Ad Targeting Gets Visual: Ditto Labs Launches Tools to Help Advertisers Use Public Photos to Reach Consumers

Marketers Can Now Buy Media Based on Brand Affinities Expressed in Photos

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Dec 17, 2014, 10:00 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 17, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Ditto Labs, the leading image recognition platform for the visual web, today released enhancements to its photo analytics platform that enable media buyers to easily reach consumers who share specific brand images on public social media. While advertisers commonly target consumers based on text, hashtag mentions or follows, media buyers who apply Ditto's new proprietary technology can now automate ad-targeting based on brand appearances in photos. Together, these features help to connect brands with a previously unreachable group of consumers.

According to the Pew Research Center's Internet Research, 54 percent of adult internet users post original photos or videos online. The massive growth in the shares of photos will soon eclipse text on leading visual social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter. However, accessing data and insights about photos, and the people who post them, has been a blind spot for brands. Today's text based platforms do not analyze photos and consequently miss this critical signal.

"Our technology offers immediate access to people posting photos about your brand and competitors," said David Rose, CEO of Ditto Labs. "Now, savvy ad buyers can acquire new customers based on what appears in public photos. For example, Budweiser can directly reach people holding a can of Miller."

The latest Ditto platform enhancements to support social ad targeting include:

An interactive audience list posting a photos of your brand, ranked by number of followers and those displaying the most recent photos of your brand.
Klout Influencer Scores allowing marketers to identify the most influential people sharing photos of your brand or competitors.
Engagement metrics to monitor the photos with the highest retweets for your brand and competitors by geography and over time.
Ranked brand affinities to better understand the other brands your fans and customers like, which helps with influencer identification, competitive assessment and partnership evaluation.
Custom tags for manual filtering that can be used for segmentation and to inform machine learning for future automatic classification.

"Success in the digital ad world is based on getting your brand and message in front of the correct audiences and channels for engagement," said John Battelle, Executive Chairman Sovrn Holdings. "With this new offering, Ditto is helping ensure those placements are correctly made as content moves from text based to images."

Agencies and media buyers can segment and import photo-based audience data for high-value fans into a DMP or ad serving platform. This makes social media buys more expansive and relevant, while opening up new opportunities for brands to reach audiences.

Ditto currently monitors publicly shared photos from Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram. To learn more about Ditto's new visual ad targeting features, visit http://www.ditto.us.com/.

About Ditto Labs
Ditto Labs, the leading image recognition company, helps the world's most innovative brand marketers and agencies tap into the daily torrent of public social photos to uncover authentic customer insights, measure visual voice, engage with customers and target ads.

Backed by Cue Ball Capital and Stage 1 Ventures, Ditto is a privately-held company based in Cambridge, MA that leverages a proprietary cloud based architecture to continuously mine millions of images to identify brand logos and other patterns. See a live feed of the top brands people are sharing now: www.streamditto.com or more at www.ditto.us.com.

Media Contact:
Sydney Fiorentino
SHIFT Communications
617-779-1875
[email protected]

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SOURCE Ditto Labs