Instagram vs Twitter: A Solution
blog.embed.ly
blog.embed.ly
There is no way to monetize images embedded on other sites
So Instagram, let's talk about these embeds. How about making them an
iframe or script tag embed like Twitter?
I don't understand what problem the author thinks embedding the comments solves, unless there's something about the comments that makes the instagrams monetisable?
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.
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.