Marketing
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.
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.”
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?
More and more photographers are willing to give their images away rather than trying to earn some revenue from their use.
Unsplash is one of many free sources for image. Can photographer who are trying to license rights to their images compete with the availability of free?
It’s time to start thinking about Photo Week in New York, October 22nd through 28th. It all starts with the Digital Media Licensing Association (
DMLA) conference beginning Sunday night through Tuesday. Then on Wednesday the 25th is
Visual Connections. Technically, the
PhotoPlus International Conference + Expo begins on Wednesday the 25th, but the trade show doesn’t really open until Thursday the 26th and runs for three full days through the 28th.
There is a new website called
TopImageSites that, in theory, will help customers find “The Best Stock Images On The Web.” Ten agencies are listed and the number of “products” available in each agency’s collection are listed in the chart below. Products include: photos, vectors, illustration, videos and audio files. Some of the agencies don’t have audio files and Panthermedia doesn’t have either video or audio.
Justin Brinson of
PicturEngine posted a thoughful comment to last week’s article “
New Stock Image Distribution System Needed.” I’m re-posting his comments here because I want to be sure all my readers have a chance to consider them. I’ll add a few of my own comments below his.
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.)
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.
The European Commission, which polices European Union competition rules, has imposed a €2.42 billion euros (
$2.72 Billion) fine on Google for breaching antitrust rules with its online shopping service. The ruling alleges that "Google has abused its market dominance as a search engine by giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service." Google was given 90 days to stop or face fines of up to 5 percent of the average daily worldwide turnover of parent company Alphabet.
A number of mid-sized and specialist agencies should join together and explore the possibility of establishing a Non-Profit Online Distribution System. Stock photo prices have fallen dramatically in the last decade. Some RM photographers are earning, on average, less then 7% per-image-licensed of what they earned a decade ago. RF prices have seen similar declines, although not quite as severe. Seventy to 80% of traditional image licenses are for fees of $20 or less. More than 50% are for $10 or less. Throughout most of this period photographers have continued to produce new and better images. The cost of production has not declined.
Stock photo prices have fallen dramatically in the last decade. Some RM photographers are earning, on average, less then 7% per-image-licensed of what they earned a decade ago. RF prices have seen similar declines, although not quite as severe. Seventy to 80% of traditional image licenses are for fees of $20 or less. More than 50% are for $10 or less. Throughout most of this period photographers have continued to produce new and better images. The cost of production has not declined.
The
MEGA Agency has expanded its staff in the US, UK and Germany to cope with the companies rapid growth. CEO Tom Tramborg said, “Our growth since launch has been phenomenal, so we are hiring new staff to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for Mega images.”
One of the big questions in today’s stock photo industry is the future potential for stock video use. Recently, the Digital Media Licensing Association (DMLA) conducted a webinar on this subject. A video is available
here.
A fundamental flaw with stock photography as a business is that producers have little or no access to the data necessary to understand demand. In most any other business the producer has some idea of what is selling and how much demand there is for the particular product.
In one of its recent promotions directed to customers,
Getty Images has identified three trending search terms, Mismatch, Heroines and Internet of Things. See what images you find using these terms.
According to MediaPost’s IoT Daily, the Real Estate industry is moving into Virtual Reality. It may be an opportunity for stock photographers looking for a way to diversify their businesses.
Dissolve has provided its contributors with information about a special marketing campaign - Dissolve for a Cause - it has launched. Under this program, agencies and studios working on pro bono projects may apply to receive up to $2,500 in royalty-free footage or photography.
In the next few months I intend spend a lot of time examining the question, “
Can the stock photo industry raise prices on at least some of the images it offers?” The possible answers to that question are either YES, NO or MAYBE.
Recently, I was contacted by a Business School student who is developing an app that “will be used by internet publication firms, as well amateur and professional photographers.” He asked if I would provide some insight into the industry, specifically on topics such as photographer compensation, and the market share of "real photo’s" vs. stock photos. Here’s my response.
As image databases get larger and larger, keywording becomes more and more important as photographers try to get their work high enough in the search-return-order for the images to be seen. Often creators must spend more time keywording than they spend taking pictures. In addition, image distributors are constantly coming up with new strategies that often necessitate going back and re-keywording images that have already been uploaded.
Twenty-five to 30 years ago there was a large demand for stock images relative to supply. Prices to use a stock image -- while reasonable when compared to what it cost to hire a photographer for an assignment -- were much higher than they are today. It was possible for a professional photographer to produce a lot of images that no one wanted to buy, and still earn a decent living from the few that did sell.
Getty is adding Programmatic Advertising content to its site. In June 2016 CEO Dawn Avery
pointed out, that “Over 97 per cent of visitors come to our websites to look at – not purchase – amazing imagery.” Getty is trying to find a way to earn some money from this 97% of users.
Shutterstock has released its annual
Creative Trends report, which is developed from analyzing the information from millions of searches and downloads.