Image: DemotixDemotix might just have created a new revenue model for editorial photographers and aspiring photojournalists. The crowd-sourced news agency, which has licensed images to publications and outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and the BBC, is to begin paying contributors a share of its advertising revenue.
The company has partnered with Guardian Select, MessageSpace and Google to place ads on all the site’s story pages and news hubs. Demotix will work with the advertising agencies to make sure that the ads are relevant and ethical, and the photographers will receive an 80 percent share of the revenue generated by the ads on their pages.
Demotix was launched in 2008 by CEO Turi Munthe, a journalist who had worked for The Economist, Slate and the Financial Times among others, and his fellow Oxford University alumnus Jonathan Tepper whose background was in finance. The aim was to promote citizen journalism around the world as a replacement for the decline in foreign news desks. The company received praise for its ability to distribute images during the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict, when accredited journalists were excluded from the region, and in July 2009 Demotix received the only image of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates as he was arrested for disorderly conduct. Prices for licenses are set at rights managed rates rather than royalty free microstock fees. An exclusive can sell for over $6,000, of which Demotix takes half as its commission. In March 2011, the company signed a deal with Corbis which now helps distributes Demotix’s images to its clients.
The new plan is intended to supplement image sales and to provide a way to monetize non-buying users who visit the site in search of news content.
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