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Monetizing Content in a Web 2.0 World
 
By Jeffrey Shear, Chief information Officer,ImageSpan Inc.
 
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The Challenge: Monetizing Content in a Web 2.0 World
Licensing and monetizing movies, brands, photos, books, recordings and sports properties continues to bea major driver of revenues for leading enterprises across the globe – now more than ever with the proliferation of such content on the Web. To monetize content and adapt traditional business models tothe Web 2.0 world of content mashups and projects with multiple copyright holders, however, a number of pain points need to addressed. These include establishing ownership, licensing and monetizing digitalimages, video, text and audio; rights management and protection, and distribution of royalties to allstakeholders.
 
While e-commerce works well for purchasing products and services over the Internet, itdoes not work well for the highly distributed digital content licensing transactions typical today. Digitalcontent licensing creates complexity; establishing ownership for multi-copyright-holder projects iscomplicated, distributed networks are fluid, and usage is diverse, encompassing multiple distributionchannels and business models.Because there’s been no clear mechanism for defining ownership, content creators and publishers have been frustrated by revenue leakage since the advent of the Web. Their content is stolen and the proliferation of this stolen content diminishes its value.Adding to these frustrations is the manual way content distribution and royalty payments have beenhandled. For a user or a buyer of content, whether a media company or an advertising agency, it is oftendifficult to establish ownership and it can take months to hammer out licensing terms via multiple phonecalls with attorneys. For principal content owners, it can take months to get paid and direct royalty payments to additional rights holders for a single piece of content. At the end of day -- in an environmentwhere content can move at the speed of light -- someone is sitting in front of a spreadsheet trying toaccount for all the licensing and royalty payments. This is not a very efficient way to manage contentsettlement.
Streamlining Content Licensing on the Distributed Web
ImageSpan’s LicenseStream is built to handle the complexity of establishing ownership regardless of howmany rights holders are involved or how diverse and dynamic the business models and distributionchannels. This automated platform streamlines the process of content acquisition and syndication on thedistributed Web to dramatically lower costs (more than 40 percent) and accelerate the time to market for all types of digital content.A simple-to-use, Web-based service, LicenseStream allows content owners to tag their content with atransaction wrapper that lets them track when it is viewed and distribute royalties quickly. Bydramatically reducing the time and cost of licensing and royalty settlements, LicenseStream speeds the pace of transactions, enables content creation and expands revenue opportunities.ImageSpan’s LicenseStream allows any rights-managed digital content transaction to occur withoutmanual intervention.Today’s large media companies and advertising networks need to apply the sophisticated Web 2.0 rulesof delivering a rich and wide variety of content types to various social groups and targeted demographics.This complex task requires a highly scalable and transactional content licensing process. LicenseStream:
 
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Automatically establishes clear ownership and licensing parameters. LicenseStream tags every piece of digital content funneled through a media company’s system with metadata that describesall the assigned rights and licensing histories, and ensures that metadata is normalized. It alsomanages the entire media transaction cycle of: registration, rights, permissions, pricing,assignment, license generation, commerce management, royalty and billing settlement for thatexisting or newly-created digital content.
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Is especially useful in complex, highly-distributed environments where it drives revenues via awide range of business models, including subscription, ad-supported delivery and directdownload via multiple distribution channels including major portals and major aggregators andsyndicators of all types, including social networks and bloggers.
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Provides rapid content partner self-provisioning via Web services, automated rights managementassignment and immediate deployment of content ready for licensing with full and automatedrights management into any network without manual intervention. For example, any contentowner can allow any distributor to select their content and offer it for licensing with the assurancethat the content will be licensed properly, that all rights will be updated, and that the proper transactions will be generated to manage the license, settlement and royalty distribution processes.
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Serves as a transactional and administrative middleware gateway. LicenseStream dramaticallyreduces costs by automating content ingest, rights assignment, rights and content tracking andtransaction management by acting as an administrative gateway or hub at the center of an array of highly active networks needed for content consumption. Removing inter-network and rightsmanagement complexities, it provides audit control at all points necessary for a brokeredtransaction (content ingest, rights, search, sale, rights management history and audit) andsubsequent targeted content delivery.
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Protects and consolidates new and existing assets to optimize their value.
 
Protecting content withLicenseStream gives media companies the confidence to place their content on the Web safely,reducing the risk that valuable content will be either stored and forgotten or pilfered online.
Technical Overview
From a technical perspective, ImageSpan’s LicenseStream is a content automation Web services platformthat functions as a conditional access (CA) content gateway deploying on-demand, transaction-basedcontent fulfillment with automated rights management.LicenseStream is a highly scalable, distributed Web services platform that can push content sourcing toeither the “edge” or the “core” of the network with accompanying digital content rights assignment andcontent quality management, all the while retaining strict control of transaction processing and contentdelivery throughout wireless, wireline as well as advertising or third- party brand networks.ImageSpan has developed intellectual property rights management (IPRM) processes for most forms of digital content. These processes are in the form of data structures and objects that make up ImageSpan’sLicenseStream software that can be used as a complete software package or in the form of servicesavailable to other software. The ability to precisely control intellectual property rights not only protectsthe content but maximizes the content’s value by allowing for more specific rights licensing andimmediate automated confirmation of available rights.
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