The growing popularity of sharing photos on social media sites and mobile apps presents a unique internet marketing opportunity. Many marketers are capitalizing on this trend. For instance, Lipton Brisk iced tea teamed up with Instagram and organized a campaign during the SXSW conferences and festivals 2011 based on this theme.
Some marketers like Pixazza have taken the trend even further. The company inserts in-image ads in standard photos. As of March, the start-up’s ads had been viewed by around 70 million unique users.
In order to make the most of the trend, marketers need to understand the pattern of customer participation. According to Pixable’s January 2011 data obtained by analyzing 100,000 Pixable Photofeed Facebook users, women are almost twice as likely as men to upload photos and be tagged. Women uploaded 347 photos and were tagged in 73, while men uploaded 179 and were tagged in 35.
The data also indicated that the highest percentage of users uploaded photos on weekends. 16.8% and 16.9% photos were uploaded on Saturday and Sunday respectively, while 14.7%, 12.5%, 12.3%, 12.7% and 14.1% images were uploaded from Monday to Friday respectively.
On the whole, every month around 6 billion photos are uploaded on Facebook. With the increase in popularity of photo sharing on social networks as well as mobiles, the figure is likely to grow rapidly. Growing smart phone penetration will further boost the trend. Marketers can capitalize on the trend by aligning their strategies according to the photo sharing behavior of their target customers.