[Terretta]

> There is no way to monetize images embedded on other sites

On the contrary, there's an incredibly simple way to monetize images embedded on other sites: put an interstitial ad in front of them or on them.

Modern browsers grok the mime type regardless of DOS "extension", so when a JPEG is linked from a monetizable site, say, Twitter, dynamically generate and serve a two frame GIF instead, with the first frame being a "brand awareness" ad, and the second frame being the desired image. Or be nice, and make the first frame be the desired image, and the second be the brand awareness ad.

Alternatively, serve up a normal JPEG with the original image rendered into a polaroid frame, with the polaroid label text being the desired ad copy.

[screeley]

Yes, you can do that. Anyone successfully done this?

[Terretta]

Well, we used to successfully dynamically stitch a JPEG onto the front or back or middle of a video to make a VOD have an unskippable ad regardless of target device. We did that back in the Windows Media (.wmv) days, haven't tried it with H.264. But this should be easier.

We use a similar principle to generate dynamic thumbnails. Our VOD hosting customers can call a video URL with a query string specifying time offset and size and we generate a JPEG thumbnail on the fly from the closest keyframe of the H.264 file, storing the thumbnails in an intermediate cache layer. Works great, and beats keeping a bazillion thumbs managed when the source media is changed or deleted.

Generating an ad should be no harder than that. Easier, I'd think, since most of our time is spent seeking to the keyframe of a 2 hour movie.