What is the difference between Total and Average Engagement?

The Total Engagement metric represents the sum of all engagement actions across videos within a specific time period under analysis.

For example, if I’m comparing the Total Engagement of Soccer vs. Basketball over the past 12 months, what I’m actually doing is adding up every type of engagement from all videos published during that period and then comparing the totals between the two topics.

This metric is essential for understanding the true scale of specific subjects within video culture, as it reveals how engaging a community can be. Its focus lies in highlighting the “big numbers” behind topics, subtopics, niches, and creators.

The Average Engagement metric (abbreviated as avg. engagement) or Engagement per Video is a metric that helps us understand how territories are balanced in their own spaces.

We achieve it by dividing the total engagement of a group of videos by the number of videos in said group. If the topic exceeds 1000 videos, we divide the sum of engagement from the 1000 most engaged videos from the sample by 1000. This is done to ensure that topics with overwhelming number of videos don't end up with low average engagement scores just because of the total volume of content.