Helsinki-based Kiosked is currently piloting a solution where publishers can put a script on their website that allows Kiosked to scrape metadata and keyword information from their articles. Once it has done so, Kiosked can automatically put a webstore into the images uploaded to the articles. This helps customers make more impulse buying decisions, and gives publishers access to another revenue stream that’s less annoying than adds. If it works as advertised, this is some 2013-level stuff.
Apart from their own algorithms that detects relevant keywords, location information, and other data, they’ve tapped into Getty Images’s PicScout ImageIRC platform. Access to Getty Images’ metadata shows the direction Kiosked is heading in – they’re going after the bigger online media houses rather than the blogger next door.
Thats not to say they can’t pick up any grassroots traction. Kiosked images are optimized to be shareable on Facebook and Twitter, and can also be embedded.
I’m still waiting for the day when I see a Kiosked in the wild, but Kiosked claims some decent traction. Currently they count over 200 million unique kiosk visitors and 10 million products through its shopping platform.
On the other side of the equation, Kiosked says it has tapped into 10,000 brands and retail heavyweights including: Angry Birds, DreamWorks, OneDirection, Dell, Club Med, Uniqlo, Karmaloop, Agent Provocateur, and OnePiece.
Last June Kiosked raised €4.5 million in the first major funding round Angry Birds financier Kai Hed made outside of Rovio.
Below is an example Kiosked image:
And here’s another use case:
