Whether for films, music, gaming or live-streaming news and web-specific events, many of us have adopted streaming for much of our daily lives with little friction.
Streaming allows us to access swathes of content on-demand and to forgo any concerns about storage. Arguably, publishers of this content benefit to an even greater extent: not only do they retain control over its use, they can also offer it as part of a potentially lucrative subscription model.
In today’s world, streaming simply makes sense. So why aren’t images streamed as standard too?
The easy answer is that images don’t have the same demand for them as other types of data-hungry content and so there is simply less call for an alternative means of delivery.
It’s less practical, for example, to download a whole movie that we may only watch once – if we end up watching it in its entirety at all – when it can simply be streamed as we demand it. This isn’t as key for images, which usually load with little delay and are quickly viewed. So, at least by this measure, streaming fails to provide an equivalent advantage.
The problem with this way of thinking is that it overlooks the huge number of additional benefits that streaming brings beyond efficient delivery.
Take security, for example. Piracy remains an issue in several industries but streaming means we’re a long way from the days when peer-to-peer platforms and individuals using them were routinely being taken to court on charges relating to copyright infringement. But with no industry-standard safeguards for images, image theft and misuse remain serious problems.
The creative industry suffers in particular, as licensing an image through legitimate means becomes fraught with issues. Even when an image is licensed, there’s no guarantee the terms of the license will be respected and that images won’t end up being stolen and misused.
In fact, it’s estimated that there are three billion images being freely shared online every day and around 85% of these are stolen or have had their copyright infringed. This represents huge value leakage for the photography industry, which has been in decline for over a decade. Indeed, many photographers would struggle to make a decent living from photography alone were it not for the option of supplementing their earnings with writing, holding workshops or other photography-related activities.
A new dawn
So what if the creative industry also adopted the streaming model? What if content was readily available for free, in an embeddable format, much like a YouTube video? And in a post-cookie digital landscape, how would the advertising industry benefit from this model?
First, by streaming an image in this way, creators retain control and full visibility over their assets and can gain new revenue streams from in-image advertising.
The advertising itself would also hold a handful of advantages over conventional display ads. Advertisers would, for example, be able to display their ads in prime position for maximum effectiveness, right within the body of the article, rather than in banners around the article where they are more likely to be ignored.
Furthermore, by using AI-based image recognition and image metadata, ads can be contextually targeted, and so perfectly tailored to users based on what they are already looking at.
This is key for both publishers and advertisers: research from IAS (Integral Ad Science) shows that contextually relevant ads are preferred to other types of ads by almost three in four people. Separate research* carried out by Nielsen shows that, in comparison with conventional ads, SmartFrame’s in-image standard display ads are 34% more relevant, 14% more memorable, 13% more engaging and 11% more enjoyable.
And this, in turn, can help with dwell times and engagement. The same research showed that whereas around 34% of respondents claimed to have read the entire article on which conventional images and advertising were displayed, this figure rose to 41% on sites that had SmartFrames with in-image video advertising in place.
Publishers, meanwhile, would gain free use of content, removing licensing costs from their business and giving their audiences a richer viewing experience, while also gaining new incremental advertising revenues.
In addition, as streaming allows publishers to understand how and where their content is being viewed and interacted with, they can be better informed on popularity and audience demographics.
With clear benefits for content owners, advertisers and publishers, and a solution for some important industry issues, the shift to this model only seems inevitable.
SmartFrame Technologies, which is the first-to-market with a unique image-streaming technology that's revolutionising the photography industry, will be hosting an exclusive ad launch event at the Tate Modern, London on 3rd November 2021. To register your interest in the event and for more information, please see here.
*Nielsen Digital Content Evaluation measures the impact of native, social or branded digital content by exposing a relevant and representative sample of online panelists to a campaign’s content. Commissioned by SmartFrame, this study assessed whether the content generates better engagement for advertisers by providing a better visual experience for users. This research analyses 1200 responses surveyed in August 2021.
Matt Golowczynski is head of copy at SmartFrame Technologies
