account in the basket has to be a profile on that channel. To compare the same accounts on a different channel, clone the report and change the channel in the clone. See Creating an Overlap Report for the channel-selection step.
What exactly does the percentage in each cell mean?
Each cell is directional: it shows the share of the row account's followers who also follow the column account. So a cell at the intersection of @adidas (row) and @nike (column) reads as “X% of @adidas's followers also follow @nike”. The mirror cell — @nike (row) and @adidas (column), answers the opposite question and will almost always be a different number.
Why are the diagonal cells empty?
Because an account isn't compared against itself. The diagonal always reads “—”.
Why does the smaller account almost always have the higher percentages?
It's arithmetic. The percentage is computed over the row account's follower base, so the smaller the base, the larger any given shared subset looks in percentage terms. The same shared followers can read as 5% from a 290M-follower account and 50% from a 29M-follower account. Switch to Absolute mode to see the real magnitudes.
What does Compare Sources actually do?
It filters which accounts appear in the matrix and the graph. Open Compare Sources, tick or untick accounts, and click Apply, the view redraws with only the selected accounts. Useful when one account in the basket is on a very different scale and is washing out the heatmap, or when you want a focused two- or three-way comparison without rebuilding the report.
An account I need doesn't appear in the dropdown. What do I do?
Overlap Reports only work with accounts that already exist in the Audiense catalog, there's no Not-Found request flow like there is for entities in a Demand Report. If a key account is missing, open a support ticket so the team can review whether it should be added to the catalog; in the meantime, the report can't include it.
Can I change the channel or accounts after launching the report?
Not on an existing report, channel and accounts are part of the report definition and are baked in the moment you launch. The fastest path to a different configuration is to clone the report from the Reports List, change the channel or the basket in the clone, and re-launch. The original report stays intact.
What can I download from an Overlap Report?
Two views, both from the Actions menu in the top-right of the report: Download absolutes view (the matrix in raw shared-follower counts) and Download percentages view (the matrix in directional shares). Unlike other report types, Overlap doesn't have a single combined export, pick the view that matches the story you want to tell.