Today, at the PDN PhotoPlus Expo, ImageSpan unveiled a new service, LicenseStream Creator Pro, that automatically scours the Web, 24/7, 365 and lets photographers know where (and how) their digital content is being used PLUS it provides several options to accelerate converting non-paying content users into paying customers.

Based on the number of announcements that have happened in this arena over the last few months (i.e. Flickr/Getty and Photrade), it is pretty clear that the market for addressing the needs of digital content creators is quite hot.

Press Release:

IMAGESPAN ADDS DIGITAL CONTENT TRACKER TO ITS LICENSESTREAM CREATOR PRO SERVICE, HELPING SUBSCRIBERS FIND AND CONVERT NON-PAYING CONSUMERS OF DIGITAL CONTENT INTO PAYING CUSTOMERS

LicenseStream Creator PRO Now Offers Tracking, Licensing in one Service, Empowering Content Owners and Creators to Make More Money from Their Digital Assets

NEW YORK, NY – October 23, 2008 — ImageSpan Inc., which provides a digital content licensing and billing settlement platform, today announced the addition of a new content tracker to its Web-based LicenseStream Creator PRO service, delivering the first service to offer both tracking and licensing to creators and owners of digital content. LicenseStream Creator PRO offers additional licensing, reporting and publishing flexibility and options to the standard LicenseStream service for photographers, videographers, illustrators and other providers of digital content.

The new tracker helps content creators find their digital content online, providing them with a view into where and how it is used. ImageSpan has also added automated options to convert non-paying content consumers into paying customers. This helps content creators obtain more value from their photos, video and other digital assets as they get distributed on the Web. Until today, tools this powerful were available only for large enterprises.

“Content creators and owners have long sought a combined service that provides visibility into where their content is going online, how it is being used, and then automates licensing and billing transactions to facilitate the flow of royalty payments,” said Iain Scholnick, chief executive officer and president, ImageSpan. “With this new tracker feature, LicenseStream Creator PRO puts licensing and tracking control into the hands of content owners and creators, seamlessly helping them to pursue untapped opportunities for new licensing, advertising and distribution while providing a means to resolve potential infringement issues Internet-wide. The addition of this new tracker makes LicenseStream Creator PRO the complete solution.”

LicenseStream Creator PRO enables subscribers to embed into their content’s metadata terms of use, including where the content can be used, for how long, in what geographies, etc. The new tracker continuously monitors billions of photographs, videos and other content on the Internet to locate a LicenseStream subscriber’s digital assets with high rates of accuracy. In instances where terms of use for content have been infringed, a subscriber can select from any number of automatically generated e-mail responses. These range from offering the opportunity to legally license the content, to requesting a link back to the content owner’s site, inserting the content owner’s ad feed, sharing ad revenues or issuing a take-down request. The service monitors to see when action is taken and reports back to the content owner.

“It’s a no-brainer for me to sign up for this new integrated service — it provides the support I need to track, market and to grow my business as a designer and provider of images,” said Clement Mok, chief executive officer, Visual Symbols Library, who is widely recognized as a pioneer within the interactive marketing industry and the designer on the launch of the original Macintosh from Apple. “The ability to track content usage is a powerful idea. The addition makes LicenseStream Creator PRO a simple, flexible and invaluable tool and resource.”

Today’s announcement was made at the PDN PhotoPlus Expo in New York.

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Fast Facts about ImageSpan and LicenseStream

+ The company has established relationships with key players (i.e. PLUS Coalition and Adobe).

+ They just launched an e-commerce portal that provides the nearly 10,000 members of the Wedding & Event Videographers Association (WEVA) with the means for making money (even while they sleep).

+ ImageSpan recently closed a $11 million second round financing from a group led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG (http://www.imagespan.com/corporate/release/release-06-16-08.html).

+ LicenseStream helps anyone with digital content (i.e. photographers, videographers, graphic designers, illustrators) to register, license, assign rights, price, license and easily produce invoices and track royalties for their creative work.

+ LicenseStream eliminates time-consuming negotiations or middlemen that accompany manual licensing processes to cut costs dramatically (more than 40 percent) and maximize profits as it minimizes paperwork.

+ LicenseStream unlocks revenues by enabling content creators and owners to link to LicenseStream from their own Web site and provide a link to their own online gallery on LicenseStream where they are not competing with thousands of other photographers for client attention.

+ It allows content creators and owners to automatically publish to the Web, and to sites such as Google Base, which provides them with an even greater audience.

+ It provides a licensing engine to reduce time spent on pricing research

+ It enables any LicenseStream subscriber to register, license and make money from their work for just 5 percent to 10 percent of the transaction — versus the more than 70 percent transaction fee typically charged by large photo stock houses

+ It helps establish and protect content ownership by providing registry services. In fact, ImageSpan is the exclusive provider of license registry services to the Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS) Coalition, the international, multi-industry standards body for image licensing

+ It is accessible via plug-ins for Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom™ photography workflow software and the popular Adobe Creative Suite® 3 software.

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