New Ways to Engage Readers—And Please Audiences

Making Photos Speak Pictures: people love 'em, to the tune of 3 trillion or so images posted online. The problem for publishers is that these big, beautiful bits of real estate are mute, with no keywords, tags or ads to make them monetizable space—until now. A new crop of startups (two of the best-known are Stipple and Luminate) succeed in giving photos a voice by embedding links, tags, video and social sharing, activated by clicking icons that appear when hovered over by a mouse. Wondering what dress Jessica Chastain wore at the Critic's Choice Awards, or who sells Brad Pitt's wool cap? You can now find out without leaving the Web page to search elsewhere. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Luminate, backed by Google Ventures, Nokia and others, is "on a mission to make Web images interactive," according to company president Chas Edwards. "In every corner in which you look, publishers are recognizing that consumer appetite for images is enormous, so figuring out how to sell them is important." The problem, he says, is that an image is "sort of a dead-end street … asking more questions than it answers." By tagging the who, what and where of a photo, Edwards believes Luminate can provide the relevant information readers and advertisers are looking for. We asked Edwards for more details on the technology and how it can benefit publishers. His answers are excerpted from that interview. Publishing Executive: What's the problem you are looking to solve? Chas Edwards: When you ask [publishers] about photo galleries they'll say, 'We have discovered the importance of photos and love them—the bad news is the photos that satisfy our readers best are the ones that make us lose our customers.' If you have photos of the red carpet at the Critic's Choice Awards and a viewer is really interested in a picture, you would think that would be a moment of publishing victory … but readers go to Google or IMDb [for more information]. If we can bring relevant content to that image, we can answer that reader's question. PE: How does the monetization piece work? CE: It's ad supported. We think of our model as similar to a magazine model in that once we uncover the metadata—the content—inside the image, we want to present [that] content to the consumer and surround it with relevant advertising. We call it visual targeting … [and] within that we can get very granular. We did a campaign with L'Oreal, who asked if we could target images of celebrity women who had smooth skin. We looked at photos of models on their website and found women who look like that on the organic Web … whenever we saw an image of a woman who fit that visual description we would flag it and surround by an ad for Garnier's beauty products. PE: How does the technology achieve that tagging? CE: We take a variety of different approaches. Software and algorithms are great, but currently there are only certain things software can do. [Image recognition] software looks at pixels to recognize stuff … but it's pretty limited, so we use other software approaches to get more information. Text classification looks for proper nouns [in text associated with an image] to help identify the subjects in an image … [We] then use humans to do the more precise work. An example of this kind of activity is identifying clothes on celebrities or to tell if they are carrying a Fendi bag or a Chanel bag. PE: Why is the social sharing aspect important? CE: Photo content is the dominant form for social media—people are sharing and liking photos in social media more than text. This is why we prioritized social sharing apps right out of the gate. People want an easy way to share [photos], but conventional sharing buttons operate on [the level of] the entire photo. There might be a case where I see a picture of Gwyneth Paltrow on a celebrity news site, but I don't care about Paltrow, I love the tile she has in the background. We allow users to pinpoint part of image—drop a tag and write a comment saying, 'check out the tiles above her sink.' Our primary customer is the publisher. … Our end game is get [the user's] friend back to Yahoo and Fox, not to make [him or her] more successful on Facebook … [We've found that] anytime someone shares on Facebook it leads to four new unique visits to that image [on the publisher's page]. Vance's Digital Dash Vance Publishing celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2012, and did it in fine fashion—with redesigned websites, new event and app launches and a "Great Media Website" recognition from B2B Media Business for Modern Salon. The accolades reflect recent heavy investment in digital, database and business information products, with new technology and talent brought into the business to make products state-of-the-art. Additionally, as vice president of media operations Dean Horowitz said at Publishing Executive's virtual show in September, the company has been a pioneer in utilizing data to develop sophisticated products for target markets. On the back end, Vance has successfully streamlined workflows across its three dozen websites. We asked president and COO Peggy Walker about these and other initiatives. Publishing Executive: Vance is often associated with carefully-managed growth; a company not afraid to acquire or sell assets in order to achieve targeted goals. What are the principal ideas guiding your growth philosophy? Peggy Walker: Our strategy for the past several years has been to provide more services to fewer markets. We are focused on production agriculture, professional woodworking and the professional beauty industry. PE: What are your most important revenue generating products right now? PW: Our digital products continue to grow by double digits. This includes website and e-newsletter advertising, custom digital products and online subscriptions. We also launched a very successful event in the fresh produce space last year [the Midwest Produce Conference & Expo, produced by The Packer], which we are building upon this year with a bigger show and a series of regional/local events. PE: What are the main challenges for a B2B company of your size and market? PW: I can tell you what our main challenges are, but I'm not so sure larger and smaller B2B media companies don't have similar challenges. There are so many different ways a marketer can take their message to their customers and prospects. Technology and niche service providers lead marketers to "go it alone." Our challenge is not to be disintermediated; our opportunity is to be a compelling partner with the marketer—by providing custom content, marketing services, integrated media programs and being a gateway to other services where we may not have expertise. PE: You spoke at a show recently about managing organizational change. What do you find most important when it comes to retooling job descriptions, creating new efficiencies and encouraging internal innovation? PW: The most important thing we do is listen to our customer and the market. That intelligence guides what and how we need to change which in turn drives organizational change. The term "transformation of our industry" is over-used and so it doesn't resonate much anymore. But if a B-to-B media company doesn't transform itself, it will be gone. Constantly evaluating what you need to do and who you need to have to do it is key to growth. PE: Where do you hope to take Vance in 2 years? Five years? PW: Let's focus in on two years. Vance brands will continue to remain strong in our markets. We will have more robust data products, a larger event footprint, more multi-year custom business and continue to deliver double-digit digital growth. PE

Publishing News

New Ways to Engage Readers—And Please Audiences

James Sturdivant

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

James Sturdivant