RF photo library Dreamstime have entered into a – beta – agreement with Google to provide images for the search giants display ads.
In a post on one of the agency’s forums Serban Enache writes: ‘Although we have agreed to keep details of our arrangement confidential, we can share with you as a selected member of our contributor community a few specifics about this relationship. We commend Google on their efforts to effectively utilize and integrate stock photography into their advertising products in a way that will be beneficial to advertisers and photographers alike.
The details of the program that we can share with you at this time are that Google has selected a large number of images from our collection for use in display ads: Google will be able to use pre-selected Dreamstime RF images only for ads, and in limited sizes to accommodate ads. During the beta period, images will not be available in a template library. These images will be used under the Royalty Free license in a beta for the next 12 months, and contributors will receive royalties soon. The royalties for the first 12 months will be based on our all-at-once subscriptions – i.e., $2.00 (non exclusive) and $2.20 (exclusive) per image. As we do with other initiatives, Dreamstime supports the volume discounts and we expect to at least double our regular royalty rate. The volume discount also reflects the use case, since these images will be used in limited-sized ads and not in more prominent uses. We have decided to provide a higher royalty rate for this launch than originally planned as a demonstration of our long-term commitment to offering fair revenue to our contributors. It is important to note when considering the amounts that we’re talking about a very high volume purchase that will hopefully increase even more over time.
Provided the first phase of this project goes as expected, after a maximum of 12 months (we all hope it will be sooner), in addition to the royalties described above, Google will initiate another volume purchase of an upgraded W-EL license for each image. We might switch images that didn’t perform well with new ones, awarding royalties as appropriate. For the second stage we will award EL royalties (25%-60%). Overall the royalties will average approximately 50%.
Although we are very enthusiastic about the long-term potential for this collaboration, and we would anticipate your enthusiastic participation in this groundbreaking program, you may elect to “opt out” any time until January 31st by removing your participation in the Alliances program on your account management page. We will proceed awarding royalties after this date. If you have opted-out in the past from Alliances and wish to participate you can opt-in using same Alliances & Partnerships page (which will of course enroll in all our Alliances).
In our opinion, this is potentially not only a very attractive deal for our contributors, but with so much future potential, will ultimately be good for our entire community. It’s a collaboration with the world’s most acclaimed advertising network and is something we have dreamed of since inception of the site. This has taken many months to finalize, we thank all of our contributors for their patience and, of course, for their support through all these years.’