Ernesto Cardamone is an academic researcher specializing in consumer behavior and marketing at the University of Calabria and LUISS University in Rome. His work combines text mining, image analysis, and social media data to understand how brands communicate and what drives engagement. He also teaches text mining courses at the PhD level.
The challenge? Academic research requires large-scale social media data extraction, but researchers don't have enterprise budgets or unlimited time. Before Apify, Ernesto used freelancers on Upwork to scrape Instagram data. While cheaper upfront, the process was time-consuming and required managing multiple contractors for different extraction needs.
Academic research needs reliable, straightforward data extraction
Ernesto's research projects require extracting posts, captions, engagement metrics, and images from hundreds of brand profiles. His work includes luxury brand communication strategies, pet influencer success factors, and food influencer visual patterns. Each project involves analyzing thousands of Instagram posts to identify what drives consumer engagement.
Using freelancers created bottlenecks. In the majority of cases, using Upwork is cheaper compared to Apify, but the trade-off wasn't worth it.
"It's true that using Upwork is cheaper, it's much more time consuming. And for us, of course, time has a value. So we prefer to use Apify because we need the data about these companies."
-- Ernesto Cardamone, Researcher at University of Calabria
His workflow combines Apify's extraction with Google Cloud Vision API for image analysis. After scraping Instagram data, he sends image URLs to Google's API for color detection, logo identification, and object recognition, then analyzes everything using KNIME Analytics. The process is straightforward: "We just go on Apify. And that's it. So a really straightforward experience."
Apify replaces freelancer coordination with self-service scraping
Ernesto uses Apify's Instagram Scraper and Instagram Post Scraper to extract data from brand profiles for multiple research projects. The data powers studies on luxury brand communication, pet influencer characteristics, and food influencer visual strategies.
The switch eliminated coordination overhead. His previous tool, Import.io, became prohibitively expensive with what he calls "a crazy pricing model."
Apify's simplicity matters for academic researchers who aren't professional developers.
"I learned using Apify by myself. And I have to say that Apify is one of the easiest platforms to use. I believe that somebody that never scrapes data can do it on your website."
-- Ernesto Cardamone, Researcher at University of Calabria
The value extends beyond his own research - Ernesto actively recommends Apify to colleagues at both universities and plans to feature it in his PhD-level text mining summer school. "I'm teaching a text mining summer school this summer, and I'm pretty sure I will have one day on data scraping, and I think I will mention your service."
Results:
- Straightforward self-service extraction replacing time-consuming freelancer coordination
- Multiple research projects powered by Instagram data (luxury brands, pet influencers, food influencers)
- Scalable across universities with colleagues at the University of Calabria and LUISS University using Apify
- Academic citations in published papers legitimizing the platform
- PhD student adoption through summer school curriculum
Academic research runs on tight budgets and tighter timelines. For researchers analyzing social media behavior, Apify eliminates the coordination tax of managing freelancers while keeping costs within university budget constraints.
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