3
ALAMY POSTS 2005 NUMBERS
April 14, 2006
Alamy has up dated the operational figures provided its contributors in August 2005 (See Story 747) with figures for all of 2004 and 2005. A complete breakdown is provided below.
Alamy officially launched its search engine in the fall of 2001 and has been growing ever since. Currently they have over 5 million images from over 300 stock agencies and over 5000 photographers. They are adding new images at a rate of over 200,000 per month.
Points To Consider
- In 2005 Alamy added 1,555,439 new RM images and 690,295 new RF images to their site. In Q4 2005 59% of the revenue came from the licensing of RM images and 41% from RF images.
- Images submitted by photographers were responsible for 40% of the revenue while images submitted by agencies were responsible for 60% of the revenue.
- Over the two years there has been a small but steady increase in the proportion of total revenue generated from RM sales while there has been a corresponding slight decline in the proportion of RF revenue. This would be encouraging for RM producers except for the fact that more than twice as many RM images are being added each quarter compared to the RF images. This means that the average return per RM image is likely to be going down much faster than the return on the average RF image.
- One of the reasons for the low prices is that 65% of total revenue came from licensing images for editorial use while only 35% of revenue was for commercial use.
- About 32% of the images on the site are RF and 68% are RM or more that 2 RM images for every RF. But the percent of total revenue generated by RF was 41% compared with RM at 59%. Thus, the average RF image sells more frequently than the average RM and at a higher price ($206 for RF and $170 for RM).
- It should also be noted that the average price for an RF license was consistently higher than the average price for an RM license throughout the year. The reason for this appears to be explained by the fact that a significant portion of Alamy's revenue comes from licensing for lower priced editorial uses and editorial users tend to make much more extensive use of RM imagery rather than RF.
- The average price for an editorial license was $131.00 in Q4 while the average price for a commercial use was 2.7 times higher at $359.00. It is interesting that commercial prices seem to fall significantly in Q4 of both 2004 and 2005, but they jumped back up in Q1 of 2005 and hopefully will have done the same in 2006. It is also worth noting that commercial prices ranged from 2.7 times to 3.2 times the average editorial price throughout the year.
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2004
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2004
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2004
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2005
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2005
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2005
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2005
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Contributor Information |
Q1 & Q2
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Q3
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Q4
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Q1
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Q2
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Q3
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Q4
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New RF images from photographers
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58,315
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38,787
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39,827
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53,408
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74,008
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89,199
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83,614
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New RF images from agencies
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128,199
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89,852
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94,097
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60,850
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140,360
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63,451
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125,405
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New RM images from photographers
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222,103
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163,962
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169,321
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203,641
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258,847
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268,147
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291,356
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New RM images from agencies
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132,931 |
105,090
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98,619
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125,688
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143,297
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120,030
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144,433
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% Revenue photographers
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33% |
35%
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36%
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38%
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39%
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41%
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40%
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% Revenue agencies
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67%
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65%
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64%
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62%
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61%
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59%
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60%
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2004
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2004
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2004
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2005
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2005
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2005
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2005
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Contributor Information |
Q1 & Q2
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Q3
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Q4
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Q1
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Q2
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Q3
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Q4
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Photographers submitting images |
2,920 |
1,600
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1,692
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2,030
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2,209 |
2,349
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2,452
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Photographer submitting RM images
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2,875 |
1,456
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1,554
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1,850
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2,001
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2,111
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2,179
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Photographers submitting RF images
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1,525 |
636
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678
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907
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1,041
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1,135
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1,214
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Agencies submitting images
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229
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163
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159
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165
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175
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179
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161
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Agencies submitting RM images
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203
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140
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131
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142
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141
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142
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128
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Agencies submitting RF images
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97
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56
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61
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58
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70
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72
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67
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RM images submitted in quarter
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900,758 |
269,052
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267,940
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329,329
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402,144
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388,177
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435,789
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RF images submitted in quarter
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467,780 |
128,639
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133,924
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114,258
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214,368
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152,650
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209,019
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All images submitted in quarter
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1,368,538 |
397,691
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401,864
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443,587
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616,512
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540,827
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644,808
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2004
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2004
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2004
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2005
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2005
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2005
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2005
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Percentage Revenue Info |
Q1 & Q2
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Q3
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Q4
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Q1
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Q2
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Q3
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Q4
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Images per transaction - credit card
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1.9
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1.8
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1.8
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1.7
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1.7
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1.8
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1.8
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Images per transaction - account
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2.6
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2.5
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2.7
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2.9
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2.9
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3.0
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3.3
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% Revenue RF
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46.5%
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46.8%
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45.0%
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43.0%
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43.1%
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42.3%
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41.0%
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% Revenue RM
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53.5% |
53.2%
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55.0%
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57,0%
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56.9%
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57.7%
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59.0%
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% Images sold RF
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53.3%
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48.6%
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45.9%
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41.0%
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39.0%
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39.9%
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36.4%
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% Images sold RM
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46.7% |
51.4%
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54.1%
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59.0%
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61.0%
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60.1%
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63.6%
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% Images sold - credit card
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29.9%
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27.2%
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23.9%
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23.0%
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21.9%
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23.0%
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21.0%
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% Images sold - account
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70.1% |
72.8%
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76.1%
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77.0%
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79.0%
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77.0%
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79.0%
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% Revenue - credit card
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28.5% |
26.2%
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26.2%
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25.0%
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25.4%
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28.1%
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25.1%
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% Revenue - account customer
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71.5% |
73.8%> |
73.8%
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75.0%
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75.0%
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71.9%
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74.9%
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% Revenue editorial licenses
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60.0% |
64.2%
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61.4%
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67.0%
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66.0%
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62.7%
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65.0%
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% Revenue commercial licenses
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40.0%
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35.8%
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38.6%
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33.0%
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34.0%
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37.3%
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35.0%
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2004 |
2004
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2004
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2005
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2005
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2005
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2005
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Average Price in USD
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Q1 & Q2 |
Q3
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Q4
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Q1
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Q2
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Q3
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Q4
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Avg RF price - credit card |
$133.00 |
$161.00
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$175.00
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$191.00
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$199.00
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$206.00
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$210.00
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Avg RM price - credit card
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$266.00
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$225.00
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$232.00
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$239.00
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$276.00
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$304.00
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$236.00
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Avg RF price - account
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$145.00
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$176.00
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$172.00
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$193.00
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$206.00
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$114.00
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$203.00
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Avg RM price - account
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$174.00
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$177.00
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$174.00
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$170.00
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$156.00
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$146.00
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$162.00
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Avg RM price - editorial use
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$135.00 |
$141.00
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$134.00
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$132.00
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$137.00
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$131.00
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$131.00
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Avg RM price - commercial use
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$410.00 |
$427.00
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$381.00
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$423.00
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$423.00
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$425.00
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$359.00
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Avg price all RM images
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$183.00 |
$182.00
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$180.00
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$177.00
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$165.00
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$182.00
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$170.00
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Avg price all RF images
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$139.00 |
$171.00
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$182.00
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$192.00
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$203.00
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$201.00
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$206.00
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