BlueOcean, provider of a platform for analyzing brand sentiment, today announced plans to release an application programming interface (API) that will let third-party applications access analytics data. The API will be available later this year.

The immediate goal is to make it easier for financial services firms to, for example, employ a public BlueScore API to incorporate brand sentiment analytics created in real time within their financial forecasts, BlueOcean cofounder Grant McDougall said.

A wide net

The BlueOcean platform aggregates data from hundreds of sources, including social media platforms, business and financial data, forums, product review sites, and website traffic. The company then analyzes this data using a set of proprietary sentiment algorithms it has developed. The Brand Genome at the core of the platform is based on a data collection method that is enabled by machine learning algorithms and other forms of AI using various psychological models. That Brand Genome platform can be accessed today via a graphical interface dubbed Brand Navigator. All told, the platform incorporates more than 1,100 types of data inputs, McDougall said.

This approach allows organizations to evaluate brand data and consumer sentiment continuously in a way that enables them to identify market shifts before they occur, McDougall said. This analytics capability helps organizations make better strategic decisions about where to allocate resources to counter rivals, McDougall added.

Organizations that make use of the BlueOcean platform include Microsoft, Google, Bloomingdale’s, Alen Air, Cisco, Alteryx, Juniper Networks, Panda Express, Bose, Smirnoff, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. BlueOcean claims the brands it tracks on behalf of customers have a combined stock value of more than $18 trillion. The BlueScore API provides access to time-series data that enables financial institutions to continuously track specified investment categories, such as food and beverage, automotive, health care, energy, and computer software in a way that aligns with how they invest in baskets of stocks, McDougall added.

Shifting tastes

Sentiment analytics is an inexact science, but it’s possible to detect shifts in opinions as tastes change. For example, the level of online chatter about a new sneaker could have implications for all manufacturers of footwear.

More troubling but equally important are disinformation campaigns that, for example, employ deep fakes to drive the stock value of an organization up or down based on speculative investments made by unknown parties. Financial services firms these days also want to track online conversations that might be encouraging people to invest in a certain stock that would adversely affect the investment strategy of, for example, a hedge fund.

Many organizations are also a lot more politically active, and the public may be more politically engaged. An executive’s statement about new legislation might have a measurable impact on the perception of a brand, something that needs to be closely monitored.

There is no shortage of platforms for running sentiment analytics applications on the market. But organizations need to determine to what degree they prefer to deploy and maintain their own sentiment analytics platform versus consuming analytics-as-a-service from an external provider. The research firm Industry Research recently predicted that the global sentiment analytics market size will drive $6.35 billion in revenue by 2027, up from $3.7 billion in 2020 for a 7.9% compound annual growth rate.

These days, each brand has a distinct personality that organizations have spent millions, sometimes even billions, carefully cultivating and guard jealously. And in a world where opinions expressed online can create a crisis for a company seemingly overnight, there’s a clear need to proactively engage critical commentary ahead of any firestorm.