Article

Stipple aims to turn Web images into embedded storefronts

New service enables embedding of brand and pricing information, as well as links to purchase, within editorial images.

August 21, 2011

By David Henry

With financial backing from Justin Timberlake, San Francisco-based Stipple has launched Stipple Pipeline, a new service that enables brands to accurately credit their products pictured in editorial photos on the web. The company says that with its image commerce platform, brands can turn any image containing their products into a virtual storefront window display.

"Editorial images generate billions of page views every day. Brands lose tens of millions of dollars each month simply because there's no way for people to identify the products they see in those photos," said Stipple founder and CEO Rey Flemings. "If people can't find out what the product is, then your brand loses marketing value and revenue."

Brands can choose to pay Stipple by the mouse-over, or on a per-click basis. A pay-per-conversion option is in the works. Brands are also able to view user interaction statistics in real time. The fact that many brands tag photos with celebrities in them is a key part of Stipple's strategy.

Kelly Kupper, senior account executive at American Rebel PR in Los Angeles, says Stipple Network has streamlined what used to be a painstaking process of scouring hundreds of blogs for mentions of her firm's clients. She is eager to see how Stipple Pipeline will improve their celebrity product placement efforts.

With Stipple Pipeline, brands and retailers can create advertising campaigns around the products they want to sell inside photos. When people mouse-over a photo's product dots—the overlay Stipple uses to indicate the areas in a picture that contain more information—the image reveals the brand, pricing information, and a link to either purchase the item or add it to a wish list. Users can email their wish lists to friends, post them to Facebook or other social media sites, or on Stippleit.com.

"Stipple relies on humans to create a single accurate tag, from that tag, we automatically syndicate that tag to copies of an image throughout the web," said Flemings. "Our technology also finds related images (pictures taken of the same people/products) and tags those images automatically as well. So a single human created tag can automatically tag hundreds of photos across any number of sites." Thus, brands turn images into highly targeted storefronts, brands grow both engagement and revenue, and photo rights holders have a new way to monetize their assets.

And to those who foresee an ad-bearing pox that will infect every image on the Web with little black dots, Flemings is way ahead of you.

Let's say you want to know who made that deep-purple, off-the-shoulder, billowy silk chiffon number Natalie Portman wore to the Oscars this year. Maybe you want one for yourself or, more likely, you want someone to know that you want one. If you see an "explore" tab tucked away in the upper right-hand corner of that red carpet photo, you're in luck. Just click on it and her gown, her shoes, every accessory—even her makeup and hairstyle—may well be tagged with Stipple Pipeline's product dots. Move your mouse away from the photo and the dots disappear. That's as intrusive as it gets. The service is entirely user-initiated. So unless you deliberately go exploring, all you'll see is a photo of Natalie Portman.

Flemings believes that Stipple has a clear advantage over services such as Pixazza and even Google's image searching technology thanks to Stipple's advanced tools and true product matching. While some searches bring up intrusive ads for clothing or accessories that are similar to what a person in a photo is wearing, Stipple focuses on the exact items. Stipple works with registered brands to ensure that product information is accurate, resulting in a spam-free experience for web audiences and high purchase intent customers for brand advertisers.

"If a user mouses over a photo of, say, Prince William and Kate Middleton, they don't want to get a pop-up that has nothing to do with the content and then keeps following them as they scroll down the page," said Flemings. "You don't mouse over a picture of Kate Middleton to see what's on sale at Best Buy, you want to know about the dress she's wearing."

Stipple Pipeline is part of the Stipple product ecosystem that also includes Lens, Network and Want. Stipple's investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), Floodgate, Justin Timberlake, Eghosa Omogui, and more than a dozen other leading companies and investors.