Top Contributors Get a Share of Demotix’ Ad Revenues.

Just edited your title a bit there John, think it might have been too long to be displayed in the sidebar so no-one was clicking on it!

Hi Tom

I can't agree with this idea , as usual

In my country we can't even talk about advertisements on our newspapers, tv or radio where we work.

It's forbidden by the law and it's unethical.

Jursnalist, should be as much objective as he can, he can't promote his picture, his article or tv production like a soap or shampoo and he CAN'T get money for advertisements

It is very, very unethical.

So, if any charges will be paid to me for advertisements I will have to return this money to You .

Best,

Michal

That's very strange Michal - don't newspapers and TV channels have advertisements in Poland? How do they make their money? I doubt that newspapers are paid for entirely from the cover price!

You can be objective and still think that your story is interesting and that people should read it - otherwise why would you make a story in the first place? I know that when I write a story I share it with all my friends and ask what they think.

The important thing is that you have no connection to the advertisers or to their products - you just get your share of the money we're earning from being able to place adverts by your work.

This is 2 different things.

Newspapers , TV radio etc has people - sales team who sales advertisements.

Jurnalist can't take money for advertisements he can take only money for His work - for picture, for article etc. no for advertisements.

Michal

But that's what we want to do - you submit work, we sell advertisements. If your work does well, we pay you for it (using the money we make from advertisements, just like a newspaper).

You're not advertising anything personally.

Tom, sorry, but I think different.

I don't want money for advertisements, only for sold pictures.

Michal

Michal, I think you're overthinking here or being naive. You always get money from advertising, whether the media that buys your pictures tells you or not. If it weren't for ads, magazines and newspapers wouldn't be able to pay your pictures, so you may feel like you're not compromising your moral, but every time you get published, you're erning money that perhaps is coming from sources you wouldn't like even a little. Been there as a musician, now feeling the same as a photographer...
Unless you decide to walk the streets selling your pictures yourself and don't allow any intermediary, you're earning money that's difficult to trace where it's coming from. Actually even in that case you don't know where does the person that buys your picture getting the money from. Each and every PJ and artist faces that contradiction.
Even if you don't sell, perhaps your camera, or your strap or memory cards or the bag you use are manufactured by underpaid or slave workers. I think you can't be so inflexible because if you really are you should probably quit doing things at all.
Summarizing, if you're published you're being paid by advertising.

I can see Michal's point. If there are ads next to his work it can bring into question why that particular ad is there in the first place. In a publication there are not ads directly tied to the story. They are on the same page, and that is how the publisher makes money, but they usually have no reference to the story.

With how the ads are tailored by the story content here it can bring into question the objectivity of the journalist. "Did he solicit that particular advertiser on his story page?" is what I feel Michal is talking about, and what can be brought into question.

With ads next to his story that the pictures are for sale on can cause confusion. These are not pictures, or a story, that has already been bought, they are for sale to publishers, why that particular ad next to them? Is that advertiser paying him to be displayed there, thus having an indirect influence? Most do not realize there is no control by the contributor to what is advertised next to his story, and can be viewed as unprofessional by some of the ad's content shown.

Thanks Steve !

This is exactly what I want to say , but my English is to bad

Best,

Michal

[EDITED BY ADMIN TO REMOVE PERSONAL ATTACKS]

I can see Michal's point to some extent re adverts. However the other magazines and newspapers who use his images either directly or via Demotix will take advertising. Though of course unless he is a staff reporter on a profit share system he will not get any money for this.

On the other hand why are there adverts on Demotix? What will Demotix advertise? Is there anything it will not advertise? Who decides which adverts appear where? Can a reporter say they don't want a particular advert next to their stories? (you would not normally get that luxury in a newspaper or magazine)

As Steve says these are stories and images that are foe sale. The adverts could cause confusion and it could colour the choice of the picture editors. I assume that when the buyers see them they have a different view ands don't see the adverts?

come on people what have you been drinking? no reasonable reader would assume that just because an advert is next to a story it means that that advertiser is paying the photographer. if it was the case we.d all retire to the seaside within one year. not to mention that it is a bit early to assume that anyone of us will qualify for that money. whilst I.m no authority in Polish law what that law probably says is that an advertiser cannot directly give a journalist any money either to influence or whatever reason in the course of the person acting as a journalist. this does not mean that a company cannot advertise in a newspaper. incidentally in English we call this corruption and you.ll find that this rule applies in most civilized countries. what we should worry about is that we act to the highest professional standards.

---corrected some typos which I did not see on my mobile, apologies--

So, to address some of the actual questions/points that have been raised:

Patricio gets what I'm trying to say here.

As far as Steve's points are concerned, it's actually not really possible, given the way our online advertising is set up, that the photographer could know in advance what adverts will be shown against his story.

