Ranker has made a profitable business of crowdsourcing lists and rankings on everything from action movies to ice cream flavors. Now, it wants to sell that data.
The Los Angeles-based media company announced this week it has surpassed 1 billion user votes for its lists and with that data will launch Ranker Insights, a new service targeting the marketers, studios and entertainment platforms vying for consumers' attention in a crowded online space.
What Makes Ranker's Data Unique
<p>The value of Ranker's data, the company says, starts with its volume. Those 1 billion votes and counting – which imply three votes per second over the company's 10 years of operating – come from over 70 million users. 40 million users visit the site on a monthly basis, according to the company. Voters spend over 4 minutes per visit and vote about 11 times per list.</p><p>"A lot of TV networks and studios, pay-TV and video on-demand platforms are not yet fully leveraging the power of data," Yon said.</p><p>Although the company's focus has been on building up rankings around entertainment – TV, movies, music and celebrities – the site also includes subjects like food, sports, fashion and history. There's data on favorite skin care products, grapefruit drinks and beaches in Hawaii. This variety and volume means Ranker can extract insights based on correlations.</p><p>"You start to build a connected graph that's not just about people's TV preferences but interconnected preferences," Benson said. For example, discovering the kind of music that fans of "Breaking Bad" enjoy, or the type of car to which "Call of Duty" fans aspire.</p><p>Building upon its data collection, <a href="https://dot.la/watchworthy-ranker-app-2645570752.html" target="_self">the company launched Watchworthy in March</a>. It poured a "7-figure investment" into the app and directed most of the company's product and engineering resources there over the past year. And it's paid off. The app had 13,000 downloads in its first month and Benson said it could ultimately drive half of Ranker's direct sales. Already Watchworthy has attracted some of Ranker's biggest advertising deals to date, Benson added.<br></p>Want to watch the next season of "Stranger Things" when it comes out? I know I do, so I pay for Netflix each month. "Jack Ryan"? That's over on Amazon Prime. "The Handmaid's Tale"? Hulu. If you think Picard was the best Star Trek captain, you'll need CBS All Access – but at this point in your budget you may be choosing between that or "The Mandalorian," for which you'll need Disney+. And let's not forget the new content exclusive to HBO Max, Apple TV+, BET+, and NBC Peacock.
Most of us are aware of the recent fragmentation of content across subscription streaming services, and we've either had to make some hard choices about which content we will watch or else we're now paying bills for streaming services that resemble the bundled cable bills we paid before we cut the cord. And it's not just the cost that bothers us. When nearly everything was on one of just a few services, we knew where to find it. Now, keeping track of which services have which content – and whether we currently have that service – seems like a job in itself.
Watchworthy's app is one of several trying to make it easier for viewers to find the content they're looking for, across services.
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What Should I Watch? Ranker's New App Aims to Make it Easier to Choose Across Viewing Platforms
Ranker, an L.A.-based digital media firm boasting 40 million monthly visitors, on Monday morning released Watchworthy, a service that uses machine learning to give users bespoke what-to-watch recommendations. Watchworthy will initially be available only on the iOS app store, but Chief Executive Clark Benson told dot.LA that the company plans to roll it out to Android and connected devices like Roku and Apple TV later this year.
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