Visual analytics tool Curalate is back as promised with support for a new platform that puts its photo identification algorithm to good use. Today the platform is unveiling its support for Instagram – a fitting move for the application.
Curalate is a one-of-a-kind analytics platform that specializes in making sense of what types of photos people share and interact with on Pinterest, and now Instagram. Its algorithm is able to decipher the individual pixels in a photo a user has shared, and find if there’s a product in it. Then Curalate matches this content to what it can find in its massive database filled with billions of images. Corporations including HGTV, Nine West, and Michael Kors are just a handful of the brand’s using this technology.
Curalate’s expansion into Instagram territory comes as a variety of platforms are exploring the photo-sharing network’s marketing potential. Instagram’s value holds court with the likes of Pinterest and Twitter in terms of use among Internet users, according to Pew’s latest social network report . In fact, based on the study, Instagram is being used by 13 percent of users, while Pinterest and Twitter really aren’t far ahead with just a usage rate of 15 percent and 16 percent respectively.
“Images drive emotions with an immediacy that no other medium offers,” says Curalate CEO Apu Gupta. “Brands are rapidly tapping into the power of imagery to connect with consumers and drive real business results.”
With the update, brands will have the ability to track conversations on Pinterest and Instagram conveniently from a single feed. Curalate will identify where the brand’s products are being shared and who is sharing them, they can figure out what product is trending and what photos are the most recently shared on both Pinterest and Instagram. The analytics engine will even delve deeper to differentiate the level of engagement on user-submitted images from photos published by the brand themselves.
“We help brands understand which images are most popular rather than what’s most recently posted. While we enable brands to monitor photo engagement as it happens, we find that with large brands they need an efficient way to determine what photos are more actionable,” Gupta explained to me. To track the metrics that matter, particularly for a campaign, Curalate monitors Instagram hashtags, comments, likes, and number of photos published.
As we covered earlier, Curalate dipped its toes into promotional tools with a product called Promote. While that product is specific to building and promoting contests on Pinterest, which without application assistance can be a rather complicated ordeal, Curalate offers promotion tools including “promotions that originate on Instagram and drive content to Pinterest and Facebook simultaneously,” and the ability for brands to share photos to these social networks directly from within its software.
We’ll be at Curalate’s visual-based marketing event at Social Media Week on Wednesday, where we’ll hear more about the startup’s and others’ efforts in the image-heavy revolution changing social networking.
