--- title: Digital Marketing Companies Now Using Photos From Instagram, Pinterest description: Digital marketing companies analyze photos posted on Instagram, Flickr and other sites to find trends and insights for advertisers. canonical: https://time.com/3490124/marketing-instagram-seflies/ author: Tessa Berenson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-10T17:16:50.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:03:22.756Z og:title: A Marketing Firm Could Be Looking At Your Selfies og:description: Your pictures may have more useful data in them than you think. og:url: https://time.com/3490124/marketing-instagram-seflies/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Marketing Firm Could Be Looking At Your Selfies twitter:description: Your pictures may have more useful data in them than you think. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # A Marketing Firm Could Be Looking at Your Selfies > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement.  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Oct 10, 2014 5:16 PM UTC  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Oct 10, 2014 5:16 PM UTC That picture you posted on Instagram from the beach last week might have more useful data in it than you think. Where are you? What do you have in your hand? Do you look happy or sad? What are you wearing? These are all questions that can help advertisers target their marketing to consumers, so a crop of new digital marketing companies has begun analyzing photos posted on Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest and other photo-sharing sites to look for these trends and insights. Ditto Labs Inc. uses photo-scanning software to locate logos in these personal photos (is the subject wearing a North Face jacket? Or holding a can of Coca-Cola?) and look at the context in which these brands are being used. For example, [according to the _Wall Street Journal_](http://online.wsj.com/articles/smile-marketing-firms-are-mining-your-selfies-1412882222), Kraft Food Groups Inc. pays Ditto Labs to find their logos on Instagram and Tumblr. Ditto Labs then analyzes trends like what people drink when they’re eating Kraft products and how happy they appear to be. They are then placed into categories like “foodie” and “sports fan” based on how they’re eating their Kraft food. Digital marketing firms use personal photos in other ways, too; Piquora Inc. stores massive amounts of these images over a few months to look at trends over time. This new brand of marketing research serves as a fresh reminder that the photos we put online are public, and once we click ‘post’ we lose control over who sees them and what they’re used for. “This is an area that could be ripe for commercial exploitation and predatory marketing,” Joni Lupovitz, vice president at children’s privacy advocacy group Common Sense Media, [told the _Journal_](http://online.wsj.com/articles/smile-marketing-firms-are-mining-your-selfies-1412882222). “Just because you happen to be in a certain place or captured an image, you might not understand that could be used to build a profile of you online.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3490124/marketing-instagram-seflies/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3490124/marketing-instagram-seflies/"},"headline":"A Marketing Firm Could Be Looking at Your Selfies","datePublished":"2014-10-10T17:16:50.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:03:22.756Z","description":"Big brand advertisers want to find their logos in your pictures","url":"https://time.com/3490124/marketing-instagram-seflies/","keywords":["Living","Tech","Internet","Advertising","marketing","Instagram"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tessa Berenson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3490124/marketing-instagram-seflies/","name":"A Marketing Firm Could Be Looking at Your Selfies"}}]}] ```