In January2010, pacaSearch will roll out a major marketing campaign
to picture buyers to promote its new pacaSearch software. At a recent demonstration at PictureHouse in New
York, Lee Horton, Multimedia Editor of K12 Inc. said, “Learning about
the functionality and usefulness of [pacaSearch] put a big smile on my
face. As a photo editor and art buyer, I search multiple sites daily.
This tool puts more control in my hands. I can keep the results pages
in tabs with fewer keystrokes, page toggles and site crashes. The
relative percentages, predictive text and term definitions create a
tight, clean search environment. With the launch of pacaSearch, I can
successfully and accurately find imagery in less time, with less
hassle, while having more agency resources at my fingertips. Thank you,
PACA.”
PACA’s Web site includes a demo of the new service. Customers who go to pacaSearch.com
and enter a search term will be presented with two lists. The first
shows the 30 top agencies in terms of the number of images with that
search term, and this number is listed beside each agency’s name.
This list is ordered based on the number of images; the agency with
the most at the top. The customer can click on any agency name and go
immediately to that agency’s Web site, where all the images related to
the search term requested are displayed. If the customer chooses an
image, he or she negotiates directly with the agency, and the agency
keeps 100% of the fee collected. There are no sub-agency splits, and no
percentage of the usage fee is paid to PACA.
There is also a power click feature enabling customers to
command-click and choose one or several agencies whose thumbnails they
want to review. Then the search shows up in a tab in the background,
allowing the user to easily and quickly go through the results of
several agencies.
The second list has the same agency names ranked by the percentage
of image this subject represents in its total collection. Suppose
agency A has 500 images that fit the search term out of 1 million total
images. Agency B only has 125 relevant images, but it is a small
specialist with only 20,000 total images. In the second pacaSearch
list, Agency B will be listed first, because it has a higher percentage
of this subject matter in its collection. This may assist customers in
determining which agencies have more specialist knowledge in a
particular subject area. Again, by clicking on the agency name, the
customer goes immediately to that agency’s Web site.
The site also has a unique feature that helps when searching for
homographs, words with the same spelling but different meaning or
origins, such as “trunk,” “bar,” “bow,” “china,” and “turkey.”
pacaSearch provides a drop-down menu whenever such a word is entered to
enable the user to see various definitions and pick the specific one
they want.
So where is the catch? Participating agencies must be members of PACA and pay annual dues, but for these dues agencies are also entitled to other membership benefits.
It is usually beneficial for a supplier to be able to make its
images available through as many portals as possible. But in this case
the greatest benefit may be that the supplier is able to control the
pricing of usages. Recently, many suppliers have been unhappy with the
degree to which some large portals have been discounting prices.
pacaSearch lets the agency deal directly with the customer and retain
100% of any fee negotiated.
To participate, an agency must contact pacasearch@pacaoffice.org
and request instructions on how to link its Web site to pacaSearch.
Brad Kuhns of IPNStock was able to complete this process in 49 seconds.
A second agency did it in about two hours, and another completed the
work in less than a day.
Is this just for U.S.-based agencies? No. All any agency—or
individual with a searchable database—has to do is become a PACA
member. International membership is open to any individual or entity
that meets the requirements of a General Member but does not staff an office in the U.S. or Canada.
At PictureHouse, one researcher anticipating the launch said, “It
will be a huge time-saver for researchers to be able to search across
multiple agencies from one clean, easy-to-use interface. I love the
dual ranking feature—showing both which agencies have the most hits on
the search and the percentage of their collections that are relevant to
the search. The intelligent predictive text search field and ability to
save the searches as one bookmark will be incredibly helpful, too. And
all free?? Wow!”