Just viewing images of celebrities like Kim Kardashian might satisfy some Web surfers, but a new partnership between Getty Images and Luminate, a company that specializes in making digital images interactive, is bringing a new experience to more inquisitive viewers.
Digital photographs from Getty are typically tagged with basic descriptors of who or what is in the photograph — small bits of information known as metadata. Luminate will take those photos and append additional metadata, including, for example, Ms. Kardashian’s Web site, Twitter feed or related articles about her. When a user hovers over an image, the information will appear on the screen.
Chas Edwards, the chief revenue officer and head of publisher development at Luminate, said adding that information to a photograph can help publishers retain readers who might otherwise leave Web sites to find more information on the subject of a photograph. Getty began using the company’s technology this month.
“If there was a story about a celebrity, wouldn’t it be nice to pivot that audience to an entertainment gallery on a related site?” Mr. Edwards said. “It keeps that reader on your experience.”
Publishers that have already started embedding related Twitter posts into images include Entertainment Tonight Online, Just Jared and Perez Hilton.
Luminate also offers Getty and other clients the ability to tailor advertising to users based on the images on a publisher’s site. The images are tagged with metadata that matches an advertiser’s product profile. A toothpaste brand, for example, may opt to display its ads around photos of people who are smiling.
Brands that have used the technology include Garnier, Samsung, Macy’s, Best Buy, Intel, McDonald’s and Gap.
Tanzina Vega writes about advertising and digital media. Follow @tanzinavega on Twitter.
Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/partnership-gives-web-surfers-more-than-just-images/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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