Frequently Asked Questions

Blinkfire is an AI-powered sponsorship intelligence platform for sports, media, and entertainment. It uses computer vision, machine learning and generative AI to detect brands, logos and physical assets across social, digital, web, app, broadcast, streaming and in-venue media, then values that exposure in near real time so rights holders, brands, agencies and media companies can measure and grow the return on their partnerships.

Three things. First, coverage of the whole sponsorship lifecycle, not just the end of it: Blinkfire measures the inventory you have, tracks progress against what was sold, and produces the recap for both rights holders and sponsors, across digital, social, broadcast and in-venue. Second, and most important, the results are auditable. Blinkfire reports on a post-by-post basis for digital and social media, so actual results can be checked line by line against what was expected. Most tools in the category deliver a high-level KPI recap whose composition cannot be inspected. You get a number, not the evidence behind it. Third, Blinkfire owns its AI and computer vision. The detection and valuation models are proprietary, built and trained in-house on Blinkfire's own dataset and protected by its own patents, which is what makes that underlying detail available to show you in the first place.

Blinkfire was founded in 2014 by Steve Olechowski and Juan Luis Hortelano.

Blinkfire is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, at 560 W Washington Blvd, Suite 400, with a second office in Valencia, Spain.

Sports and entertainment properties, brands, media companies and agencies. Blinkfire has hundreds of customers across six continents, including leagues, teams, federations, colleges and NIL programs. Solution overviews are published for rights holders, brands, agencies, colleges and NIL and media companies.

To revolutionize the sports, media and entertainment industries with AI-driven business analytics, redefining sponsorship and media valuation using AI, big data and real-time analytics so partners can make smarter decisions and drive growth.

More than 500 million posts across social media and broadcast.

No. Blinkfire works across sports, media and entertainment. Sports is the largest category, but the same detection and valuation technology applies anywhere a brand appears in media, including esports, music, influencers and media companies measuring their own content.

Blinkfire Analytics for sponsorship measurement, valuation, reporting and insights; Blinkfire Inventory Manager, a sponsorship CRM covering inventory, deals, fulfillment and ticketing intelligence; Blinkfire Broadcast & Streaming for TV, streaming, audiences and earned media; Blinkfire Benchmarking for league-wide comparative data; Blinkfire Trends for real-time leaderboards and cross-platform social tracking; talent and influencer tools for discovery and monitoring; and the Blinkfire Agentic Suite, domain-specific AI agents that run workflows and deliver ready-to-share reports.

The core product. It automates measurement of physical and digital asset exposure and media value across social, digital, TV and streaming, using a transparent valuation engine based on programmatic advertising rates. It also surfaces audience insights and demographic data, and produces partner-ready reporting in real time.

A full sponsorship inventory management and fulfillment CRM. It tracks inventory, campaigns, deals and deliverables; provides proof of performance in real time; reports pricing analytics including average asset sales price and sell-through rates; and paces assets and campaigns automatically against contractual targets for impressions, engagements and valuation. It covers everything from social and digital inventory to physical and custom assets, and includes a Salesforce integration.

Yes. Inventory Manager predicts rate-card values by learning from historical rate-card and pricing patterns, and uses AI and machine learning to predict the price to charge based on projected KPIs and ad rates.

A part of Inventory Manager that connects in-venue attendance to sponsorship exposure. It links verified attendance data to sponsorship placements to measure in-venue exposure, uses section-level insight to show where fans sit and which assets deliver value, and combines ticketing, inventory and media performance in one view. Blinkfire is an official Ticketmaster Nexus partner, so teams can connect ticketing data directly.

An end-to-end broadcast, TV and streaming offering covering audience insights, sponsorship valuation and earned media. It provides whistle-to-whistle coverage of in-game broadcast exposure, an AI audience engine combining data inventory with machine learning models for precise viewership numbers, automatic asset-level detection of partnership assets, and TV earned media tracking across more than 2,000 channels, from national sports programming to local news.

Apples-to-apples comparison of owned and earned sponsorship performance by brand and asset across major sports leagues, media companies and influencers. Teams use it for competitive analysis when selling new deals or renewing existing ones, to assess property performance across assets and brands, and to benchmark specific assets against other teams and comparable markets.

Yes. Blinkfire's talent tools let you search and prospect across social platforms using filters such as follower range, influencer type and platform focus; AI-generated tags classify talent automatically based on content and engagement patterns; you can build and track talent lists to monitor potential partnerships; and per-influencer traffic can be measured with bespoke link tracking. Blinkfire also scores talent for brand safety using social content and news mentions.

Yes. Blinkfire tracks athletes' public social posts, detects sponsor exposure in images, videos, and captions, and values each post the same way it values a team's content. Tags, @mentions and collabs get full value by default. Blinkfire also has a rate card generator to help athletes and agencies better understand the value of their social media.

