June 19, 2007
ImageSpan and Visible World Offer Rights-Cleared Content Acquisition and Real-Time Customization Services
ImageSpan and Visible World have partnered to build a marketplace for rights-cleared ad content, including still images and video. The new platform will combine existing ImageSpan and Visible World products, allowing advertisers to customize ads in real time at a lower-than-usual cost.
The Sausalito, California-based ImageSpan - known in the stock image industry as the exclusive license automation provider to the PLUS Coalition - is a licensing and revenue automation platform offering business services, such as rights management, licensing and billing alongside delivering creative content. Millions of rights-managed images are available through ImageSpan's OneStream, while the CurbStream service provides on-demand access to thousands of photographers and videographers who shoot local content. This material is immediately rights-cleared and made available for licensing by advertisers and other content producers.
In addition to providing access to up-to-the-minute, localized content, ImageSpan simplifies the manual rights-clearance process for both content owners and buyers. It eliminates all person-to-person negotiations, the need for attorneys and the usual documentation necessary to license and acquire rights-cleared images and video. Instead, all such processes are automated through an online interface, requiring minimal time and potentially reducing associated costs by as much as 90%.
The new partnership allows users to take the content-acquisition process one step further by using the IntelliSpot Dashboard. Created by the New York-based Visible World, the dashboard allows users to electronically create, customize, deliver and monitor video spots.
The new service targets the most lucrative segment of image and video buyers, the advertising industry, by coupling simplified rights management services with greater flexibility in addressing local markets and different delivery platforms. "The marketplace will make it easier and more affordable for advertisers to secure the content and rights they need for on-the-fly customization of video advertising - to any market and on any screen - from TV to PC to mobile," said Visible World president Tara Walpert.
Getty Images Launches Photo Contest for British Teens
By: Julia Dudnik Stern
Getty Images invites UK teenagers (13 to 18) to participate in My Britain, a photography competition that launches July 4. The winner will receive an exclusive one-day internship with a Getty Images photographer working in news, sport and entertainment or creative photography. Getty executives will judge the entries together with photographer and Royal Photogrpahic Society fellow Tom Stoddart.
New Royalty-Free Brand Seeks Distributors
By: Julia Dudnik Stern
Hamburg-based Denkou Images entered the royalty-free space with its first collection, Sugar Gold. It is actively seeking additional distributors for the brand. Starting with just over 5,000 images, Denkou says it's signed a large number of well-known photographers and plans to add 10,000 to 15,000 new images per year. The new company was founded by Joachim Koutzky, who is also president of Avenue Images and former executive at Mauritius and Bilderberg (Germany) and Photononstop (France).