When people think about stock images, the first buyer market that comes to mind is typically not commercial print. However, perhaps it should be-depending on the category of images purchased.
Stock Market 2008: U.S. Market Sizing in Units and Dollars, just released by The Industry Measure, demonstrates that commercial printers and trade shops purchase more images than their creative and publishing counterparts in a number of key image categories. In some cases, printers also purchase more images than Internet design and development firms.
For example, user-reported figures suggest that printers purchase twice as many royalty-free images as publishers. Printers also buy nearly three times as many royalty-free images and CD collections as creatives, which include ad agencies, graphic design firms, corporate designers and commercial photographers. While creatives spend more on individual images, printers buy more of them.
This is not just a royalty-free phenomenon. Printers also say that they purchase nearly the same number of rights-managed images as creatives.
The reason for the evolution of stock-buyer demographics is the rapid change of the commercial printing marketplace during the past decade. Printers are making wholesale business-model changes by transitioning from print manufacturers to providers of print-based marketing services. As they expand from execution-only services into campaign conceptualization and development, printers are offering a host of new services, ranging from database development to design.
"Design" from your local print shop used to mean a client-service rep sitting tweaking digital templates for letterhead and business cards for SoHo clientele. Today, printers are bringing real creative talent in-house-talent that rivals small design boutiques. In some cases, printers are actually purchasing these shops to bring in the design expertise needed to service larger, more demanding clients.
A major driver of this trend is 1:1 printing (or print personalization). Typically sold by the printer directly to the client, 1:1 printing does not use a creative middleman but has unique design needs. The ability to anticipate and accommodate these needs is a skill that printers-turned-marketing-services-providers are in a unique position to offer.
This drives the need for more sophisticated design services, including stock image purchases, to meet the demands of larger businesses and corporate clients. This explains the demand for rights-managed images-demand that rivals that of advertising agencies, graphic designers, corporate designers and commercial photographers combined.
While stock-image providers often overlook the printing market, it warrants consideration, especially since printers prefer single-source relationships. According to Stock Market 2008, the percentage of printers and trade shops single-sourcing suppliers has risen from 28% to 45% over the past three years. Price is the most important factor in choosing a stock-image supplier, followed by variety of images (30% of survey respondents) and search-engine accuracy (27%).
Stock Market 2008 covers estimates for stock-image purchases in units and dollars for royalty-free and rights-managed images and CD collections for the printing, creative, publishing and Internet design and development marketplaces. For the printing and creative markets, estimates are also provided for subscription-based and microstock image products.
--Heidi Tolliver-Nigro, senior analyst at The Industry Measure, is the author of Stock Market 2008. She has been covering the commercial printing and publishing industries for the past 20 years and has authored close to 100 of The Industry Measure reports since the company's inception in 1995. Previously, Tolliver-Nigro served as the editor of Printing News, Quick Printing, and Southern Graphics