Protecting Multimedia: The Rising Importance of Metadata

Multimedia is content: So it makes sense you would protect it like you would any article or publication. But when you want people to share your images or video, it’s hard to know how to protect your rights as creator.

This brings up the issue of permanent metadata.

Metadata is data about data, or more comprehensively, data within an image or video that tells you about it: who the author is, where is originated, etc. You can find this data by looking at a video or image’s properties and looking into its advanced settings. It’s really not as complicated as it sounds. This information is also used by search engines to know exactly what an image or video is about (because search engines don’t have eyes or ears). SEOs call these alt tags and use them frequently to improve search engine’s understanding of a website, and in turn, search rankings.

The issue is this metadata isn’t permanent. It can be altered by anyone at anytime, making protection nonexistent if anyone had the inclination to eliminate your digital affiliation with your work. It is for this reason hardly anyone even uses them.

What is needed is software to make this metadata permanent: a digital thumbprint that would be irremovable from the multimedia. This thumbprint could then be read by search engines and knowing the originator’s site (which would be embedded in the metadata), could boost their rankings, making sharing seamless and responsible. This eliminates the idea of “orphaned” multimedia and protects creator copyright.

Here’s an example. Say you’re a photographer and you post a really cool image of a Starbucks coffee cup. You then share than image and it goes viral, until eventually Starbucks sponsors it in a paid social-ad campaign. Search engines value shares and recognize them as proof that content is valuable. Your website then, which you linked into the Starbuck image metadata, would then get boosted to the top of the search result for whatever keywords were discerned as significant in the meta description.

Cool, huh? There's even more.

While also protecting the creator's work from being used in other campaigns as it no longer being categorized as "orphaned" or unclaimed, permanent metadata could result in further business for the creator as their contact information would be easy to find if a business were so inclined as to contact you to purchase it.

The hurdle is that many businesses like the idea of free "orphaned" images that they can use for marketing purposes. And these business have clout. The hope is that in the future, businesses see that this protection not only protects the Instagrammers but extends to big business as well. That if this metadata became permanent, and a significant piece of that digital Internet structure, they would no longer need their high-power legal teams to protect their assets; they would protect themselves. An innovative idea we should all be able to get behind.

Video Ads to Hit Facebook This Summer

Since Facebook juiced up their mini-feeds with adverts it has been a touchy subject, but that is nothing compared to the expected backlash of video ads (that we can only assume will be auto-play).

According to Ad Age, Facebook has not finalized the format of the advertisements but it can be expected that they will be housed in either the main news feed or the sidebars, or most likely, both. According to the same article, the ads will be capped at fifteen seconds and the frequency capped to be sure no viewer sees each more than three times per day. The asking price, you ask? According to one executive, the video ads’ ticket price reaches the upwards of a million dollars.

The hopes are to tap into the deep pockets of TV networks with plenty of video to spare, but the real question is whether Facebook can withstand another disastrous hit to a demographic growing tired of the network donning out their information and pinning them with adverts while they provide little innovation in its services that’s actually new (Facebook Home is just an extension of services and Facebook Graph—wait, what happened to Facebook Graph?). They have been patient with the network's slow adoption to mobile and their broken promises of user/marketer privacy, but video will be a hard sell to keep them from migrating to other less ad invasive environments.

[VIDEO] FYO on Brand Recognition

Awesome video from LADDesign about a five-year-old's aptitude for brand recognition.

Online Videos and Personality

In a time when internet videos pervade the Internet like pimples on a preteens face, its hard to know what works and what's worthwhile. Recently KISSmetrics came out with a great article on "How to Create Your Own Promo Video for Under $100." The article does a great job outlining how to produce a quality explainer video for any business--simplicity and brevity being key.

1. Write script. Like all marketing material, content is king, make sure your script is engaging, articulate and includes a call to action. Also don't forget to pay attention to SEO with titles and other keywords.
2. Record voiceover. Use a quality USB microphone (between $100-150) in an echo-free space.
3. Create visuals. Beforehand, the storyboard should be planned out visually. If you don't have the talent for someone to create a video in Illustrator or Flash, don't forget about screen captures, live video, doodles on a scanner and stock images/videos that can be purchased online.
4. Edit video. Possible software to work with include Adobe After Effects, iMovie, ScreenFlow, Powerpoint and Carntasia.
5. Add music and SFX. Only use music with a proper license for unrestricted web use. Royalty-free tracks range from $15-30 and includes sites such as Premium Beat, Audio Jungle and IB Audio.
6. Publish. Export in high definition whenever possible (MPE-4 format). As mentioned before, pay attention to SEO when writing title, tags and description.

While it's a great launch point for any small business, especially one without a marketing firm, an explainer video runs the risk of being a bit formulaic and it should be noted as not the only option. The point of any marketing video, like in any form of advertising, is to show what you have that your competition doesn't. Sometimes that can be as simple as personality. Checkout how simple this concept can be from Indeed Brewing Company, a new beer brewing company in Northeast Minneapolis.


Introducing Indeed Brewing Company from Indeed Brewing Company on Vimeo.