Stock photo customers have a big problem. They need more time and they need to be able to operate more efficiently. Stock photo sellers could help.
A study conducted in 2015 by
International Data Corporation (IDC) found that:
- 85% of creative professionals say they’re under pressure to develop assets and deliver campaigns faster
- 71% say they need to create 10x more assets than previously in order to support the diversity of channels
- 76% agree that personalization is driving the increased need for assets (Personalization is a means of meeting the customer's needs more effectively and efficiently, making interactions faster and easier and, consequently, increasing customer satisfaction and the likelihood of repeat visits.)
The study also found that:
- One third of marketing assets go unused or underutilized
- The average organization creates hundreds of new marketing assets each year
- Assets can take days and even weeks to create
- An asset may have dozens of different renditions or versions
- A new marketing video for a major promotion can cost tens of thousands of dollars
Stock photo agencies could do a much better job of helping customers quickly find images that will work in their projects. One of the ways would be to allow customers to review just the images that other customers have found useful. This is very simple to do. Images that have been licensed previously would be placed in a separate section of the database that could be searched independently of the entire database.
Based on preliminary results of a recent
DMLA survey only between 1% and 10% of the images in the collection are licensed in a given year. More of the agencies were closer to 1% than 10%. Thus, if the agency has a collection of 100 million images this gives the customer the option of searching just the one to ten million images that have been most popular and most in demand. This could save some customers huge amounts of time by not requiring them to review huge numbers of images that are of no interest or use for their immediate purpose.
If they don’t find what they want among the previously used images they can easily the collection of new and unused images.
Downsides For Image Suppliers
Of course, the obvious downside for image creators and suppliers is that not as many customers will be looking at new images, or older images that have never been used. These images will be in a separate database that possibly many customers will not bother to review.
There are certainly some customers that are only interested in new images or older images that have never been used. Those customers would be able to start by searching the collection of unused images for those uploaded in the last 30 days, last 90 days, last six months, last year or the whole collection.
Thus, if a particular customer regularly reviewed a particular subject matter on a regular basis that customer might only have to search the images uploaded in the last 30 or 90 days to be reasonably confident that he/she was aware of everything the agency had to offer on the subject.
If the customer was looking for subject matter never considered previously, then he/she might find it necessary to review more of the older images.
Such a search strategy would be very easy to implement because the stock agencies have the data on which images have been licensed and which haven’t, as well as the date each image was added to the collection.
One would think that if customers could find the images they need for their projects in a more timely manner they would be more likely to use the agency that made life easier for them.
In addition, customers might be inclined to pay slightly more for images that had been used before, if they were brought together in much smaller and easier searched collection.
For more about the pressures customers face check out
this link from Adobe.