By It’s time for a new, screenshot-worthy look. It’s time to deliver those key features you’ve been asking us for. It’s time for better data, graphed over time. It’s time for an all-new version of SparkToro.
Today, we’re releasing a massively upgraded, fully-overhauled version of our audience research platform. <Slaps roof of car> This baby’s got so much audience research juice, you’ll never go data-thirsty again. Here, I’ll show you:
The Top 10 New Features in SparkToro’s 2025 Update:
I’m not a big believer in shoving a bunch of extra features into software and assuming it’s an upgrade. So, rather than just list features, I’ll show you why each one makes your marketing work easier, better, faster, and/or more effective.
#1 – Screenshot-Worthy Visuals
Last year, we asked dozens of our customers what they missed most in SparkToro. The top answer was overwhelmingly: “Make the data more screenshot-friendly!”
A lot of folks want to build actionable personas (3min video) with our audience data, and thanks to the help of the very talented Monty Hayton, we’ve made more attractive, distinct, segmented data elements designed for exactly that purpose.
You’ll find a handful of these on the Overview page, but don’t sleep on the individual subsections in the app. Every tab has been designed with visual friendliness in mind; even the lists are more screenshot-adaptable.
What makes this so useful?
No more exporting to Excel and making custom charts just to have something to put in your pitch deck or presentation slides; SparkToro’s now screenshot-friendly so you can look good to your boss, team, or client without hours of extra labor.
#2 – Analyze a URL (not just a website)
For years, folks have asked about analyzing the audience that’s interested in a particular page or section of a site rather than the entire domain. I’m not gonna lie: this was a hard feature to build. Congratulations are due to Casey Henry, who persevered despite months of setbacks and other competing priorities. This feature’s only available to paid accounts (just FYI).
But now, it works! Above, I’m showing an example where I’ve analyzed the visitors interested in Pudding.cool’s interactive Covid Science report from 2021. Given that most of Pudding.cool is about music, film, and pop culture (and appeals largely to men), this analysis does a particularly nice job of showing how we can give accurate data about a URL, unbiased by the domain hosting it.
What makes this so useful?
Segment those audiences. Now you can do audience research on your competitors’ most successful pages and content pieces. You can even analyze the audience for a big media piece from the NYT, WaPo, or Guardian to see who they’re reaching and how you can target that group.
#3 – See Affinity Graphed Over Time
What’s rising in popularity with an audience vs. falling? SparkToro can finally show you this, graphed quarter-over-quarter, for any set of websites (high affinity or hidden gems). We use Datos’ clickstream panel, trended over the last 2 years we’ve had access, to deliver this feature.
I’ll talk about customizability of graphs in a minute, but see those little “x”s; they’ll let you add and remove items on the chart, so you can show off exactly the sites you want for that presentation screenshot 😉
What makes this so useful?
Catch sites that are rising in popularity with an audience, and those that are declining so you can make better choices about where to invest (rather than just going after the highest affinity domains).
#4 – New “Search & AI Tools” Analysis
When we first showed off the ability to identify which search and AI tools were most popular with an audience, folks got real excited. Now, we’ve re-engineered this feature to be more inclusive of other discovery/search platforms (like Wikipedia, Amazon, Reddit, and Pinterest), as well as combining ChatGPT and OpenAI visitors and including more AI tools (like Deepseek).
This chart, too, is customizable so you can show *just* the AI tools, only classic search engines, or any combination you like.
What makes this so useful?
Everyone is asking about AI adoption, and whether their audience is using these tools more/less than average. Now, you can provide the answers your team or client so desperately needs, backed by real, provable data.
#5 – Customizable Charts & Graphs
Awww snap… Edit those charts! Make the perfect screenshot! Do it right in the app!
What makes this so useful?
Forget about copy + pasting to Photoshop just to get the websites, platforms, or networks you want. SparkToro’s new graph visualization features are customizable across the board so you can show the data you want in the reports you build.
#6 – Describe an Audience with Natural Language
Marketer: “Rand, what if my audience doesn’t cleanly fit with people who visit a site, search for a keyword in Google, or have words in their bio?”