Real-time leaderboards and cross-platform tracking across the major social networks, for watching how properties, athletes and brands are performing right now, not in last month's report.

Domain-specific sports and entertainment AI agents that run the workflow, not another dashboard to dig through. You ask a question and the agent picks the dataset, sponsor and date range, runs multi-step workflows across social, broadcast, streaming and in-venue data, and returns output that is partner-ready: benchmarked, sourced and shareable. Blinkfire's MCP server extends the same idea to assistants your team already uses.

A managed service for organizations that want valuation work done for them instead of running it in-house. Details are on the Valuation Service page.

Most providers use media equivalency: what it would have cost to buy the same exposure as paid media. Blinkfire starts with how the post performed (engagements, impressions or views) and multiplies that by the matching ad rate: CPE, CPM or CPV. By default, Blinkfire uses CPE, but has options to customize or use real-time ad rates. Each brand then gets its share based on how it appeared. For images, a brand's logo size matters, as the Strength Meter™ determines if it is visible on each device per social platform. If a logo meets the size requirements for all devices, the brand receives full value for that post. For social videos, logo size and clarity, time on screen, and when the brand appeared (beginning, middle, and end due to audience retention data) are factored into the brand valuation. Hashtags and @mentions can receive the full post value or the percentage of a post's value assigned can be adjusted. Each detection also records which asset the brand appeared on and whether the exposure was active or passive, so the result is a value per post, per video, per broadcast and per asset, not one blended estimate.

Earned media value is what an entity "earns" from content published on channels it doesn't own. For example, when a team's game-winning shot is posted by ESPN on X and by House of Highlights on Instagram, every sponsor visible in that clip gets exposure the team didn't publish itself. Other earned media comes from players, other teams, influencers and podcasts. Blinkfire values earned media the same way it values owned content.

Because social and digital ads are bought and sold differently than TV ads. A valuation method built around standard-sized TV spots cannot account for newer digital formats and the range of devices people watch on, so those media need earned-media valuations calculated from a live data flow, not a fixed rate card.

Blinkfire's AI and computer vision detection technology, the engine that detects brands, assets, and scenes in images and video. Its Visibility Filter judges whether a logo is recognizable across dimensions like occlusion, blurriness and contrast, and its Size Filter accounts for how much of the frame the logo occupies, since size drives how effective the exposure is.

Blinkfire's device visibility model. It uses AI and computer vision to measure how large a brand's logo appears in the content and predict whether it is big enough to be seen on each device people view content on: desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone. Logo size is what matters, not legibility. Device usage for the platform and audience is then applied, so brand value is attributed proportionally to the share of viewers on devices where the logo was large enough to see. A logo that meets the size requirement for every device earns the full post value; one large enough only for desktop earns a fraction of it. The Strength Meter™ is applied by default and can be turned off in your valuation settings.

A big one. A logo that's large enough for every device (smartphone, tablet, laptop, and desktop) earns the full post value. If it's only large enough for desktop, it earns less due to the small audience that uses social media on desktop. A logo sized for laptop or tablet but not phones earns a partial share the same way.

They are the standard ways paid media is bought: cost per engagement, cost per thousand impressions and cost per view. Blinkfire uses CPE by default for social posts, and CPM for Instagram Stories, broadcast, web and app. You can switch social valuation to CPM or CPV, set custom rates, or use real-time ad rates.

Baseline CPEs, CPMs and CPVs are variable and derived from four inputs: test campaigns run through social media auctions using real audiences for representative customers; Blinkfire's Real-Time Ad Rates Engine; insight shared by partner agencies in the sports and entertainment industries; and direct relationships with the social platforms. Rates vary by platform and content type. The Real-Time Ad Rates Engine and Auction Price Database track live ad-buying rates across the major social platforms, filterable by network, date range, CPX type and country. Customers can use the baseline settings, substitute their own custom values, or switch to real-time ad rates.

Yes. If an account is authorized and credentialed in the Blinkfire platform, private metrics such as impressions and video views can be used to value content, not just publicly visible engagement.

Active exposure is when a brand is mentioned, tagged or hashtagged, or when the brand's digital overlay is placed on the content. Passive exposure is when a brand is visible but not mentioned, or appears on an asset like a uniform, pole pad or step and repeat. Blinkfire classifies both and reports them separately. The classification is covered by US patent application US20230119208A1.

Blinkfire tracks five types of brand exposure: visual exposure, where AI and computer vision detects the logo in a photo or video; @mentions; hashtags; branded content tags; and collaborations. Visual exposure is detected even when the brand isn't referenced in the post copy. Brand engagement counts all public interactions on posts where the brand has exposure.

