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Articles from August 2008
Getty Images is continuing its foray into broader audiences and nontraditional ways of monetizing its content: Calif.-based blinkx, which claims to be the world's largest and most advanced video-search engine, now offers a Getty Images channel among some 350 others. The 26 million hours of content delivered through blinkx.com come from sources as diverse as the BBC and CBS to Real Estate TV and shoetube.
When professionals object to microstock, they are not asking microstock contributors to stop selling images. Most professionals do not have a problem with images being made available for small uses at extremely low prices. Most are also not afraid of competition on a level playing field. All professionals really want is for amateurs to stop allowing themselves to be exploited by wealthy buyers.
Jupiterimages has launched Photos.com Plus, which contains some 1.7 million images, including 1.3 million by Stockxpert contributors.
Three new licensing models from Denver-based Thought Equity Motion offer footage clips from Paramount Pictures, MGM Studios, Sony and others at prices that begin at $20--for select uses. As of this week, Web, corporate communication and presentation "stores" have been integrated into the Though Equity Web site.
It seems that every amateur who's made a few bucks selling microstock writes a blog extolling the virtues of microstock and encouraging other amateurs to try selling their images. I've got no problem with them telling their stories. But in their enthusiasm to encourage others, they often put out inaccurate information about the effects microstock is having on those trying to make a living shooting stock images.
Continuing the tradition it established last year, iStockphoto gave out $40,000 in cash and prizes. The company also let exclusive contributors keep 100% of the royalties--over $200,000--generated by their images on Monday.
Companies that previously specialized in royalty-free licensing are now asking photographers to offer their new production as rights-managed content. Photographers are questioning whether or not this is a wise idea. Photographers worry that customers will not go to RF companies to buy RM--and if they do, they may not be willing to pay RM prices.
In 2007 I proposed a pricing strategy that combines the rights managed
theory of pricing based on usage and the simplicity of microstock and
its ability to license rights for very small uses for fees of a few
dollars. The system is described in a 12 page booklet. I call the
strategy Modified Right Ready.
When discussing content piracy, industry insiders often say that nine out of 10 images are used inappropriately--that is, without payment for a license or in violation of its terms. Though the idea of educating the public on the nature of copyright is raised at industry events, such education is not often part of routine business activities for stock photographers or agencies. Perhaps it should be. An iStockphoto-commissioned survey of 1,000 Americans shows that a third use downloaded content, and practically all such users--27% of 33%--are unaware of needing permission.
A survey of major U.S. marketers, conducted by the Association of National Advertisers, found that 87% have cut back on marketing and advertising spending. Over 50% expect to further reduce spending by the end of the year.
According to PhotoShelter, which now represents 42,000 photographers from over 160 countries, image buyers frequently request the ability to purchase hard-copy photographic prints. Today, the company launched PhotoShelter Prints in response to these requests.
The Metadata Image Library Exploitation Project will conduct an all-day seminar, "Speaking in Tongues," in London on Oct. 3. The seminar will include discussion and workshops on multilingual thesauri that can make image collections widely available internationally.
The rationale for royalty-free licensing used to be to provide the customer with three benefits: a simple, straightforward price that didn't require negotiation, unlimited use of the purchased image and a low cost. As this marketing concept has matured, all of these ideas have been lost.
Rob Haggart, the former director of photography for
Men's Journal and
Outside Magazine, has launched A Photo Folio, a service that promises to build photographer Web sites from a client perspective.
Brentwood, Tenn.-based Dreamstime, originally launched in Romania, is expanding distribution in its native region. It has partnered with Prague's Imagio.cz to bring micro-priced creative and editorial imagery to the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Financial arrangements were not disclosed.
This month saw the launch of Celebrity Extra, the first of a multimillion-dollar group of new entertainment-focused news products from the Associated Press. Focusing on A-list stars, Celebrity Extra video is available now, and a photo service is scheduled to launch in September.
As image collections have grown, finding the right image quickly has become an increasingly difficult problem for customers. Back when the industry delivered 35mm transparencies, customers could call a picture agency, describe their need in detail and a researcher would delve through hundreds of images to find the few best. These selects were then shipped to the customer for final consideration. Internet search has changed all that.
As part of the process of selling Getty Images Goldman Sachs was
provided detailed information relative to Getty's operations and on
November 28, 2007 they produced a report that projected revenue for
2008 and 2012. The following are those figures. Getty Images was later
sold to Hellman & Friedman. Due to the tremendous pressure microstock is putting on the stock photo market the following chart should be sobering for both traditional RF and RM shooters.
This chart provides a list of the stock agencies Getty has acquired since its founding in 1995.
This chart provides a list of the major sellers of stock photography worldwide. The list is broken up into three separate groups, those with revenue in excess of $20 million, those with revenue between $5 and $20 million and those with revenue between $1 and $5 million.
The recently announced program to add StockXpert contributor images to the Photos.com Web site is set to launch on Aug. 20. Jupiterimages, the parent of both brands, has also revised some of the parameters in response to photographer feedback.
