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.
Among the indicators that there may be significant additional video use are that IP traffic alone will have increased nearly 100 fold between 2005 to 2020 and is expected to grow 3 times in the next 5 years. Wireless and mobile traffic will be 66% of total traffic by 2020 and 75% of it will be video. Smartphone traffic will exceed desktop traffic by 2020. The number of devices connected will be 3 times the global population and broadband will nearly double to an average of 50 megabits per second.
Marketers report that recall is dramatically improved when visuals -- both video and stills -- are used instead of just text. Surveys show that 74% of social media marketers use visual assets and 87% of these marketers use video today.
Currently, 96% of B2B organizations are using video and 22% of small business plan to use video. By 2020, nearly a million minutes of video content will cross the network every second. A new study by Cisco says that video will represent over 80% of all internet traffic by 2019 and in the U.S. it will be over 85%.
Virtual reality traffic will increase 61-fold globally between 2015 and 2020. Content Delivery Networks will carry almost two thirds of all video traffic.
Among the projections for Video Marketing are:
- Short-form video is likely to garner more views than longer videos.
- 10-15 seconds or less will be the sweet spot for video.
- For maximum video marketing ROI you need to post your video content in multiple locations.
- SEO is crucial for video marketing success.
- Video marketing + email marketing is starting to drive conversion.
At the beginning of the webinar moderator Leslie Hughes laid out the above facts that indicate there will be a dramatic increase in the use of video online in coming years. However, she also pointed out that when Kodak purchased The Image Bank (TIB) 25-years-ago they did an extensive study that predicted that video usage was getting ready to explode at that time.
By the time Getty Images purchased TIB in 1999 it is believed that TIB’s video archive was generating $35 to $40 million a year. Sources indicate that Getty’s gross video sales in 2016 were about $84 million. While that is significant growth over a sevensteen-year period, it has not been what most would call “explosive.” In addition, prices for clips have dropped dramatically and other distributors have entered the picture affecting the growth in revenue. Getty is still believed to be the largest source of stock video.
While there will likely be growth in the usage of video, the big question is how much of it will translate into a need stock clips to tell the story. Here are a few things for stock shooters to think about.
1 – More of what is used, particularly for employees and recruitment, is being shot internally rather that looking for stock video. While there may be more demand for videographers to shoot specific projects end-to-end, it doesn’t necessarily follow that there will be increased demand for stock clips.
2 – When brands want to explain a product or service they will hire someone to shoot the project for them. More and more videographers are available and capable of doing this type of work. Many are willing to work for very low prices.
3 –An increasing number of customers are looking for real life, raw, edgy content that may not be as polished as what they wanted in the past. This means they can often get by with less experienced shooters and much less expensive productions.
4 – Given the trend toward 10 to 15 second short films most will be able to be put together without a lot of clips. (An interesting question is whether stock clip producers will be able to produce short films that customers will buy as a package rather than buying separate clips. See Jim Erickson’s new site
https://www.ericksonstock.com/ )
5 - While unit sales have increased and are expected to continue to increase the supply of clips has grown dramatically. Thus, as usage is spread among more and more creators, the amount that any individual creator can earn has tended to decline. That trend will continue.
6 – Clip prices are unlikely to increase as long as Getty, Shutterstock and AdobeStock are fighting each other for market share. One interesting option is Videoblocks Marketplace where they offer an even lower price than Shutterstock, but give the videographer almost 100% of the fee collected. Thus, the creator makes a lot more while the customer still gets the good deal they are looking for. Getty and Shutterstock can’t really compete because they insist of keeping such a large share of the fee paid.