PicApp offers ad-sponsored stock photos

Stock photography houses have been under siege from the millions of amateurs shooting quality photos and making them available for free under Creative Commons licenses on sites like Flickr. PicApp hopes to give the stock photo houses a way to monetize their copyrighted photos across the Web.

Developed by an Israeli company, PicScout, PicApp embeds images like a video into a page, using Flash, and includes an advertisement. The revenue is shared with the stock photo houses, such as Corbis or Getty Images, representing the photographers. PicApp options include embedding photos on Web pages as well as bookmarking and e-mailing them to a friend. PicApp also provides a place for users to store their PicApp photo selections online.

PicApp offers a selection of high-quality images to embed on Web pages.

Here is an example of an embedded image:

Om Malik posted about PicApp earlier and assessed the service as follows:

While most of us tech bloggers don't have a pressing need for news photos to accompany our posts, the service can be useful for small Web sites and blogs that follow politics and news. Hollywood gossip blogs could find use for PicApp. That said, PicApp will need a very large number of embeds in order to bring any meaningful revenues. I think it is a challenge that has confounded all "embed"-based businesses. On the other hand, larger sites that can provide large traffic volume like PopSugar and Defamer can afford to pay for the photos and use that as a way to stand out from an increasingly crowded marketplace.