Yes. Every valuation is built from individual detections (each post, each video, each broadcast exposure), and each one records the brand, asset, scene, exposure type, size, clarity and device visibility. You can open any total, trace it back to the posts behind it, and compare actual results with what was sold, asset by asset.

Blinkfire is an always-on platform with minimal time lag. Direct integration with social platform APIs and a vertically integrated in-house AI stack mean data and insight arrive in near real time. Exposure and valuation update as media publishes and as broadcasts air, not in a monthly batch, and valuation settings are updated continuously instead of once a year.

Yes. Blinkfire values any boosted social posts (organic posts that have been promoted) and dark posts (paid ads running through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or X's Ads Manager). Paid posts come in when your ad accounts are connected to Blinkfire. Ads are left out of totals by default, and you can include them whenever you want.

Brand presence in an image is binary: the brand is either detected as present or it isn't. If BrandSpotter™ recognizes the logo as visible enough to affect brand lift, the brand receives the post valuation calculated from engagements or impressions multiplied by the applicable CPE or CPM, mimicking what it would cost to buy that many engagements. The Strength Meter™ then attributes that value proportionally by device visibility.

A brand detected in video receives a discounted share of the potential post value, which itself derives from engagements, impressions or video views multiplied by the applicable CPE, CPM or CPV. The brand's share depends on five factors: time on screen, total duration of the video, a timeline appearance discount reflecting whether the brand appeared at the beginning, middle or end, screen-share percentage from logo clarity and size, and audience retention data layered into visibility.

By default, it receives the full post value. When a brand is given exposure through an @mention, an official hashtag, a branded content tag, an Instagram collaboration post or an "in partnership with" tag on Facebook or Instagram, Blinkfire treats that as full sponsorship exposure regardless of logo size, even if no logo appears in the image or video. The percentage of post value assigned to @mentions and hashtags can be adjusted for your account. For example, one customer assigns 50% of post value to @mentions and 25% to hashtags.

Yes. When no brand is given exposure either visually or textually, Blinkfire still applies a post value using the CPX configured in your valuation settings. That makes it possible to see what your content is worth independent of who is sponsoring it.

Every enclosure is processed and valued the same way. In a carousel, a brand detected in the sixth image earns on the same basis as one detected in the fourth. A mixed media post containing both images and video has each enclosure processed on the rules for its own type, with brand value assigned wherever applicable.

On a media equivalency basis using CPM, because a Story is interstitial and promoted Stories can only be purchased by impressions. A CPE-based value wouldn't reflect how that inventory is bought.

By default, brands receive the full post value in text posts, since a mention in text is unambiguous exposure. Text posts with no brand exposure are still valued using the configured CPX for that platform and content type.

By integrating with Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics and other web or app analytics providers. Web content is valued from page views against a default or custom CPM; app content from in-app impressions against a default or custom CPM. Both defaults are configurable.

Blinkfire applies default or custom CPMs based on the visibility and placement of in-stadium signage, determined by its own AI and computer vision, and connects in-venue attendance to that exposure through a proprietary model. Its official Ticketmaster Nexus partnership lets teams connect verified attendance data directly.

On a media equivalency basis. The CPM used is the rate for a 30-second ad spot, combined with viewership data and brand detection results to determine viewership exposure time. That exposure time is compared against an advertising frequency cap, then discounted for size, clarity and a passive-exposure percentage to produce the final valuation. The default rate is adjustable, and a dynamic CPM option varies the rate by day and time of broadcast, so a Saturday-evening window is not valued identically to a Wednesday afternoon.

Viewer time, brand duration, brand valuation and logo impressions, plus a brand timeline highlighting each specific exposure and its value across the broadcast, not just one headline number for the whole game.

Blinkfire supports 24 social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Threads, Twitch, Douyin, Toutiao, Sina Weibo, WeChat, Line, VK, Huya, BiliBili and Giphy. It also tracks web and app platforms, streaming and OTT, broadcast television, and in-stadium and in-venue media.

Brand and sponsor logos across tens of thousands of marks; physical and digital assets including LED boards, uniforms, backdrops and equipment; team crests and badges as distinct from sponsor logos; products, including unbranded items identifiable by signature pattern or design; active versus passive exposure; content categories; campaigns; and scene and context, with more than 100 generic, sport-specific and custom scene types trained in the platform. Large language models analyze captions, on-screen text and metadata alongside the visual detection. Blinkfire processes every frame of a broadcast and produces a brand timeline.

Blinkfire's proprietary dataset comes from more than 500 partners, not web scrapes. It includes over 500 million social posts, over 100 million brand logos and over 50 million annotated objects, with 99.4% annotation accuracy.

Yes. Blinkfire publishes league and property reports and case studies on the Resources hub and the Blinkfire blog, plus public rankings at music.blinkfire.com and influencers.blinkfire.com.

