Agencies/Distributors
Videoblock has rebranded itself as
Storyblocks. The existing video and audio libraries are being maintained as separate subsites:
Videoblocks by Storyblocks and
Audioblocks by Storybloacks. (Each offering requires a separate subscription.) The former GraphicStock library is now part of Storyblocks.
Shutterstock, Inc. has launched its
Flashstock business as
Shutterstock Custom, a proprietary platform that provides an efficient and innovative way for its 1.7 million customers to create branded content.
Shutterstock, Inc. has updated its custom-built plugins to more fully integrate with Adobe’s Creative Cloud®, adding compatibility directly within the Adobe Premiere Pro®, Adobe Illustrator®, and Adobe InDesign® applications. This is the first time Shutterstock has made its high quality video collection of 8 million clips available through a plugin, giving amateur filmmakers and veteran film editors another powerful tool at their disposal within Premiere Pro®.
According to sources
Getty Images has reduced the royalty share of sales for all commercial RF collections supplied by agencies and distributors to
15% of the gross sale price.
Getty has sent its photographers a new Custom Content assignment for T-Mobile. “T-Mobile is looking for photography shot on mobile phones* that is the total opposite of stock images.” (*The images don’t actually have to shot with a mobile phone, and most of those submitted probably won’t be.)
Alamy has appointed Andy Harding to take over the role of Chief Executive Officer beginning on December 4th 2017. Co-founder and CEO James West is moving up to the role of Chair after 18 years as CEO.
Footage.net has announced that preview clips from Bridgeman Footage are now available for viewing through Footage.net. Bridgeman Footage is a division of Bridgeman Images, the world's leading specialist in the distribution of fine art, cultural and historical media for licensing. Bridgeman Images represents over 2,000 image suppliers - including museums, galleries, artists, stately homes, photographers, private collections, libraries, universities, auction houses and picture archives.
Since 2012
ImageBrief has been helping image buyers submit briefs to photographers about their image needs. Now Shutterstock and Getty Images seem to be getting interested in offering their customers custom shoots. In June Shutterstock acquired
Flashstock and in early July Getty introduced its Custom Content assignments program to Getty Images and iStock Exclusive contributors.
Hootsuite has announced a collaboration with Adobe Creative Cloud and
Adobe Stock that will give its customers the ability to access, edit, distribute, and measure the impact of social content directly from Hootsuite, thus helping marketers get more value from their creative content.
Shutterstock has produced a new resource called
The Shot List that may be helpful to anyone trying to keyword images. It includes some very broad general guidelines on the kind of imagery customers are looking for when searching for: Landmarks, People, Interiors and Religion and Holidays.
The investment banking firm
Jefferies has downgraded
Shutterstock shares from Hold to Underperform with a price target of $30.00. Shutterstock stock price closed today at $33.69 down 20% from $42.14 a month ago. The stock is down 52% from the high of $65.16 that it hit in September 2016.
A readers recently asked what I believe the illustration segment of the stock photo industry is worth. A very good question. Since, I've spent most of my career as a photographer, I tend to think of the stock image business in terms of photography, but the reader is right that a huge percentage of the business involves the licensing of graphics and illustrations, not photos. Let me see if I can break it down.
Nobody seems quite sure what the future of
Offset might be. Keren Sacks, the god-mother of Offset, left (or was let go, no one seems quite sure) last December and is now working as a “
Visual Content + Strategy Consultant.”
A reader has pointed out that
Image Source is offering its customers using the promo code AUG50 a 50% discount on any image purchased during the month.
Cavan Images is also offering a 25% discount all month if customers use the discount code CAVAN25. Will temporary discounts bring in more customers and result in more sales overall?
On the
Shutterstock conference call yesterday CEO and Founder Jon Oringer and CFO Steven Berns made some statements about stock photo market size, and growth potential, that need to be examined. When discussing the Editorial market Oringer said, “Today, we believe our editorial business represents less than 1% of what we estimate is a more than $1 billion market opportunity.”
Shutterstock has reported Q2 2017 revenue of $134.0 million. This revenue was up 8% from Q2 2016, and up $3.8 million from Q1 2017. Revenue per download increased 9% from $2.81 in Q2 2016 to $3.05. Revenue per download in Q1 2017 was $2.96. At the end of the quarter there were 144.7 million images in Shuttrstock’s collection and 7.6 million video clips. This was up from 132 million images at the end of Q1 2017 and from 92.1 million a year earlier at the end of Q2 2016.
Adobe Stock offers customers a very useful search feature that Shutterstock, Getty Images and iStock have chosen to ignore. Adobe lets customers search for
“Undiscovered” images. We assume that means image that have never been used, although Adobe doesn’t make that entirely clear.
Kathy Yeulet owns and operates
MonkeyBusinessImages, which she started in 2006 and is one of the most successful microstock production companies . Previous to that she owned and operated Banana Stock, a company that produced and licensed stock images at traditional royalty free prices. With near perfect timing she sold that company in 2004 when the traditional royalty free prices were near their peak. Two years later decided to start producing images for the relatively new microstock market.
Adobe’s
Visual Trends predictions for July talks about “Breaking the Rules of Composition to Create Thought-Provoking Images.” Breaking the rules is great for someone trying to create Fine Art, but do such images actually sell? Of course Adobe will be able to point to a few that have sold, but in general is it better to break the rules, or learn the rules and stick to them if you’re trying to produce images customers will to buy?
In a story by Rick Boost published in Campaign Asia-Pacific, a publication providing insights and intelligence into the ideas, work and personalities shaping Asia’s marketing-communications industry, Kumi Shimamoto, Asia vice-president for Getty Images, says that one of the reasons for the company’s position as the largest image supplier in the world is its audience research methods.
One of the major problems faced by the stock photo industry is “too many images.” Customers don’t need more images they need to be able to
find an image that works quickly. To offer some additional search options Adobe has introduced some AI-powered
aesthetic filters that will enable art directors to search more naturally and intuitively.
I just received a press release from
Envato Elements that offers “inspiring and ready-to-use photos, templates, fonts and assets” for $29 a month. They say Envato Elements “now includes 200,000 hand picked photos” from its
PhotoDune collection of 9 million photos. (Actually, there are currently 244,085 photos in the Elements collection.)
Shutterstock, Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire
Flashstock Technology, Inc., a Toronto based company that enables the efficient creation of custom visual content through its proprietary platform, for approximately $50 million cash. Flashstock has a fast growing customer base of enterprise marketers seeking on-brand content to feed the ever growing visual demands of multiple marketing channels. By integrating Flashstock into its product offerings, Shutterstock will be able to offer a high-quality custom content product to its 1.7 million customers. The transaction is expected to close in July 2017.
Danita Delimont Stock Photography has launched a
new website design with large photos and roll over pop ups. The site’s new
Galleries section shows tightly edited collections of the best images in 48 of the most popular subject categories they have to offer.
Photographer’s tell me that
EyeEm has introduced a new model release strategy that is markedly simpler for photographers than the release strategy used by stock agencies and photographers for many years.