Any blog too tiny for a photo budget no longer need fret. Getty Images, the world's largest photo provider, is letting people embed its stock images for free.
The move is an abrupt change in business model for the photo service. Instead of relying on licensing fees for its stock photos, it plans to make embed codes public for the majority of collections on site. Those pictures will come without a watermark and will contain an image credit linking to the company's licensing page. But most importantly for Getty, the practice will provide a new form of revenue.
See also: Getty Is 'Leaning In' When It Comes to Stock Photos
By letting people embed Getty photos, the company can access previously untapped data. Via embeds, Getty can gather user information and run ads within branded, embeddable frames, similar to YouTube's options.
In a way, Getty parallels challenges faced by the music industry. For instance, if anyone wants to use a Getty image for free, it's not hard to do, just like it's not difficult to illegally download music. You can find Getty photos via Google and screenshot them, sans watermark.
By providing an embed code for WordPress, Twitter and more, Getty hopes to incentivize legal photo uploads, in the same way Spotify offers free music streams.
This way, Getty also gets to keep control of those photos. If the company removes an image from its collection, the same image will disappear from every site that embedded it.
Ultimately, Getty is acknowledging that its content is in high (often illegal) demand. Instead, it's making a strategic choice to monetize photos via more creative means. If the gamble works, the company will have tapped a revenue stream for years to come.
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