116
SALES BY CATEGORY
January 6, 1998
Alfonso Gutierrez of A.G.E. Fotostock in Spain points out that worldwide there
are 10 big market segments and he defines them as: (1) Publishing, (2)
Decorative uses, (3) Advertising, (4) Packaging, (5) Calendars/Prints/Posters,
(6) Travel brochures, (7) Toys/Games/Puzzles, (8) Editorial, (9)
Music/Multimedia and (10) Miscellaneous as a final container for all other
unclassifiable uses.
Some of these market segments tend to get most of their images from catalogs and
others tend to rely on classic file searches. Certain of these categories are
more likely to use Royalty Free than others.
One of the things that interests me about this is that I believe our "segments"
here in the U.S. are much different from those in Europe. For the sake of
argument I would define the U.S. segments and their relative economic importance
in terms of gross sales in dollars as follows:
Print Advertising 20%
Brochures and catalogs of all types 35%
Non-publication Advertising
packaging, billboards, posters, POP 10%
Books - Textbooks & tradebooks 10%
Consumer Editorial Content in Magazines 15%
Corporate Editorial and other internal uses
Desktop Publishing, PR, a lot of
Internet use 5%
Calendars, Prints, Posters, Toys, Games
Puzzles 3%
Miscellaneous 2%
Different agencies are going to have different experiences depending on the make
up their files. Some agencies focus on selling to certain segments of the
market and pay less attention to others.
My guess is that the numbers for the market in Europe are totally different from
the U.S. percentages I have outlined above. The percentage in dollar volume for
Consumer Editorial is probably much higher and for Brochure use much less.
Calendars, Prints, Posters, Toys, Games, Puzzles, Music and Multimedia combined
represent a very small segment of the U.S. market while Alfonso has list them as
three of his ten segments.
I would be interested in comments from anyone in the U.S. or overseas who has
statistics that might prove or disprove my theories.
Accurate data would help everyone if we could find some ways to get accurate
comparisons between the relative economic importance of the Editorial market,
the Advertising/Brochure market and all the rest in various countries or parts
of the world.
In choosing an agency it is important for a photographer to understand the areas
where the agency tends to concentrate their marketing efforts, and to make sure
that this fits with the kind of material the photographer plans to produce.
The way we edit for the file, the way we handle requests and the way we
advertise and promote are very different for the Advertising and Editorial
markets. While most stock sellers make some sales in both markets, they also
tend to concentrate on one area or the other. I believe it is important to
allocate costs to each market area, and measure those costs against the returns
from that particular market.