our next prez

Makes you want to go to the beach! (05/02/2015) 

I Heart Intellectual Property (04/15/2015)

Cheery (04/13/2015)

Not a cyclist, but want this anyway! (3/27/2015)

Content Creators and Consumers:

the future of monetization

Last month Getty Images announced they are enabling 35 million of their photographs to be embeddable within third party digital distribution platforms – for free. 

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-26463886

A handful of photographers exhausted their shocked frustration in select blogs.  Reference the group: “Stock Photography – buy and sell images,” – on Linkedin.  Frustrated by diminishing royalties, some also shared concerns that the marked turn to capture the volume market – by these licensing companies – has resulted in the devaluing of photographer intellectual property.

The competition, according to Wiki, is crushing.  Getty has over 80 million images and 50,000 hours of video.  Corbis has 100 million images.  And that’s nothing folks – YouTube aggregates 100 hours of content a minute! 

Everyone with a camera shares responsibility for saturating the content marketplace.  Compare it to a bazaar in a third world country – colorful and packed – if you look closely – you can find something amazing – one of a kind – but chances are that you’re going to touch some shit along the way.

Apple alone put hundreds of millions of cameras in the hands of amateurs since 2007 with the launch of the iPhone.  It’s no surprise that content is barfed up to the web instantly – and in the masses through facebook, instagram and other social portals.

As the number of content creators exploded – the symbiotic number of content consumers grew equally.

There are three basic groups of content consumers – think pyramid scale.  On the base is the blogger – the YouTube poster – the consumer and curator of content – THE MASSES.  This is the largest group with the smallest amount of money to pay for content.  In the middle – you have graphic design shops and small budget consumers of content.  At the top, are large ad agencies and marketers that spend boku dollars on content – this is the SMALLEST group.

Understand that smart licensing agencies have adapted their business models over the years to accommodate sales into each level of the consumer pyramid.

By 1999 Getty had aggressively aggregated content from large agencies (Tony Stone Images, Hulton Press Archives, etc.).  They captured a significant amount of content and the matching number of consumers.  This perpetuated the rights management model of licensing – the most expensive and controlled model of content monetization.  This strategy was targeted mostly at advertisers – the top tier of the pyramid with the most dollars.

In the early 2000’s Companies like PunchStock invaded the market with a ton more content – and introduced a royalty free model of monetization.  This is cheap and easy – and targets the middle level of the pyramid.  By 2005, PunchStock is acquired by Getty.

Flickr launched in 2004 where users can upload and share their photographs – creating an explosion of content.  By 2007, Getty partners with Flickr to monetize some of this content.

Our world is saturated.  There’s content everywhere you look – and every time you look again – there’s more content being created.  The photographer from the article is jaded as he attempts to place blame for diminishing royalties.  Incorrectly, he relates the loss of his revenue stream to the degradation of his intellectual property (IP) rights.

It’s probably true that with thousands of contributors, no Getty sales associate is pitching his specific portfolio.  An abundance of content options in the market drives prices south, yielding smaller royalties per image – to keep up ­– contributors need to submit MORE content. 

The larger issue – and where the photographer needs to reconsider – is the devaluation of copyright.  Smart photographers retain copyright – no matter what company they use to license.  However, tracking content and enforcement of copyright has been a major industry struggle.  Think Napster – or that illegal website you use to download bootleg videos.

If an advertiser takes an image from Getty and uses it without a license – they WILL get their hand slapped.  Policing the bloggers and the bottom of the content consumer pyramid is the struggle.

Photographers – content creators – it’s time to try something different.  Retain your copyright – TRACK your content!  The future is YouTube.

The site claims 1 billion unique website visitors and 6 billion hours of video viewed PER MONTH.  Those viewers are coming from every level of the content consumer pyramid – all with different wallets.  Comparatively, web trafficestimate.com says 108,000 visitors to Corbis last month.

Experience says that advertisers are looking on Google and YouTube FIRST – when they are looking for content for their projects.  Advertising agencies don’t love working with stock companies.  It’s not reasonable, but these folks feel less creative when they collaborate using stock content (for the most part).

The first YouTube argument:  Hit them where they go first! 

Aside from licensing your content to the top tier client – the opportunities are boundless with the bottom masses of the pyramid.  Become a YouTube partner – get everything online and watch the awesomeness of this platform.  Be creative and figure out collaborative strategies with other online platforms.  All the while – enable AdSense and you can monetize your content on your site – or through YouTube partners.

Second YouTube argument:  Content is KING – wherever it is, monetize it!

Now – digital piracy has been a fear for some time – if I put my video on YouTube – someone else will steal it.  Just like Getty does with Advertisers – YouTube will match your content across their platform and will alert you if anyone has reposted any portion of your work.  Yes – they match frame by frame through billions of hours of content – FOR FREE.

If someone else embeds your video, you’ll know.  You can tell them to take it down – or you can collaborate and monetize your content on their platforms – just like Getty is doing!

The next decade will show how collaboration in the digital sphere is one of the most important mechanisms for monetization.  In that sense Content is KING, and will enable survival within this model.  YouTube leads in this environment, giving the power of analytics to the content creator – and encouraging collaboration with consumers – really shrinking the feeling of cyberspace as it expands further.

matthew holskin 4/11/14

​