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Getty recently announced their commitment to delivering part of their collection via embedding technology to their users. As a leader within the licensing industry, Getty’s move is impactful to its contributors, clients and partners, but treads familiar territory already pioneered by IMGembed with some stark tactical and philosophical differences.
IMGembed’s commitment to raising the bar and defining embedding technology is in direct response to how images are used, shared and tracked online, and its commitment extends further to an image owner’s control over price, attribution, and a publisher’s ease of use.
The use of images online for visual communication long resided with a narrow publishing group, professional buyers who served print and online media publications. Access to quality imagery for the small online publisher and even small corporate use wasn’t a viable option and even if affordable wasn’t in line with the on-demand needs of the publisher’s workflow. As image consumption grew through online publishing, the landscape for image licensing shifted, and image licensors have been trying to keep up with the priorities of demand.
IMGembed modeled its embedding technology and platform on the needs and demands of the online publisher, while providing transparency and openness to image owners. While Getty followed IMGembed’s lead on bringing a solution to image owners and publishers through embedding technology, how do they differ?
TECHNOLOGY
Getty uses iframes, which has shown limitations such as error in displaying credit lines. IMGembed's proprietary technology regenerates flattened jpegs to facilitate a broader variety of usage including responsive designs and current CMS auto-generated thumbnails.
LIMITATIONS ON USE
Getty allows highly restricted and limited use on non-commercial sites only. IMGembed can be used on and in commercial and editorial contexts.
IMAGERY
Getty restricts access to only a portion of the images on their site. IMGembed’s entire site is available for use, and anyone can participate easily.
PHOTOGRAPHER CONTROL
Getty’s photographers have no control over how their attribution, sharing, pricing or even visibility into where and how their images are being used. IMGembed allows complete control and ownership to the photographer.
TRACKING USE
IMGembed provides a hassle-free method of sharing and reposting images on the web, which are all tracked via an image owner’s dashboard. Getty’s tracking is siloed, and unavailable to image owners.
PARTICIPATION: INVOLUNTARY VS. OPT-IN
IMGembed is an opt-in community of image owners who seek the use, sharing, attribution and monetization of their images with direct exposure and connectivity to their publishers. Users define the flow and control of content. Like it or not, Getty’s contributors are forced to participate and have no control.
It’s evident that the adoption of embedding technology will proliferate in a more expedited way with Getty’s entrance, but the commitment to community empowerment, image owner rights and the ethical use of images online – all critical points of engagement within a sustainable marketplace – will be key to its success. The future of image use will center on providing control and clarity to both image owners and publishers – and not to an intermediary’s sole discretion.
This post is edited and republished from the blog of IMGembed.
About the author:
Robert was recent president of the Picture Archive Council of America, the trade association for commercial and editorial licensing of visual media. He has fifteen years experience in commercial and editorial digital media, specializing in licensing and distribution. He has held mid and senior-level management positions at industry leaders Getty Images and Blend Images, was a co-founder of boutique agency Evolve Images, and an industry consultant and product developer. He advocates strongly for the rights of content owners, has spoken at numerous conferences on the industry, and actively writes posts on industry trends, technology and issues. He is now VP, Business at IMGembed.