1. What is image recognition?
Image recognition is the identification of objects and logos within an image. When using image recognition technology, images or videos are past through detection servers where objects and logos can be identified, which generates various insights.
Digital data is everywhere. We are currently living in a Visual Age and social media platforms have started to recognize this. We only have to look at the success of platforms, such as Instagram and Snapchat, to clearly see this shift from text to visuals. In short, image recognition technology has been developed in response to the digital demand for visual content.
2. Why is image recognition important?
3.2 billion images are shared each day on social media. Instagram now has 500 million users and over 95 million photos are uploaded to the platform each day... That's a lot of visual data. Even Facebook's news feeds are now completely saturated by memes, images, and videos.
So what does this mean for market researchers? If we already have text-based detection, why shouldn't we have the same for images? Having visual analytics means that visual data doesn't have to be extracted manually. So image recognition is important because visual is where the future of digital is heading and it's becoming clearer and clearer that text-centric Social Listening tools are no longer enouh to obtain complete data.
3. What are the benefits of image recognition technology?
For most industries, image recognition can be very advantageous. It is particularly useful for brands who want complete social media analytics for both text and images. If a brand already has a Social Listening strategy in place, implementing image recognition for visual analytics will optimize that strategy. More data means more insights, making brand and logo detection much more effective. For social analytics and Social Media Monitoring companies, image recognition and logo detection technology provide more complete data for their customers.
For the digital sphere, the benefits of image recognition are in its evolution. In the future, this technology will continue to become more and more adaptive to human behavior. We are even beginning to see technological advancements such as object and gesture detection thanks to image recognition technology.
4. Can image recognition detect more than brands within images?
Image recognition, like most technologies, is advancing and evolving constantly. Depending on the technology, image recognition can sometimes detect visuals that aren't brands or logos. With the advancement of technology, image recognition is now possible for video. According to Brandwatch, Facebook gets 8 billion video views per day from 500 million users and when Instagram first introduced videos, over 5 million were shared in just 24 hours.
It’s clear that video is now taking over digital and marketers recognize this with 51.9% of them believing video to be the type of content that has the best ROI. Image recognition is also possible in real time. As social media is constant, it's important that the technology you are using has the ability to detect images and videos in real time, otherwise a lot of data will be lost.
5. How can marketers use image recognition to their advantage?
Marketers can leverage image recognition technology through the ways in which they nurture their customers and market their brands. The technology itself can provide them with valuable insights which they can utilize when formulating strategies and campaigns. You can read our previous blog-post to find out how marketers can benefit from image recognition in more detail.
6. What happens if a social media profile is private?
If a social media account is set to private as opposed to public, usually the privacy terms and conditions of the platform mean that insights aren’t obtainable from that account. Image recognition companies cannot violate terms of service. However, the majority of insights that brands gather are from influential and popular accounts rather than from private users.
According to Huffington Post, only 11.8% of Twitter users have private accounts. So not many people opt for a privatized social media experience. Text-based Social Listening tools have already been analyzing data from shared and public accounts, so image-based social analytics should broaden and align with that analysis.
7. Can image recognition detect text-based logos?
Depending on the technology, it is possible for image recognition to effectively and efficiently detect text-based logos. As long as the technology you are using is advanced enough, text-based images should be easily detectable. The reason why some technologies cannot detect these logos is because the textual aspects of a logo are much more difficult to distinguish from regular text.
A simpler logo, such as Nike’s is also difficult to detect because there isn’t anything overtly distinct about it. With a more intricate logo, it’s much easier to identify because there are unique and distinguishable characteristics about its design. Sometimes the logo can be very small within the image which can also cause recognition problems. However, if the technology you are using is of good quality, then there should be few issues when it comes to detecting text-based, simple, and smaller logos.
8. Do I need image recognition?
If you need more complete data and more rounded insights, then yes. If you are unsure about whether or not you or your company would fully benefit from image recognition technology, try out our free gold standard test. The value of this type of technology is important, so ensuring that customers will gain something valuable from using the product is vital. Social analytics companies can certainly benefit from using image recognition technology as it will greatly assist their customers when it comes to gathering brand insights.
If you try out our free test, so you can see for yourself if the technology would be useful to you.