Me until today: “I’m really sorry… there’s not a lot we can do for you right now.”
Me, starting right now: “No problem! With an enterprise or agency tier SparkToro subscription, you can describe your audience the same way you would to a friend (or ChatGPT), and we’ll confirm we’ve got the right group, then analyze it.”
I’ve built dozens of these custom audiences using this new feature, and it’s DOPE. Maybe founders are supposed to describe their software with more professional adjectives, but IDGAF (I Don’t Garble About Facts). Also, now you know this wasn’t written by AI 😉.
What makes this so useful?
The era of SparkToro being unable to analyze an audience—any audience—is over. If you can describe it to a colleague, you can describe it to us. I have yet to stump it; that’s how good this feature (and the data behind it) is.
#7 – Improved Demographic Data (including job & salary info)
The hundreds of millions of profiles in our database are not only updated for this release, they’re also providing more full-featured information than ever before. Want to know years of experience? Salary estimates? Geographic specifics? Employer industries?
Yeah, it’s all there. Just one word of caution—because SparkToro uses LinkedIn for demographic data, you’re always going to get a more “professional” breakdown in the demographics section. People who use LinkedIn, especially those who keep their profile updated and full-featured, tend to be more educated, wealthier, live in cities, and all those other LinkedIn-style-demographic-biases you’re used to. Just be aware if you’re surprised to see more college-educated, white-collar-style folks in the demographic breakdown.
What makes this so useful?
Persona builders, especially in B2B, will delight in having amalgamated information about any describable audience, fresh and screenshot/export ready.
#8 – Get a Custom Analysis of Your Email List
Another incredibly-long-asked-for feature is finally alive. You can upload a CSV list of emails, we’ll match them to our database of profiles and then immediately anonymize (so there’s no privacy/security risk).
This feature does take some time to process, and a bit of processing power (which is why it’s only available at higher tiers in the “Custom Audiences” section), but the results are incredible. I’ve analyzed lists as small as 50 emails and as large as 50K, and seen superb results.
What makes this so useful?
For folks who want to segment their lists, analyze newsletter audiences, break their customers down by behavior, and then discover attributes of
#9 – Upgraded Podcast, YouTube, and Subreddit Data
We’ve done a bunch of behind-the-scenes work to feature more comprehensive, accurate, and specific. That last one—specific—is particularly important because we (and many of y’all) noticed that in the past, certain broadly popular YouTube channels and podcasts kept coming up for way too many unique audiences (that were in roughly the same sector).
With this update, you’re seeing more granular, hyper-specificity-to-a-given audience in the podcast and YouTube results. Reddit is also upgraded, but in a different way; we’re now showing more popular subreddits that reach an audience vs. the overly-granular-but-sometimes-extremely-tiny subreddits we did in the past.
What makes this so useful?
Data quality and granularity means that if you’re pitching, sponsoring, targeting, or reporting on podcasts/YouTube channels/subreddits, you’re likely to have greater success and impact.
#10 – Website Traffic Estimates Over Time
One of the cool things about buying data from Datos is the estimates of visitors to domains they provide us from their global clickstream panel. When we saw these numbers, we thought to ourselves: “after a few quarters, we should show this data trended!”
Now, you’ll see that right at the top of the Overview page when analyzing a site’s audience AND in the websites section on every row where we’ve got traffic data. The beautifully-rendered error bars are another Casey Henry and Monty Hayton visualization feature that I personally love, especially for screenshots.
What makes this so useful?
Seeing traffic trends (including seasonality) makes targeting the right sites even easier, and rather than forcing you to go to separate app (like SEMRush, which, FYI, also uses Datos’ clickstream panel), we can do it all in one place. Lemon squeezy friends.
We think this new version of SparkToro is worthy of a test-drive, and maybe even a shout-out on your favorite social network. Better audience data can make a real difference to your marketing, targeting, and content efforts; and better visuals can make winning approval or client business a reality.
After you’ve tried it out, drop us a line via [email protected] with any feedback; we’d love to hear what you think 😎