Artificial intelligence, computer vision and generative AI models, applied to social, web, app, broadcast, streaming and stadium media, on a vertically integrated stack. The Technology page covers the pipeline in more detail.

Blinkfire's model routing layer: one intelligent pipeline that selects the right model for every frame, instead of running a single general-purpose model across every sport, channel and image type.

Brand and asset detection, scene detection, active vs passive exposure classification, image similarity matching, TV audience prediction and inventory pricing prediction. AI also powers the rate card generator, the Agentic Suite and the MCP connector. See the Technology page for more.

Blinkfire's computer vision, brand detection and valuation models are designed, trained and implemented in-house by its own computer vision team, on its own proprietary dataset, and its patent portfolio was developed in-house with no reliance on third parties for IP.

Because it determines what you can see and what can be changed. Detection can be tuned to a specific sport, asset or logo variant; methodology can be explained, not deferred to a vendor; and every underlying detection is available to report on, which is what makes post-by-post auditing possible.

Yes. Blinkfire has a portfolio of granted and pending US patents covering detection, valuation and annotation. Granted and published filings include US20160189200A1 (scoring image engagement in digital media), US10762374B2 (high accuracy image identification), US20180349726A1 (logo image identification), US20260057651A1 (intelligent cascade auto-review), US20230206631A1 (real-time media valuation) and US20230119208A1 (sponsorship exposure metrics). Full abstracts and links are on the patent portfolio page.

Through a patent-pending automated cascade review system that classifies and annotates images, video and metadata through successive classifier stages which approve or reject each tag. Those results then train the computer vision and machine learning models, so review output improves model quality instead of being discarded. Blinkfire's annotated dataset carries 99.4% annotation accuracy.

Yes. Detection matches on geometric relationships between key points, not straight pixel comparison, and models are trained on blurred variations of known marks, which is what allows small, angled, low-contrast or partly occluded logos to be found. The Visibility Filter then judges whether that detection was recognizable enough to count. This is the subject of patents US10762374B2 and US20180349726A1.

Yes, alongside computer vision. LLMs handle caption, text and metadata analysis, earned-media classification, sentiment analysis, talent classification and scene understanding, and they power the Agentic Suite, the in-platform assistant and the MCP server that lets external assistants query your data in plain language.

Blinkfire publishes an AI usage policy at llms.txt. Indexing, search, summarization, question answering and retrieval-augmented generation are permitted with attribution to "Source: Blinkfire Analytics"; training models on raw content, republishing or reselling it, and imitating Blinkfire's brand voice are not.

Yes. The Blinkfire Reporting API is a REST API returning sponsorship, valuation and brand exposure data as JSON, documented for ease of integration. It is available to actively licensed customers with API access approved, under a separate API Terms of Service.

Social platform APIs directly; web and app analytics through Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics and other providers; verified ticketing and attendance data, including through Blinkfire's official Ticketmaster Nexus partnership; Salesforce, for sponsorship inventory via Inventory Manager; and your own sales, CRM or ticketing exports when you want them joined to exposure data.

Yes, into both, as tables your analysts can query and join to ticketing, CRM and purchase data inside your own environment. Blinkfire also publishes datasets on Databricks Marketplace.

Yes, all three. Blinkfire maintains a Tableau Web Data Connector and a Looker Studio connector, and Power BI, Looker, Qlik Sense and Domo all connect through the Reporting API.

Yes. Blinkfire's Model Context Protocol server lets AI assistants including Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot query your licensed Blinkfire data in plain language, respecting the permissions your team already has in the platform.

Yes. Blinkfire supports scheduled CSV and Parquet exports on a recurring basis, alongside on-demand exports from the platform, for teams that want files instead of a live connection.

Yes. Blinkfire Inventory Manager includes a Salesforce integration that syncs partnership asset inventory from rate card through fulfillment.

Yes, and you do not need a data team to do it. If you have one, Blinkfire lands in your warehouse and your analysts join it themselves. If you don't, send Blinkfire a sales or ticketing export and we model it against your exposure data for you.

Then you never have to touch an API. Reports, dashboards and scheduled exports cover the large majority of customers.

You can start a free trial, or schedule a demo to have someone walk through the platform against your own properties.

Pricing depends on which products you use and the scope of properties, channels and brands being measured. Talk to us for a quote.

Actively licensed Blinkfire customers with data access approved for a supported use case, governed by a separate API Terms of Service.

Access to data in Blinkfire follows your organization's license and permissions, and API, warehouse and MCP access all inherit those same permissions and never widen them.

The legal and privacy pages, with API use governed additionally by the API Terms of Service.

Through the contact page, or by requesting a demo if you would rather start with a conversation about your own properties.