GumGum.com - Photo Licensing Platform

Newcomer GumGum aims to make a difference in media licensing on the internet. There’s a significant divide between offline licensing norms and those online, as the nature of the world wide web dictates different standards. Thus GumGum has developed a monetizing platform for online images. The service is based on impressions. Photos can be licensed on a CPM basis—usually about 15-20 cents, however determined by the owner, or they come free with an advertisement attached. Images must be published using a Flash object in order to track impressions for payment purposes. Photographers from all over the world can upload their photos to GumGum and publishers can browse through them and license them after creating an account.

“Licensing media for the Internet finally makes sense.
Offline, content is licensed for a finite period of time to a predictable audience. Online, content lives forever and usage is unknown. This begs the question: How do you fairly monetize a license when circulation is unpredictable? GumGum distributes, tracks and monetizes every view a piece of online content receives.”

This is a step forward in online media licensing. It gives photographers a real way to monetize their photos, while giving publishers ample material to select from. Also, allows for licensing to unlimited numbers of people—which could work much better than charging one time fees.

Will this work? Is it too much work to embed a Flash object for publishing? There’s still Flickr which is a hugely popular source for photos, many of which are free or licensed under Creative Commons.