Advertising

Ad Downturn

By Jim Pickerell | 54 Words | Posted 9/24/2019 | Comments
According to AdAge Brian Wieser, global president of business intelligence at WPP’s Groupm, weighed in with a blog post last week, saying “advertising growth is looking neutral to negative versus last year, with recent trends likely to continue.” Marketers, he stated, “need to be prepared for a downturn.” For more information see the full story.

Ad Agencies Turn Away From Stock To Assignments

By Jim Pickerell | 368 Words | Posted 5/27/2019 | Comments
As more and more consumer are turning to social media for information about the products and services they want to buy Ad agencies and brands are finding that they must up the quality of their offerings in order to get attention. According to Erik Radle, CEO of Dallas-based Miller Ad Agency, “People are finding out that the content has to just sing. It has to just dazzle. We’re spending a lot of time doing photo shoots because the days of stock photography being meaningful on social media are over. That just doesn’t cut it any more and will get you ignored.”

More On Apple’s Photo Contest

By Jim Pickerell | 250 Words | Posted 2/1/2019 | Comments
Last week I reported on Apple’s new global photography contest. The 10 winning images will be used extensively in a massive advertising campaign including product packaging and billboards. The official contest rules say the winning entries will have “No cash value.”

How Much Has The Value Of A Great Photo Declined?

By Jim Pickerell | 259 Words | Posted 1/23/2019 | Comments
Want to know how much the value of a great photo that is used in advertising has declined? In 2001 Microsoft paid $135,000 to use Chuck O'Rear's image of a green rolling hillside with a pale blue sky to launch a major advertising campaign for Windows XP software. How much do you think Apple is willing to pay for an iPhone photo that will be used heavily in iPhone advertising? Hint: If you're a photographer you won't be surprised, but you also won't be happy!

Shutterstock Launches New Ad Campaign

By Jim Pickerell | 331 Words | Posted 1/9/2019 | Comments
Shutterstock has announced it is launching its first brand marketing campaign in six years. The ‘It’s not stock, it’s ShutterstockTM’ message is designed to showcase the unparalleled quality and depth of Shutterstock’s creative asset repository driven by more than 550,000 contributors from around the globe, as well as highlight the proprietary search and discovery technologies that inspire the creative professionals who use Shutterstock to find the perfect asset every time.

Do Buyers Need Unique Images?

By Jim Pickerell | 1029 Words | Posted 3/13/2018 | Comments
Marketers are often told that the images they use in their marketing materials should be “unique” – whenever possible unique to their own business. In theory, that is one reason why so many experts claim that stock images are bad. But, is that true? Do most image user follow this advice?

VisualSteam Releases Stock Image Licensing Survey Results

By Jim Pickerell | 661 Words | Posted 12/11/2017 | Comments
VisualSteam has released the results of its 5th Annual Survey of Creative Pros on the issue of Stock Image Licensing. The survey was sent to US art buyers, art directors, art producers, creative directors, photo editors and marketing professionals and provides a glimpse into what is driving image licensing today.

Time Inc. Looks To Save $400 Million: Staff Could Be On The Chopping Block

By Jim Pickerell | 180 Words | Posted 8/9/2017 | Comments
Time Inc. unveiled plans for a “strategic transformation” that will yield more than $400 million in savings over the next few years. In the last quarterly earnings report total revenues fell 10% year to year while operating income fell from $50 million to a loss of $38 million.

When Are Releases Needed

By Jim Pickerell | 987 Words | Posted 7/28/2016 | Comments
Photographers who saw ImageBrief’s a recent blog post about Pamela Olivera’s shot that was used worldwide in a Delta Airlines campaign have been asking why Delta would take such a risk on an unreleased picture. Other ImageBrief photographers have commented lately that ImageBrief does not determined whether or not they have releases on at least some of their accepted pictures. They seem to simply accept that every image submitted has all necessary releases.

Why Does Information Have To Be Free?

By Jim Pickerell | 1305 Words | Posted 10/21/2015 | Comments
What amazes me is why all the smart people in the publishing world think they have to give away all their information when they put it on the Internet. In theory if you get enough “eyeballs” then you can sell more ads and the revenue from the ads will cover your costs and generate a profit. But, that theory is not working.

Global Ad Spend Trends

By Jim Pickerell | 663 Words | Posted 10/20/2015 | Comments
eMarketer forecasts that the total worldwide ad spend in 2015 will be $569.65 billion. Global digital ad spend will jump 18% compared with 2014 and reach $170.17 billion, or 29.9% of the total advertising market.

Are You Watching Trends In Online Ads?

By Jim Pickerell | 715 Words | Posted 10/2/2015 | Comments
Have you been watching the ads lately when you do online searches? Yesterday, I was reading a news story on Yahoo about U.S. manufacturing and three different Adobe Creative Cloud ads were delivered in connection with that one story. Two of the ads included the “St” icon promoting Adobe Stock.

