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| Formerly | BEN Group |
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| Company type | Privately held company |
| Industry | Advertising Rights clearance |
| Founded | 1989 (as Interactive Home Systems) |
| Headquarters | , U.S. |
Key people | Ricky Ray Butler, CEO |
| Owner | Bill Gates[1] |
| Website | www |
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BENlabs, formerly BEN Group Inc, is a Los Angeles–based product placement, influencer marketing and licensing company.[2][3] The company offers AI-driven product placement, influencer marketing services, music partnerships, rights clearance, and personality rights management services for the entertainment industry.
The company was founded in Seattle by Bill Gates in 1989 as Interactive Home Systems, and later renamed Corbis. The company's original goal was to license and digitize artwork and other historic images for the prospective concept of digital frames. In 1997, Corbis changed its business model to focus on licensing the imagery and footage in its collection.
The Corbis collection included contemporary creative, editorial, entertainment, and historical photography as well as art and illustrations. Among its acquisitions were the 11 million piece Bettmann Archive, acquired in 1995; the Sygma collection in France (1999); and the German stock image company ZEFA (2005). Corbis also had the rights to digital reproduction for art from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery in London.[4]
Corbis later expanded into providing services for the entertainment industry, including brand integration and rights clearance services. In January 2016, Corbis announced that it had sold its image licensing businesses to Unity Glory International, an affiliate of Visual China Group. VCG licensed the images to Corbis's historic rival, Getty Images, outside China. Corbis retained its entertainment businesses under the name Branded Entertainment Network, which has since evolved to BENlabs.
- ^ Lohr, Steve (July 18, 2010). "In a Partnership of Unequals, a Start-Up Suffers". The New York Times. Retrieved May 10, 2011.
- ^ "BEN Group Inc | AI Entertainment Marketing". BEN. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
- ^ "Give Your Creative Vision the Greenlight". GreenLight Rights. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
- ^ Hafner, Katie (April 10, 2007). "A Photo Trove, a Mounting Challenge". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 10, 2007. Retrieved August 17, 2022.