Publisher Spotlight: Syte – The needs of Millennials & Generation Z and the future of visual search

Syte is an AI visual search company that’s aim is to create an easily accessible shopping experience for consumers. We recently caught up with Eliana Atia, Marketing Manager at Syte, to find out more about how their technology works and what are expecting from the future of visual search.

Syte uses AI to provide retailers with a visual search camera button, allowing users to make the visual world shoppable. Can you tell us a bit more about your technology?

With Syte’s visual search camera button, shoppers can search by taking a photo or uploading one from their camera roll and receiving instant results on visually similar or exact items from within the retailers’ inventory.  In addition to making any image of inspiration into an easily accessible shopping experience, Syte empowers shoppers by allowing them to search without knowing the correct terminology for the styles they love, and have the ease of shopping multiple pieces from one photo.

With online retail being one of the fastest growing industries in the world, online retailers need to embrace new technologies to keep pace. What do you think visual search means for the online retailer industry and how does it add value?

Syte enables immediate AI with strong ROI, providing retailers with a visual search camera button that is seamlessly integrated within 24 hours – allowing users to make the visual world shoppable. Millennials and Generation Z are on their phones 6-10 hours a day and within this time 60% is spent on social media, consuming hundreds of images daily. Visual search allows retailers to connect customer inspiration from social media back to their eCommerce store. Due to Amazon’s effect on retail it has become extremely pertinent for brands to create a lasting awareness amongst their shoppers.

Following on from this, how does visual search help publishers to monetise their content?

Syte helps publishers monetize visual assets by allowing every image featured on online publications to become a shoppable experience. Readers can see an item of interest on a featured photo, and instantly receive live shoppable options – providing a dynamic, multi-faceted experience for all readers. Additionally, Syte’s technology eliminates the need to manually tag items with affiliate links.

Do you have any recent case studies of your success working with a retailers?

Glossy wrote a great feature on our work with retailer Boohoo which can be viewed here.

You’ve recently partnered with our publisher Intu. Can you tell us a bit more about this development?

Intu has been a real pleasure to work with. They are a very innovative company, constantly thinking about their customers. Our partnership originally started by providing them with our API. Intu designed their own UX/UI for the shop similar feature – which is doing really well and looks amazing. Since then, our partnership has grown to include more use-cases like our visual search camera button. We are excited to see how we will flourish together.

Be sure to view the article they wrote about our camera button.

Are there any exciting developments in the pipeline for Syte that you’d like to share?

One of the things that makes Syte unique,  is that we are constantly innovating and developing new products. One of our new offerings includes a reverse instagram search which allows you to find outfit inspiration by uploading an image and receiving a shuffle of instagram influencers wearing similar outfits. A fun interactive way to complete your look.

Finally, what can advertisers expect to learn in your talk at Symposium London next month?

Our Co-Founder & CMO’s presentation will focus on Millennials & Generation Z,  their needs, and how visual search fulfills their natural course of action. Soon they will expect to be able to upload an image on every retailers’ website and find what they are searching for.