Public Funding for Media Reach Advertising Limited

PhotoBrief is a unique and innovative web application solution that brings photo providers and consumers together to share and express photo briefs and photos. There is a good level of innovation within each of the system parts and their underlying technologies due to the automatic creation and use of metadata throughout the system. However, the largest innovation of the PhotoBrief system solution lies in the integration of these system parts and new technologies into a holistic solution that addresses the complete life cycle of photo briefs and photo trading. This includes mechanisms for: photo creation, automatic annotation of metadata to images, organising, creation of photo briefs, social proofing and recommendation, search and filtering of relevant images, protection of images, pricing, and negotiations. Therefore, the anticipated level of impact and progress beyond the state of the art is high. The integration of the PhotoBrief system parts will result in a holistic product solution suite that becomes a new distribution channel for photo briefs and stock photo trading.

Since 2005, the stock image market has been developing strongly – “the percentage of creatives planning to purchase rights-managed images in the next 12 months has risen from 26% to 38% and the percentage planning to purchase royalty-free images has risen from 27% to 64%” (Trendwatch GA, 2005). The emergence of microstock sites (lower-cost, royalty-free images) does not seem to have stemmed market growth. This has had a dramatic impact on the established stock image market. Seeing the emerging trend, major image providers have bought up microstock sites (i.e. Getty’s purchase of iStockphoto). However, due to the proliferation of microstock sites and the disparity in image value, traditional stock image sites began to lose money quickly (before being taken over by Getty, Jupiter lost 2/3 of its value in 2 years as it became unable to compete in the new market model). In addition to the changing market dynamics, total revenues are predicted to fall. Corbis, a major stock company, forecasts the market to slide to $2.2 billion in 2011, from $2.3bn in 2007. With the global recession, this is could slide even further!! A major reason for this has been the growth of increased Internet bandwidth. Digitisation has also increased the amount of freely available digital content on an unprecedented scale. This has created a perception in consumers of believing that digital media should be available for free, as shown by the prevalence of advertising revenue models increased digital piracy and copyright infringements. Online photos have been no exception. Pictures from free sites such as Google Images and AltaVista Image Search give people access to huge quantities of images that are used in social networking sites, blogs and personal web sites. Users can find almost anything they want and many, even in business, are happy to put up with low quality if they do not have to pay!! The problem is one of changing consumer behaviour so that they move away from freely available pictures to purchasing them. iTunes from Apple is proof that this can be done. Users can purchase music and movies easily. This process is so simple that it makes it more likely that consumers will make purchases rather than download content from the Internet. There has been relatively little innovation in the stock image industry since the introduction of online viewing with most sites operating in essentially the same fashion. Although some sites have adopted subtle changes in business models such as exclusive contracts, subscription services and variable pricing, there have hardly been any developments in image search technologies. Sites have mainly focused on forcing the contributor to provide very detailed tag data to eliminate semantic ambiguities. This has led to poor site performance and is usually only suitable for re-finding images that are known to exist on the site. PICLET: Project Overview! ! #! ! We aim to develop a novel photo and design community for the benefit of consumers, making considerable enhancements over existing systems. By using enhanced visual-based searching for accurate image retrieval, easier design of templates such as brochures and web pages, with automated uploading of images into these documents the overall process of purchasing and consuming images becomes quicker. The result is a better user experience, more convenience for customers wanting to purchase high quality images and higher quality document creation. The technology will also provide a resource for professionals to be able to commercialise their stock. The business opportunity will be represented by adding value through significant savings in time translating into cost. The project will develop an innovative integrated image search and design tool to help stem the decline of the online photography industry, which is threatening the livelihood of professional stock photographers who are finding it increasingly difficult to make money in a ‘content is free’ society. The technology is anticipated to provide significant advancements in the process of image purchasing, from enhanced searching that retrieves content relevant images to quicker and specific uploading of images into design templates and desktop publishers. Piclet will aim to create an environment that is convenient and easy to use and provides the consumer with a more pleasurable user experience. In the process Piclet will also create new revenue streams for skilled photographers, who at present are competing with the free content model and availability of low quality images. Future possibilities also include further revenue creation through affiliates, advertising and the formation of new partnerships through social media sites like facebook and twitter. Our aim is to make image use so easy and intuitive that it negates the benefits of free content. Piclet will dramatically reduce search times and increase accuracy by creating an ‘image universe’, mapping images by similarity using advanced Neural Network technology. Combined with an intelligent plug-in tool for desktop publishing packages, users will be allowed to search directly from their document allowing the search to take in aspects such as space, resolution and even perhaps a designer’s freehand sketch. Auto image manipulation will add final professional touches. Piclet will allow users to populate documents with images up to 80% faster than is currently possible, saving time, money and improving document quality for non-professionals. Once established, we believe Piclet can generate £20m p.a. for the UK economy. The digital photography market is set to reach $100.4 billion in 2013, and continue to increase with a compound annual growth rate of 13.3%.