Crimson Hexagon unveils first image analysis beyond logo identification for deepest consumer insight through social data.

Coca-Cola and McDonalds are the most commonly paired brands on Instagram, according to Crimson Hexagon which has mined its database of one trillion social posts to identify common image trends.

This analysis comes as the company announces new image analytics capabilities to help brands unlock insights from photos.

Who, how, where

85% of images on social media lack any text reference to the brands pictured in them, so brands often miss out on the full context of consumer social conversations. With Crimson’s new image analytics capabilities, brands can learn who, how and where consumers engage with their products.

Crimson Hexagon also revealed that:

· Puppies are the most photographed animal on Instagram with 37 million puppies per month
· Every month 48 million selfies are share on Instagram
· 25% of posts on Social media are tagged Not Safe For Work
· There are almost 4x as many vistas posted on social media as there are selfies
· In one month there were just over 1.4 Million visual mentions of Avocado Toast on Instagram.
· It’s five o’clock somewhere. New York City posts the most drinking photos during work hours.

By applying Crimson Hexagon’s analytics engine to images to recognise scenes, objects, actions, faces and logos, brands learn who, how and where consumers engage with their products. Far beyond what they can achieve with simple logo identification, brands can analyse images to tailor marketing campaigns, drive product enhancements, identify influencers and more.

Social media users share more than three billion images each day. When brands rely solely on textual analysis, they miss out on the full context of consumer social conversations, especially since 85 percent of images on social media lack any text reference to the brands pictured in them. As Gartner analysts, Nick Ingelbrecht and Melissa Davis, wrote: “The growth of all types of video/image content is driving demand for improved indexing, content analysis and search capabilities. Internet traffic activity and growth forecasts show a relentless increase in image and video content, with cameras of all types capturing and sending ever-larger volumes of high-definition video.”

Zach Zimmel, director of strategy at Grassriots, said: “Whatever the topic, the language around it is increasingly visual. Before Crimson Hexagon’s image analytics capabilities, we were missing the full picture around what matters, and to whom. Our campaigns, and the causes they support, are the better because of it.”

From calculating the return on sponsorships to spotting alternative product uses to finding affinities between people, objects and scenes, Crimson Hexagon’s image analysis capabilities solve business problems across organisations. Features include image-specific filtering, data visualisations on posts containing images and a multimedia tile view display of analysed posts.

Errol Apostolopoulos, senior VP of product at Crimson Hexagon, said: “The future of content is visual, and brands that rely on logo recognition alone are missing an unwritten part of the conversation: the who, how and where of consumers’ engagement with their products.

“As consumers, especially millennials, continue to create visual content, our system’s machine-learning-based algorithm is well-equipped to ingest, store and classify those images and videos for our clients, so they can get the clearest insights about their customers.”

Crimson Hexagon is a provider of consumer insights from social data to inform strategic enterprise decision-making.