PopSugar knows you were checking out those above the knee boots the Kardashians wear - and it's selling that info to advertisers
- PopSugar's new data and analytics tool RetailRank is designed to help marketers track what products are resonating in social media - particularly Instagram.
- Marketers can use RetailRank to figure out which influencers to partner with and which products to push.
- The offering is being offered to the PopSugar's top advertisers as part of what the company tries to build out more consultative/agency like services.
PopSugar knows you spent part of Black Friday posting or sharing pics of those above-the-knee boots popularized by the Kardashians. It also knows that that cardigan sweaters were in, and day dresses out, while interest in sunglasses remains solid despite the changing weather.
PopSugar also knows that Nordstrom's teen-aimed BP brand and H&M were generating noteworthy social media chatter - while Nieman Marcus lost some heat. And the publisher was able to identify that influencers like Alyson Hayley (400,000-plus Instagram followers) and Adaatude (nearly 400,000 Instagram followers) were generating chatter for marketers like Gucci.
How? The women-focused web publisher has recently rolled out RetailRank, a proprietary analytics and data tool that aims to gauge what products are popping in social media conversations and what influencers are talking about. It's the latest example of media companies pushing into territory that goes beyond simply selling ad space.
Specifically, RetailRank pulls data from the posts 20,000 top Instagram influencers within the fashion, beauty and home categories. It then crunches which of these Instagram posts are generating likes, shares and comments and scores each influencer.
Here's the kind of data RetailRank was able to generate during the shopping-heavy Thanksgiving weekend.
Product categories that resonated on Instagram
Top retail influencers
Black Friday was good for Nordstrom, at least among Instagram influencers
Of course, lots of publishers and third-party data vendors claim to offer some kind of read on what people are talking about in social media. But in this case, PopSugar says its product is designed to help gauge what's actually driving people to make purchases.
That's because, like many publishers, PopSugar is under heavy pressure to prove that its ads actually lead to sales, especially as giants like Facebook and Google boast of increasing prowess on this front.
According to chief revenue officer Geoff Schiller, 40% of PopSugar's advertising revenue is now tied to retail, and that category is growing at a rate of 25% a year.
Thus, PopSugar is starting to use data from RetailRank to help it decide which editorial topics it should double down on. If something is gaining traction on Instagram, the publisher's staff can churn out "shoppable content" fast.
It may even sell some of this trend data to hedge funds looking to figure out what fashion lines or product categories are about to take off.
But ultimately, the company sees RetailRank as a proprietary tool that helps its biggest advertisers get more strategic about which products they push in digital advertising - on PopSugar's site and beyond. Right now, the data is only available to marketers that make a significant long-term spending commitment to the site.
For example, these marketers might use the data to figure out which digital influencers they should partner with. And it gives them insight into what competitors' brands are resonating.
"This is an evolution for us," said Schiller, who likened what PopSugar is offering to the kinds of services that digital ad agencies provide. "We need to prove that we can help drive sales. So we're starting to move away from being a media vendor. We think that brands don't really have this insight, so we can bring that to them."
Especially insights related to Kardashian footwear.