Pongr Poised to Help Brands Monetize Consumer Photos Shared On Social Networks...and Beyond

-- Leading photo-marketing platform, Pongr acquires broad IP portfolio from Sightec, to transform the way brands identify and engage with photo-minded consumers

BOSTON, Feb. 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Photos are king when it comes to social media, with 56% of internet users sharing photos or video online, according to a recent Pew Internet study. However even the largest brands and technology players struggle to monetize the pictures people post to places like Twitter, Facebook®, Instagram, tumblr and Pinterest. Leading photo-marketing platform, Pongr is today announcing a game-changing acquisition of a broad IP portfolio from Sightec, an Israeli computer vision R&D company, a deal designed to alter the way brands leverage the ever-expanding amount of photos shared around the world.

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Cementing category leadership while significantly expanding Pongr's current IP and software product suite, the move enables Pongr to offer breakthrough image enhancing and analysis solutions that can detect people and objects within images at groundbreaking new levels. These solutions will help brands uncover highly relevant advertising and marketing opportunities, gain actionable consumer insights, and create opportunities for instant social and mobile engagement with consumers.

"Billions of photos are shared by consumers every month, many of which contain brands or products consumers love or want, yet they remain one of the most underutilized and non-monetized aspects of marketing, especially within the social and mobile space," said Pongr CEO and Co-founder Jamie Thompson. "The addition of Sightec's world-class scientists and technology will enable us to unlock huge value hidden within photos at tremendous scale and accuracy and give brands engagement opportunities they've never had before."

Originally developed for military security camera systems, Sightec's super-resolution technology is capable of improving image quality 10X over typical image enhancement results. It can also detect people and objects within images regardless if they are in the foreground or background. This level of detection requires only 3-5 pixels vs. the 400+ required by competitive systems in use today. These significant advantages are achieved through Sightec's mathematical approach to super-resolution, a contrarian position within the field of computer vision. Pongr will be tuning the technology to make it work for brands and products, and adapting the subpixel registration capabilities for wide-scale brand image detection.

When applied to the Pongr platform, the technology becomes especially potent for matching mobile and desktop advertisements with the contextual relevance of photos consumers take with their mobile devices and share across social networks. The technology will immediately be factored into Pongr's existing direct-response photo marketing platform, increasing the ability to detect the presence of brands, sentiment and sharability.

"We look forward to helping the world's top brands leverage the power of pictures and videos through the use of Pongr. Our technology paired with the Pongr platform can 'see' brands and products within photos that in the past may have been deemed undetectable because the items were either out of the photo's focal point or the overall image quality was too poor," said Sightec CEO Dr. Joseph Francos. Dr. Francos will assume the role of Chief Computer Vision Scientist at Pongr.

Pongr will begin offering the new Sightec technology as part of its direct-response marketing platform immediately. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.

About Pongr
Based in Boston, Pongr is the leading photo marketing platform for the visual world. Through the use of patented image recognition technology, we unlock the value within consumer-shared photos and videos and transform it into actionable intelligence and instant social and mobile engagement opportunities. Companies of all sizes use our platform to power a variety of photo-based marketing activities including; direct-response programs, loyalty and social campaigns, multi-channel promotions and shopper marketing initiatives. Learn more at:
http://corp.pongr.com

About Sightec
Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sightec is a computer vision R&D company focusing on the analysis of video and still images at the subpixel level. Sightec tackles traditional image recognition problems with alternative methodologies and solutions based on mathematical models – contrary to the industry-wide approach of searching for matching "landmarks." Founder and CEO Dr. Joseph Francos is also a professor at Ben Gurion University in Be'er Sheva, in charge of the signal processing track of the Electrical Engineering Department.