The first image-to-image search engine, TinEye, is now open to the public.
RF prices vary widely depending on the brand. The following are some of the prices charged for usage by various brands on Getty's site.
The following is a breakdown of Getty's Footage sales per quarter from Q4 2002 through Q4 2007. At the end of 2007 Getty stopped providing breakdowns of individual segments of their business.
Below is a list of the Getty Images revenue for the various segments of their business quarter by quarter from Q3 2002 through Q4 2007. At the beginning of 2008 Getty stopped supplying quarterly breakdowns.
Thomas Costanza, the vice president and chief financial officer of the troubled a21, Inc., has resigned.
This month, Wisconsin-based Fotosearch celebrates its 10th anniversary. The online stock-image and footage distributor represents over 3 million stills and 65,000 clips by 150 brands, including the Big Three.
The photography industry's major event of the year,
Photo District News' PhotoPlus Expo, will take place in New York in late October. The event's program is as diverse as usual, spanning a multitude of creative, technical and business topics over three days.
Graphic Design USA (GDUSA) recently released preliminary information from its 22nd annual Stock Visual Survey of picture buyers. (Full details will be available in its September issue.) One question on the survey every year concerns the categories of imagery most in demand.
Over the years the top three categories have always been People/Celebrities, Lifestyle and Business/Industry.
Microsoft U.K.'s "Iconic Britain" photo contest initial goal was to identify the 100 images that best define Britain. The contest was originally co-sponsored by Nikon, which has now withdrawn its support due to the controversy surrounding image ownership.
Selling-Stock has launched a photographer survey designed to provide useful data for all those who license rights to their images.
We are locked into old-fashioned pricing. We need a new model built around use and value received. Corporate clients using an image on an ad or a billboard get much more value than someone using the same picture on their blog.
The Internet, as well as mobile applications, has caused an explosive rise in image use. Soon, other consumer technologies, such as surface computing and high-def televisions, will have similar effects.
The stock-image industry faces a daunting challenge. While there is general consensus that online use of images is among the hottest growth opportunities, little is known about the buyers driving the trend. Larger agencies can gain some image-specific insight from analyzing transaction data or commissioning in-house research; however, much general information is freely available online.
Sausalito-based ImageSpan has added new features to its LicenseStream platform, which facilitates content distribution, syndication and acquisition. The technology company also announced the rollout of a custom LicenseStream portal for the Wedding and Event Videographers Association.
Ofer Media just funded a community-based Web site YouLicense.com, which joins other micro-payment audio and music Web sites by giving amateur musicians a platform to sell music to advertisers and entertainment producers.
Jupitermedia's Q2 2008 revenues were $35 million up from $34.5 million in Q1 2008. Second-quarter revenue was up slightly from $34.7 million in the same period in 2007.
"We are a broken industry that only has three choices: adapt, change or die," says Jack Hollingsworth. Though the veteran photographer continues to see immediate opportunity in traditional stock, Hollingsworth believes long-term success in this business requires a fundamental change in the business model.
Image Source has made about 6,500 of its images (approximately 5% of its total collection) available on several microstock sites. Prices have been discounted up to 80% below the fees charged for images from its core Imagesource.com collection.
The American Society of Media Photographers disclosed that last December it received $1.3 million from the Authors Coalition of America, an organization that distributes non-title specific royalties generated by photocopying American works abroad to its members. Permissible uses of the funds are restricted to educational and advocacy activities.
Stay-at-home dads and Generation V, where "V" stands for "virtual," are emerging as two important consumer groups. Both are the products of a convergence of several cultural and economic trends in Western society.
On July 15, Steve Kapsinov, Jupiterimages' community manager for StockXpert, announced on the contributor forum that the company planed to offer StockXpert's microstock images on Jupiter's subscription site, Photos.com. Photographers were to be paid $.30 per image downloaded from the Photos.com site.
Thomas Crampton, a former International Herald Tribune and The New York Times correspondent who covers Asian politics, economics and culture, has uncovered what he described as a case of "stock photo usage gone wrong."
Though researchers using different methodologies often arrive at different figures, most experts agree that digital media is on the rise. Specifically, researchers are putting emphasis on interactive advertising's growth as a percentage of total ad spending.
GumGum has announced that the ad-supported licensing platform has secured financing from First Round Capital and Crosscut Ventures. Both venture firms specialize in providing seed capital. With two new members on its board of directors, GumGum exits beta with technology that no longer uses Flash and is reportedly more flexible.
Getty Images announced that it has shot and is distributing the most coveted news images of the moment: exclusive first pictures of the twins born to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. The deal follows a 2006 arrangement in which Getty's Brent Stirton photographed the couple's daughter Shiloh, and the company negotiated licensing terms on behalf of Jolie and Pitt.
Below is a list of the Getty Images revenue for the various segments of their business quarter by quarter from Q3 2002 through Q4 2007. At the beginning of 2008 Getty stopped supplying quarterly breakdowns.