Corbis & NetSeer Announce In-Image Advertising Partnership

By Jim Pickerell | 742 Words | Posted 9/28/2015 | Comments
Corbis and NetSeer have announced the launch of the industry’s first global programmatic platform for premium in-image advertising. The platform enables advertisers to programmatically target and buy premium In-Image advertising content while providing new monetization opportunities for publishers to thrive utilizing the visual content on their websites.

Ad Blocking

By Jim Pickerell | 648 Words | Posted 9/18/2015 | Comments
Are you tired of ads for things you absolutely don’t want of need interrupting your favorite news or entertainment TV shows? Almost one-third of every hour is taken up with ads. When you’re trying to read something online do the pop-up ads that are often very difficult to get rid of interrupt your reading and train of thought? Many in the general population want to get rid of these annoyance, but how is that likely to affect revenue for image producers?

Growth Of Digital Advertising

By Jim Pickerell | 378 Words | Posted 9/17/2015 | Comments
According to Zenith Optimedia total worldwide ad spend was about $510 billion in 2014 and Internet advertising (incluiding mobile) was about $122.4 billion in 2014. By 2017 digital is expected to be almost one-third (32.3%) of all global advertising or about $188 million.  

Advertising Trends In 2014

By Jim Pickerell | 433 Words | Posted 11/6/2014 | Comments
According to eMarketer’s 2014 Global Media Intelligence Report the revenue generated from global ad spend in 2014 is expected to be $545.24 billion. While total ad spending is expected to increase 5.7% compared to 2013, the percentage of this total spent for newspaper and magazine advertising continues to decline compared to the previous year while the percentage spent on digital will rise dramatically.

Advertising Uses 2.0

By Jim Pickerell | 969 Words | Posted 10/24/2014 | Comments
In the olden days (20th Century) when someone wanted to promote a product of service they placed an ad (that usually included a photo) in a magazine, newspaper or on TV. Many photographers were paid substantial fees for the use of their photos in these ads. Now the future of advertising may be in social media and embedding images. See here for how this could dramatically change the market.

Instagram Look: Is It A New Advertising Trend?

By Jim Pickerell | 228 Words | Posted 6/27/2014 | Comments
In May AdAge reported that the New York based social media agency Laundry Service has discovered that Instagram photos perform better than more professionally shot photos. The agency found that while regular photos achieved 2.35% click-through rate, Instagram photos achieved an 8% click-through. And even better, Instagram photos led to a 25% increase in conversion rate.

Advertising Trends – Info From PACA Webinar

By Jim Pickerell | 388 Words | Posted 6/13/2014 | Comments
PACA has just released a summary of it Sales Webinar that was conducted in May. The panel consisted of Leslie Hughes from Visual Steam, Candice Murray for Condé Nast and Sonia Wasco from Grant Heilman Photography. You can see the notes and view the power point presentation from the webinar here.

Record May Sales For Image Brief

By Jim Pickerell | 137 Words | Posted 6/4/2014 | Comments
May was another record month for Image Brief with 128 photographers receiving awards for an average image sale price of $1,238. (That’s $158,464 in total sales.) Three photographers -- Matthew Doggett, Rainer Waelder and Slobodan Blagojevic -- each had sales for $10,000 each.

Magazine Print Ad Pages Down 4% In 2013

By Jim Pickerell | 707 Words | Posted 5/7/2014 | Comments
In 2013 there were 145,713 ad pages in the magazines measured by the trade organization Publishers Information Bureau.  It is worth noting that in 2000 this organization reported 286,932 ad pages – almost double the 2013 numbers -- for the magazines it tracks.

Using Images To Mine Data

By Jim Pickerell | 1219 Words | Posted 5/1/2014 | Comments
It’s No Longer About The Image. It’s About The Data That Can Be Mined Using Images. The value of images is declining. The value of data that can be mined by tracking image use is increasing.

Cannes Lions Ridicules Stock Photography

By Jim Pickerell | 509 Words | Posted 4/30/2014 | Comments
A lot of people like to ridicule stock photography and hold it in contempt like “Truly Awful Stock Photography” or “Unsalable Stock Photos” or “20 Worst WTF Stock Photos,” but we’re not sure what the organizers of The 61st Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity are trying to do.

Advertising Trends

By Jim Pickerell | 859 Words | Posted 1/2/2014 | Comments
Total global ad spend in 2013 was between $489.6 billion (Magna Global) and $503 billion (ZenithOptimedia). This is up between 3.2% and 3.5% compared to 2012. According to eMarketer the U.S. portion for 2013 is about $171.33 billion or 34% of the world media market.

What Buyers Want From Photographers

By Jim Pickerell | 395 Words | Posted 10/18/2013 | Comments
PhotoShelter has just released the results of a new survey designed to determine “What Buyers Want From Photographers.” The 48 page report is available for Free here.