Ranker

Ranker.com is a Los Angeles-based infotainment website, owned by Ranker Inc., that publishes editor-curated lists and polls covering entertainment, brands, sports, food, history, gaming and culture. Visitors vote on and reorder list items, and those votes determine the published rankings; the site also supports user "reranks" of existing lists. Ranker describes itself as one of the largest databases of opinions, with lists numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

Alongside the consumer site, Ranker runs a business arm that turns accumulated votes into what it calls opinion graphs of consumer sentiment. "Ranker Insights" applies psychographic correlation data to produce personalized recommendations (if a user likes X, they will also like Y and Z) and audience insights sold to marketers, studios and platforms. Business Solutions are organized into offerings for brands and agencies, service providers and OEMs, publishers and platforms, and data licensing, and the company publishes regular data stories analyzing fandoms and franchises.

Ranker also operates Watchworthy, a free personalized TV recommendation app that builds watchlists across more than 200 streaming services, including Netflix, HBO, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime and Apple TV+. Users swipe through titles and receive a "worthy" score estimating the probability they will like a given show; the app is powered by Ranker's machine learning platform, Ranker Insights, and its first-party correlation data.

Founding story

Clark Benson founded Ranker and launched the site in August 2009, conceiving it from a personal interest in lists and the premise that crowd opinion is more reliable than a single expert's. Ranker was Benson's fifth startup; his prior company eCrush, an early social network for teens, was bought by Hearst Corporation in 2006. He created Ranker as an alternative to the user reviews found on ecommerce sites.

Business model

Ranker runs an ad-supported consumer media site and monetizes its accumulated vote data through business services: audience targeting and campaign data for brands and agencies, content discovery/recommendation data for video service providers and OEMs, licensing of its list and video content library to publishers and platforms, and general data licensing.

Revenue comes from the consumer website and from commercial data and content licensing arrangements with brands, agencies, service providers, OEMs, publishers and platforms; reported revenue was $22 million in 2017.

Traction

The company reports 1.5 billion votes, about 115-118 million voters and roughly 257,000-260,000 rankings, and states that Ranker and Watchworthy together have over 115 employees and continue to show profit and growth. Reported revenue was $22 million in 2017.

Latest developments

Ranker acquired Listverse in April 2022. Its business site continues to publish audience-data analyses of franchises and releases, including pieces on Dolly Parton, DC's 'Clayface', 'The Bear', 'Ted Lasso' and Star Trek dated into 2026.