Statistics & Surveys
Shutterstock has reported Q4 2020 revenue of
$180.9 million up 9% compared to $166.4 million in Q4 2019 and up from $165.2 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download was
$3.91 per-image compared to $3.44 in Q4 2019 and $3.79 the previous quarter. The average revenue per download for all of 2020 was $3.68 compared with $3.43 for all of 2019.
One thing that has bugged me lately is the host of ads I receive almost daily offering detailed reports of "Global Stock Photography Market Potential Growth" for the next 5 years. I haven’t paid for or read any of these reports, but I am pretty sure they are all scans. I hope no one is throwing their money away on these reports, or worst yet, believing them. The creators of these reports ask unsuspecting interested parties for fees ranging from $3,400 to $3,960 to read their fanciful industry growth predictions.
VisualSteam’s
“7th Annual Survey of Creative Pros: Stock Image Licensing” is a must read for stock image creators and stock agency managers who want insights into what leading, major stock photo buyers need, where they are going to purchase images and what they are looking for in the way of service. It is well worth the $79.99 price.
Shutterstock has launched its ninth annual
Creative Trends Report, identifying global and local trends that will influence design aesthetics and visual culture in 2020.
One of many reasons for the decline of stock photography as a profession is that it has become almost impossible for photographers to get a clear understanding of the various types of imagery, and the relative degree of demand, that users want and need. Once that was not the case, but now there is a total disconnect between image creators and image users.
A lot of the images being uploaded to major websites these days have little relevance to what the market needs. I decided to do searches on
Shutterstock for country names to try to get some idea of the number of images from each location relative to what the likely demand is for such images.
Shutterstock has reported Q2 2019 revenue of
$161.7 million up 3% compared to Q2 2018 and down from $163.3 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download averaged
$3.44 per image, compared to $3.41 in Q2 2018.?? Total image and video downloads for Q2 were
46.6 million, up from 45.2 million a year earlier, and down from 47.2 million in Q1 2019.
In olden days when stock photographers were trying to produce images that might be used as covers or full page inside magazines it was advised that they turn the camera on its side and shoot verticals of as many situations as possible. But times have changed. Are verticals really selling today? Recently Robert Kneschke reported on his
web site that he had reviewed 100 of his best selling images and not a single vertical was among the group.
ACSIL and
Thriving Archives have completed their fourth
Global Survey of Stock Footage Companies (AGS4) since 2007 and estimate worldwide stock footage revenue in 2018 at $570 million, more than double what it was in
2007. Data for the survey launched in July 2018 was collected from 84 of the estimated 415 footage licensing companies worldwide.
Shutterstock has reported Q1 2019 revenue of
$163.3 million up $6.7% compared to Q1 2018, (excluding Webdam which was sold in the first quarter of 2018). The revenue was almost flat with the $162.1 million generated in the previous quarter. During the conference call CFO Steven Berns pointed out that traditionally revenue for Q1 is very similar to revenue in Q4 of the previous year. Revenue per download averaged
$3.42 per image, compared to $3.40 in Q1 2018.
Image creators need better information about the kind of content that is selling. Are customers looking at higher priced content? Can creators earn more money if their images are in a collection like Offset where images are licensed for much higher prices? Should creators produce more stills? Should they buy new equipment and start shooting video that sells for higher prices? Shutterstock’s
quarterly reports to investors aren’t very helpful in this regard.
Shutterstock has published its eighth annual
2019 Creative Trends Report. This year’s eleven design styles, many of which echo the past in a playful and in a decadent way, predict the top influences for design and visual production in 2019.
I was asked recently for my predictions on where the stock photo industry is headed in 2019. There will continue to be massive growth in the number of images added to the major stock photo collections. An increasing percentage will be
produced by amateurs not professionals who might be trying to earn a portion of their living from the images they produce.
Once the data has been collected then it will be time to talk to Getty – as a group. For years they have shown they are unwilling to pay attention to suggestions from individual agencies. The more Specialist Agencies that participate in the analysis the better.
In May I
analyzed the sales of a few photographers who are major, direct suppliers to Getty. A major issue that all Specialist Agencies need to consider is whether the breakdown in the various price ranges in this analysis are representative of Getty’s total sales? Specialist agencies need to check their own figures against this baseline to determine if this is an accurate representation of Getty as a whole.
In July 2018 I did an
analysis of the more than 200 Getty Creative collections to determine how many images had been added to each collection in the almost two years between
August 2016 and June 2018. Overall there was a 37% increase in the number of images added, but there were wide variations in the sources of the growth.
We have closed the
Editorial Photographer Income Survey that was sent out at the end of August. There were 270 responses which is somewhat disappointing considering the tens of thousands of photographers producing stock images today.
I’m regularly asked for my thoughts on the size of the worldwide market for stock photography in terms of gross revenue and the potential for market growth. I currently estimate the worldwide sale of stock imagery to be about $2.75 billion divided among four different product types - Microstock, Creative Stills, Editorial and Footage or Video. Further details of the breakdown are provided in this story.
On August 31st I published the
Photog Income Survey in an effort to get a better idea of what photographers worldwide are able to earn annually from the images they produce. To see all eight questions and some background information before starting to respond to the survey click on this
link.
I saw a story recently that said
Dreamstime had identified Kiev as the 15th most photographed city in the world. That surprised me. as I had expected a lot of other cities to be much higher in terms of tourist destinations than Kiev. I couldn’t find the original Dreamstime story in order to see who they had as number 1, but I found a lot of other lists of top cities and top travel destinations. They were all differed depending on who put together the list. I found one list of “25 Most Photographed Cities in Europe” and Kiev wasn’t on it. I decided to search
Shutterstock’s collection of 216,094,727 images to see which were the top cities with the most photos.
I have created a SurveyMonkey survey in an effort to gather data on the general income ranges of Editorial Still Photographers around the world. Go to this link to respond to the survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PhotogIncomeSurvey Please encourage all editorial still photographers to respond to this survey. The resulting data could be very helpful to photography students, working photographers, the organizations that license rights to use editorial photography and those who purchase editorial photographs.
A multi-year review of Shutterstock download trends going back to Q3 2010 provides some interesting insights into how adding more images to the collection relates to sales growth. (See chart) Back in 2010 Shutterstock had 12.3 million images in its collection and 11.1 total downloads for that quarter. In theory the more choice you offer your customers the more sales you are likely to make. That pretty much held true through 2012 as Shutterstock almost doubled the size of its collection.
Shutterstock has reported Q2 2018 revenue of
$156.6 million up $22.6 million or 16.9% compared to Q2 2017. (The comparison excludes the 2017
revenue from Webdam which was divested in Q1 2018.) Revenue per download averaged
$3.41 per image, an increase of 12% over Q2 2017. (Much of this growth is probably due to increased sales of video content offered at much higher prices than still image content.)
I was asked recently if I had a breakdown of the stock images uses by various categories of industry users. The answer is NO, and as far as I know no one else has done that type of analysis. However, it occurred to me that it might be useful to develop some broad general ideas of what the breakdowns might be.
Recently I’ve done three stories examining various aspects of the collections at
Getty and
iStock and
Shutterstock. The chart below provides easy comparisons of these three collections.