MercadoLibre automates image moderation with AI

The Big Picture

88% of shoppers think product images are crucial for making a purchase decision. Marketplaces and brands understand this and have invested a significant amount of resources in ensuring product images have clarity and create internal guidelines to secure quality. A big part of the challenge, for marketplaces, in maintaining this quality comes from the vendor onboarding process. Every single image that a marketplace onboards needs checking to ensure guideline adherence and product credibility.

MercadoLibre is Latin America’s largest eCommerce ecosystem. They operate in over 18 countries and serve more than 550 million people online. Their marketplace is composed of a mix of small sellers and big brands. They have roughly 12M sellers in their database and a little more than 642 million visits per month from 18 countries across Latin America.

MercadoLibre started using Vue.ai’s automated image moderation solution to help improve the image QA process. Vue.ai’s AI image recognition technology automates image and content moderation. It can help ensure images are compliant with business guidelines - and can do this in half the time and in a way that would require minimal human intervention. AI also removes the prospect of human error - leading to faster and more accurate vendor image onboarding.

70%

reduction in rollback rates across 3 months

51%

reduction in the number of calls coming from sellers

56%

reduction in false-positive detection in text moderation

The Need

MercadoLibre routinely onboards and sells hundreds of thousands of products from various vendors. And every single image needs to be checked to ensure quality control. A manual process was in place to check for image quality. For the scale of operations they were dealing with, manual image moderation was inadequate. It was also resource-intensive, prone to errors that slowed down the time taken to monetize a product.

To solve these issues, MercadoLibre worked with Vue.ai to:

Automate the image quality checking process

Work across all the guidelines required by them

Reduce the effort required by their team to do QA

Be trained through the feedback and QA loop

Streamline the entire process end to end, and save time

MercadoLibre chose Vue.ai since the solutions offered would help them reduce vendor onboarding time, reduce dependence on manual QA, and ensure that image quality guidelines were adhered to on their site.

How it works: Image and text moderation

Vue.ai's image moderation tool automatically checks the quality of images that sellers onboard into marketplaces. Incoming images that don't measure up to the guidelines are flagged and sent back to the seller. Vendors receive a notification saying they are losing exposure on the listing.

MercadoLibre uses the tool to check:

The presence of any watermarks

Background	Text	Multi Product	Border	Watermark
WHITE	REJECT	MULTI	ACCEPT	REJECT

Whether the background complies with the specified guidelines

Background	Text	Multi Product	Border	Watermark
WHITE	REJECT	MULTI	ACCEPT	ACCEPT

If any text on the image is not a part of the product

Background	Text	Multi Product	Border	Watermark
COMPLEX	REJECT	SINGLE	ACCEPT	ACCEPT

If there are borders that impact product image usability

Background	Text	Multi Product	Border	Watermark
WHITE	ACCEPT	MULTI	ACCEPT	ACCEPT

Whether there are multiple products within a single image

Background	Text	Multi Product	Border	Watermark
WHITE	ACCEPT	MULTI	ACCEPT	ACCEPT

Impact

Reduced rollback rates through better understanding of customer guidelines

Images coming into marketplaces are sometimes inaccurately marked and sent back to the vendor. The seller/vendor in such a situation can contact the customer team to call out the error and apply for a rollback.

Vue.ai is being used across the vendor's site to check product imagery coming in from sellers for text, borders, and background compliance.
Vue.ai's image moderation tool understands customers' guidelines and has the ability to re-train with a constant feedback loop to mark images as accepted or rejected effectively.
MercadoLibre saw a 70% reduction in rollback rates across three months with a 45% average Month-on-Month reduction in rollback rates.

Reduced contact rate from robust automated moderation

Vue.ai’s image moderation tool helped by accurately marking images as ‘Accepts’ or ‘Rejects’ lowered the number of contact tickets raised by sellers to MercadoLibre.

During QA, when images are marked inaccurately, the seller can contact the marketplace or raise a ticket to highlight an error. The number of tickets raised or contacts made represents how accurately the tool has accepted or rejected an image.
The constant retraining and feedback loop built into Vue.ai’s image moderation tool ensures images are marked according to the latest guidelines, and the system learns from errors made.
MercadoLibre saw the number of contacts from vendors reduce 30% on the average month on month across three months. The reduction across three months was 51%.

Key Takeaways

MercadoLibre works as the main point of contact between vendors and their customers. The detection of text and watermarks that might have information about vendors ensures customers don’t bypass the site and reach out to vendors directly.
There is an observed reduction in false positives. Lower false-positive rates imply fewer images that are flagged as requiring further review by the vendor. This ensures greater efficiency of human moderators where necessary and more cost savings for MercadoLibre and the vendors.
AI-powered image moderation systems save both time and money by automating an otherwise manual process. Vendors receive feedback on the images uploaded, in real-time, resulting in higher productivity and money saved. Automated feedback loops also ensure mistakes are not repeated.

Request Demo

Image moderation at scale with Vue.ai

Sales demos typically last for 30 minutes. In this time, you can expect to:

Get an in-depth understanding of the Image Moderation solution.
Understand how other retailers are using Image Moderation to achieve their business goals.
Discuss your unique needs and challenges.

One of our experts will get in touch with you on your work email.
Rest assured, we respect your privacy.

MercadoLibre automates vendor image moderation with AI