Charting Industry Revenue Trends

Posted on 5/20/2008 by Jim Pickerell | Printable Version | Comments (3)

On a company basis, the best year-to-year percentage of growth overall came from Alamy with 18%, even though Getty Images had a respectable 10% growth overall on a much higher gross revenue. And, of course, one division of Getty, iStockphoto, had an amazing 124% growth. But we need to look closer at the actual numbers.

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Selling Stock is an on-line newsletter that reports on developing trends in the stock photo industry. It is updated at least twice a month. On-line subscribers receive e-mail notification whenever new stories are posted. Archives containing stories going back to late 1995 are fully available to subscribers.

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Copyright © 2008 Jim Pickerell. The above article may not be copied, reproduced, excerpted or distributed in any manner without written permission from the author. All requests should be submitted to Selling Stock at 10319 Westlake Drive, Suite 162, Bethesda, MD 20817, phone 301-461-7627, e-mail: wvz@fpcubgbf.pbz

Jim Pickerell is founder of www.selling-stock.com, an online newsletter that publishes daily. He is also available for personal telephone consultations on pricing and other matters related to stock photography. He occasionally acts as an expert witness on matters related to stock photography. For his current curriculum vitae go to: http://www.jimpickerell.com/Curriculum-Vitae.aspx.

Comments

Grant Faint Posted May 21, 2008
simple comment how deep will the world recession be? and for what period of time will it exist? 1991/93 recession drove the stock photography into new sales levels. Now with micros pricing hitting at the same time as a recession.....how many buyers will be driven into the business method of acquiring what they need? expect the numbers to change dramatically.

gvf

Tom Grill Posted May 21, 2008
The most important observation here is Alamy's substantial growth in the face of an explosion of material -- now over 12 million images. This goes counter to what every other agency has accomplished and is doing. Why? Alamy has wisely solved the problem with a computer algorithm that puts the most desirable images (from the client's point of view) at the top of the search.

It is astounding that the other large agencies -- Getty, Corbis, Jupiter, et al -- have not done this. Instead they continue to follow an outmoded model that allows their accounting department mentality to put those images with the highest percentage return to the company on the top of the search heap. This is a short term strategy sure to backfire as image databases grow. Client will go where they can find the best image and inspiration in the shortest amount of time.

It has been proven time and again in all reports that buyers seek the right image solution first with price being a much lower priority. The controls needed today, as the image databases grow exponentially, is not simply to cut the number of photographs but to control how they are found. Alamy, to its huge success, has found this out and implemented it.

The micro agencies have incorporated this policy from the get-go by putting control of search order in the hands of the client. It's basic business 101 to give customers what they want. Why it is taking so long for traditional agencies to realize this remains an anomaly.

Tim Mcguire Posted May 21, 2008
Jim,

In your story entitled

Royalties Adapt to Changing Biz Models
Posted May 13th, 2008 by Jim Pickerell

...doesn't the chart you present in that story show that iStock is canabalizing the Creative Stills market and couldn't one conclude that microstock is diluting the revenue of the industry at large... at the least, on the creative commercial end?

Why would the big three put old images into a licensing model(microstock)that is cannibalizing their core business?

http://www.selling-stock.com/?p=2661

iStocks growth doesn't come close to making up for the decline in revenue from Creative Stills. Getty's overall growth comes from other revenue streams and non still imagery business.

Perhaps Getty is moving on and they've finally finished destroying the market for professionally produced commercial stock photos. Really, what has Getty done for this industry since it entered it 10-15 years ago? The revenue for the industry has stayed stagnant even with an incredible growth in numbers of customers and images licensed. Getty gained market share by buying others and giving away more for less forcing the entire industry into this downward spiral. Hardly an innovative forward looking company. They just did what investment bankers do.. they sucked all the profits out of the industry and now they are moving on.

Do you think think this industry can revive itself to take better advantage of the huge growth in customers / images licensed? Can we increase the size of "the pie" rather than just continually dividing it into smaller and smaller pieces to be divided between more and more people and businesses?

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