We just sell the space to our advertising partners (Google etc) - they make a determination at the time the user loads the page what advert to show him/her (and they'll probably make that decision based on whether it is a him or a her, and whatever else they know about that user from their past searches, Youtube favourites, email contacts, and anything else Google has on them).

There's no question that the photographer can have any influence over the content of the adverts or the advertiser whose content is shown - except insofar as some program running on a server in a Google data centre may think that the ad is relevant to the other content on the page.

We have some coarse-grained control over what is displayed (e.g. we could say "No political ads" or "No adverts for violent video games") so that we're not showing politically insensitive ads against harrowing or controversial news stories.

The vast majority of buyers will either be looking at the "buyer side" of the Demotix site, or at an FTP feed or at one of our resellers. They won't be seeing ads against your photos - they're only shown on the public website.

That sounds reasonable. You may want to block the usual "sex, religion and politics" but otherwise who cares?
As you say the buyers use a different view anyway.

Is Demotix a news picture library, a news story service or a news provider like an online newspaper?

Why does it only have to be one of those?

Is the Guardian a print newspaper, a broadcaster, an online forum, or a dating website? It's any and every one of those things.

The thing about what we're doing at Demotix is, we can do all of those things you've just named without a huge amount of extra work - just different ways of displaying similar content. We don't even have to hire extra people to do it, unlike the poor old Grauniad.

Interested in your vision for the future... though if we knew the future we would not be sitting here now

I agree that it is easier to be all things to all men in the digital revolution as you don't have the baggage of the old systems. The Grauniad is a dating web site!!!? God help us! So when will Demotix have a dating section? (

Hello Everyone,

I must admit that I was a bit annoyed when I saw one or two specific adverts next to my stories, but then I reasoned that as long as the adverts were legal and not in bad taste, then I have no right to stop the advertiser from going about their legitimate business. Furthermore, in the UK and most countries there are official bodies people can complain to should they find an advert objectionable.

Incidentally, this is one very good reason to have a professionally prepared profile page including photo to make sure that people are in no doubt that we are a serious group of photojournalists.

As for Chris suggesting when will we have a Dating section, well, Demotix is probably one of the best dating sites if you are serious about meeting a partner. Demotix gives those who are serious an opportunity to demonstrate their professionalism and other aspects about themselves, by having, say, a professionally prepared profile page with an eye catching photo. Not to mention the opportunities to meet interesting people in our work. After all, if doctors can meet partners whilst doctoring and lawyers whilst lawyering, why not photojournalists whilst journalising? And just in case you were wondering why you should have business cards ready, now you have another reason.

Whilst thinking about the subject of sharing ad revenue, maybe there is an other angle which we did not consider (at least I didn't until now). Although I support and welcome Demotix's policy to share some of the ad revenue with us, maybe this revenue should not be distributed only to the top 100 people. After all, we are more than 100 people contributing. Speaking for myself, every photo uploaded to demotix is as important as any other photo, and any contributor is as important as any other contributor. Maybe that money could be used to set up some sort of a trust fund, to help members who encounter some serious financial loss when covering a story for demotix or to help members in difficult countries maybe to find them equipment.

Again speaking for myself, I'd rather have Demotix finding more opportunities to sell our work (did I mention an editorial stock section??) than anything else.

best

Lawrence

well it does not bother me at all, any way of getting more exposure and in the end more money is a good idea.

This is a business and as a business is there to make money so good on yer DEMOTIX. If I didnt want my images associated with anything at all then I would not put them into the public domain.

Pete

Hi everyone! Today, on one of my many daily visits to the Demotix website, I noticed an advertisment of a dating service appearing on the "Julia Tymoshenko covered in bruises in Ukraine jail" story. So on the same page one can see Tymoshenko(or anybody else) with bruises next to cleavage exposing models featured on the dating service ad. It felt kind of akward and I think this is not someone would expect to see on a news site. Of course everyone understants it's a google ad and don't get me wrong, I reckon most of us welcome ads so that Demotix and its contributors make some money. I wonder though, wouldn't it look better if there was a way to block certain type of ads?

Well, nowadays the mayority of internet news portals includes some amount of advertisement. People may like that or not, but they´re going to use the work of others without payment, so they have either to suffer the advertisement or to pay the provider of the used service instead of the advertisers. There is no reason, to ask serious journalism completely for free.

By the way: just I noted, that Google showed advertisement for a "tax paradise" near to pictures of Peer Steinbrueck, who claimed as German Minister of Financial Affairs sending the cavallery to the indians located at Swissland. Steinbrueck wouldn´t be glad about this connotion and I cann´t remember, that I searched somewhen such a topic at Google.