Click here to learn how to spot editorial content in our media library and your video.
Images, videos, GIFs, and audio tracks are sometimes only licensed for use in non-commercial, or editorial, videos.
That leads to the obvious question: is my video commercial or non-commercial? The best way to answer that is to ask yourself: "What is the purpose of my video?"
If you're creating videos to sell a product or service (an ad), it's a commercial video and you cannot use editorial-only media files.
On the other hand, if you're creating videos to report on a news story, to share a poem, to share an update, or to educate or inform, that is considered editorial usage and you can use editorial-only media files. As long as the video uses the media to present educational or factual information, that is a valid use under the editorial license. This is true even if you are a business.
Getty is one of the largest provider of editorial media in Lumen5. They put it thusly:
Editorial images include news, sports and entertainment images that show real-world people, places, events and things intended to be used only in connection with events that are newsworthy or of general interest (for example, in a blog, textbook, newspaper or magazine article).
NOTE: Simply adding a call-to-action or your company's branding to a video does not necessarily make it a commercial video.