Category Archives: license

10 questions to a founder: Imatag

advertising, analytic, Brands, content, Content Recognition, editing, flickr, interview, license, marketing, PhotoTech, Social Media, technology March 13, 2018 Paul Melcher Leave a comment

Publish an image online today and there is a very good chance that within a few days, there will be hundreds, if not thousands of copies of it throughout the internet. None, unfortunately, will bear any information on who is the creator and how he/she can be found. This is not just an issue for professional photographers, who make a living by licensing images, but anyone who creates visuals to communicate, like marketers or social media manager. Because with each reuse comes the damaging potential…

Q&A with the founders of Haystack

commercial stock, content, Content Recognition, editing, google, interview, license, Search, Shutterstock November 18, 2016 Connie Yu Leave a comment

Calling all photo buyers: Are you sick of having a gazillion tabs on your desktop while toggling through different photo agencies for the stock image you need? Former Vanity Fair and Travel + Leisure contributing photographer Andrew Rowat and technology developer Vache Asatryan created Haystack— which launched its beta in October– because they believed the previous technology was “like searching for a flight in 1999.” Here’s why they’re banking on what has already been billed as the Google Image search for stock photo agencies. What was…

10 Questions to a CEO : PixelRights

advertising, analytic, Brands, content, in-image, Interface, interview, license, photo sharing, Pinterest, Social Media, transaction November 14, 2016 Paul Melcher Leave a comment

The greatest challenge facing photography online is the complete lack of persistent attribution. While sharing of visual content has exploded, with companies like Pinterest taking advantage of it while building multi-million dollar businesses, no one, whether amateur or professional, is given credit . Of the billions of images being shared today, the vast majority will live a life of anonymous orphans, forever separated from its original creator. Beyond its obvious disregard to original creation, it is an issue affecting hundreds of thousands of photographers worldwide whose only…

10 Questions for a founder : SnapRapid

advertising, analytic, Brands, computer vision, content, Content Recognition, flickr, getty, Instagram, interview, license, marketing, Social Media, Twitter, UGC, video, visual recognition August 16, 2016 Paul Melcher Leave a comment

Advertising, and in particular sponsorship, used to be a simple process. A brand would buy the rights to put their logo on a team and would enjoy the returns of being associated with a sport franchise, mostly via TV air time. However, with more than a billion photos uploaded a day, along with videos, the metrics have changed dramatically. To the point that sometimes, exposure on social media far exceeds any TV broadcast. With far richer engagements and a life span that extends sometimes weeks…

Data driven stock photography

advertising, big data, Brands, commercial stock, content, Content Recognition, corbis, editorial, finance, getty, in-image, license, marketing, photojournalism, technology, transaction September 21, 2015 Paul Melcher 3 Comments

While there has never been so many photos taken and shared online, the world of professional photo licensing is not striving. In fact, most legacy companies have seen their revenue freeze or decline in the last decade, with rare exceptions. While at first contradictory, a closer analysis reveals that part of the issue seems to be linked to antiquated business model that are ill-fitted to our all digital, mobile world. The few companies in this space that continue to grow, and some as much as 40%…

10 questions to a founder : Imagewiki

advertising, content, Content Recognition, editing, interview, license, photo sharing, PhotoTech, Search, Social Media, technology July 24, 2015 Paul Melcher 6 Comments

With billions of photos uploaded and shared daily on a variety of photo sharing sites, monitoring copyright is a nightmare for both visual companies and content owners alike. On one side, photo sharing platforms cannot physically police every upload and on the other, content creators cannot spend their days policing the web for illegal usages. While legislators are starting to reconsider the text of the law, a Los Angeles startup might just have the right automated solution to make everyone’s’ life easier and generate revenue…

it’s Adobe Stock and it’s live

Adobe, advertising, Brands, commercial stock, content, flickr, getty, license, Microstock, Royalty free, Shutterstock, UGC June 16, 2015 Paul Melcher 1 Comment

Will convenience be the powerful feature to make Adobe’s $800 million gamble succeed in the stock photo market? Launched amidst a flurry of Creative Cloud updates for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere, Adobe Stock is a fully integrated stock photo offering within the company’s flagship product. Created with the content of recently acquired Fotolia, it boasts, at launch, 40 million images, putting it right in the path of mighty competitors Getty Images and Shutterstock. However, it has a strong advantage: it is there where you need…

The Content Marketing Machine and Photo Supply

Brands, commercial stock, content, ECM, getty, license, marketing, Search, Shutterstock, UGC October 16, 2014 Robert Henson 1 Comment

The sharp rise in content marketing by corporations has demanded a commensurate rise in content acquisition from traditional sources, and has opened the door to niche platforms and services such as Thismoment and Newscred. The impact to the photo industry has been mixed. On one hand, image licensing agencies – and specifically large-scale aggregators like Shutterstock – have benefitted from their inroads into corporate clients, expanding and servicing a segment that is marketing-focused with high volume transactions. On the other hand, UGC (corporate-generated) and platforms…

Embedding Images: The Promise of Proliferation, The Tension of Control

commercial stock, computer vision, content, getty, license, marketing, PhotoTech, Shutterstock, UGC October 3, 2014 Robert Henson 5 Comments

The practice of allowing visual media to be embedded on an external site by an anonymous user has seen widespread adoption (thanks, YouTube), so that any site in the business of publishing content uses it. By allowing readers to share the video/photo itself, and not a page link, it incentives use and reuse by offering bespoke contextualization of the object. Moreover, it gives the source publisher the ability to generate outbound links and traffic data in a more meaningful…

Brand sponsored photography

commercial stock, content, ECM, editorial, Facebook, flickr, Instagram, license, marketing, photojournalism, PhotoTech, Pinterest, Royalty free, Search, technology, UGC September 22, 2014 Paul Melcher 4 Comments

What happens in the music world does not stay in the music world. In fact, it has always been a precursor and a very good indicator of upcoming trends in other digital media evolution. While last week’s partnership between Apple and the band U2 was mostly covered for its massive release of a free music album, it is important to view it as it might impact the photo tech market. When done properly, an image – or a series of images – can become inseparable…