Scoopshot is the latest to jump on the embed bandwagon. When users find an image they want to use they have the option of paying the listed price for a download or “Use For Free.”
IAN (AKA Scoopshot’s in-image advertising network) is the first syndication platform to provide ad revenue to mobile photographers and online content publishers, such as news providers and bloggers. Scoopshot’s partner,
Kiosked, embeds the ads.
When a user chooses “Use For Free,” they copy and insert a code on their web page rather than downloading an image file. Whenever a visitor to the users site opens that page, Scoopshot instantly delivers that photo with an appropriate ad attached. In order to determine what is appropriate Scoopshot tracks some information about each user.
To get an idea of how these in-image ads might look check out this
GumGum gallery. Scoopshot has also supplied an example
here. Sometimes the ad will just sit below the picture. In other cases the ad will pop up obscuring part of the picture requiring a click from the viewer to get rid of the ad and view the image ad free.
The fee an advertiser pays is based on the number of actual views (“cost-per-thousand” or CPM) of the ad. A web site may publish 50 or 100 new pictures a day, each connected to different stories. Some stories may be very popular while others are seldom, if ever, viewed. Rather than paying based on total web traffic to a site the advertiser pays only when its ad is actually seen. In theory, if analysts can collect enough data about each site and each user, the advertiser can be reasonably sure that the person viewing the ad really has an interest in the advertisers particular product or service. Compare this with the variety of ads that can be found in print magazines or newspapers and the number that are actually viewed, or of interest to any individual reader.
The next big question, of course, is photographer compensation. I am told that the going CPM rate in the U.S. is about $5.00. The publisher of the web site gets 60% of any advertising fee collected. The remaining 40% is split between Scoopshot and the photographer giving the photographer about $1.00 for each 1,000 views. IAN handles the transfer of image rights and monetary transactions.
There may be other costs paid to organizations like Kiosked.com that find and place the ads. These costs may come off the top of that $5.00 CPM so it is possible that the photographers’s share will be quite a bit lower.
The introduction of Use For Free may also appeal to bloggers. Here not only can they get legal, free use of images, they may be able to earn a little revenue from their site because they would get 60% of any ad revenue collected. Time will tell if this catches on.
Eric Siereveld, Sales VP at Scoopshot reports that currently the company supplies more than 70 leading media companies and brands including USA Today, News Corp Australia, Apple Daily, WAZ, Fiat, Finnair, Oxfam and many others. On the contributor side they have nearly 535,000 mobile users and 1,500 professional photographers in 177 countries.
Most of the images purchased are feature material rather than hard, breaking news. A high percentage of the images uploaded to Scoopshot result from tasks proposed by media companies. Bloggers will also be able to propose tasks. They are not required to use any of the images submitted. Sometimes thousands of photos are submitted for a given
task with the publisher only purchasing one or a few.
Image search on Scoopshot can be difficult given the limited number of keywords attached to most images. To deal with this problem they have introduced a system that makes it possible to browse images by category. Siereveld says, “We are working to improve (the keywording) by encouraging the use of hashtags. Hopefully, going forward, you will notice an improvement in our search function.” The most liked images go to the top, this way the best photos are at the top.