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What is an Entity?

Learn more about what an Entity is and how they can be identified

 Overview

An entity is the foundational unit of analysis inside Demand Reports, anything you want to measure attention for: a brand, a celebrity, a piece of IP, an organization, and so on.

This article explains what an entity is and what kinds of things can be entities. For how Demand Intelligence identifies and enriches them, including our tracking rules and how to request a fix. The same word is also used as the billing unit for the entire product, even outside Demand Reports, that side is covered in Entity allowance: how reports consume entities. 

What is an Entity?

Inside Demand Reports, an entity is the thing you're measuring, the object whose attention, popularity and demand signals are being analyzed across channels and markets.

When you build a Demand Report you're really building a basket of entities to compare side by side. Each row in the report is one entity, and the scores, demographics, interests and search trends you see in the report are the signals Demand has aggregated for those entities.

Entity vs. account. Inside Demand Reports the input is always an entity, the conceptual umbrella over the names, handles, search terms and URL that describe one object of analysis. The other report types (Influencer, Overlap, Creator Discovery) take social accounts as input, not entities. 

What Can be an Entity?

Entities are deliberately broad. They can represent anything that has a measurable presence across digital channels. Common examples include:

  • Brands — e.g., Nike, McDonald's, Netflix.
  • Celebrities and public figures — e.g., Cristiano Ronaldo, Adele.
  • Entertainment IPs and franchises — e.g., Marvel, The Last of Us, FIFA.
  • Media properties — e.g., The New York Times, BBC News.
  • Organizations — e.g., NGOs, sports leagues, government bodies.
  • Products and product lines — e.g., iPhone, PlayStation.

If it has a name and a digital footprint, it can be tracked as an entity.

 How an Entity is Identified

Each entity is built from a consistent set of identifiers, its name, its official handle on each channel, and its root-domain URL, and Demand follows the same tracking rules for all of them (official accounts only, root domains only). For the full picture, including what to do if an entity's data looks wrong or incomplete, see How an Entity is Identified.

 Found vs. Not Found

When you create a Demand Report, each entity in your basket is checked against the Demand Intelligence database. Entities can be Found (ready to analyse), Not Found (the entity isn't in the database yet and needs to be requested), or have partial data.

Entities as the Billing Unit

Demand Intelligence was originally built around Demand Reports, so its credit system is denominated in entities. As other report types joined the product, the same unit was extended to them for billing consistency. Today:

  • A Demand Report consumes one entity per entity in the basket (the conceptual entity, in the sense of this article).
  • An Influencer Report consumes one "entity" per report, even though the input is a social account, the cost is denominated in entities.
  • An Overlap Report consumes one "entity" per account analysed.
  • A Creator Discovery search does not consume entities, it's free.