Gary Shenk
| Private | |
| Industry |
Advertising Rights clearance |
| Founded | 1989 |
| Headquarters | Seattle, Washington, United States |
|
Key people
|
Gary Shenk, CEO |
| Owner | Bill Gates |
| Website | bengroup |
Branded Entertainment Network (BEN) is a Los Angeles, California-based advertising and licensing agency. The company offers product placement, 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 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 are the 11 million piece Bettmann Archive, acquired in 1995; the Sygma collection in France (1999); and the German company ZEFA (2005). Corbis also has 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.
Corbis later expanded into providing services for the entertainment industry, including brand integration and rights clearance services. In January 2016, Corbis announced that it would sell its image licensing businesses to an affiliate of Visual China Group. VCG licensed the images to Corbis's historic rival, Getty Images, outside of China. Corbis retained its entertainment businesses under the name Branded Entertainment Network.
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Wikipedia