Ad spending plans are trending upward for most major media, according to the most recent data from an every-other-monthly tracking report surveying the "advertising confidence" of key media decision-makers.
Last week, the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies alerted its members that it is supporting the National Portrait Gallery in its intent to pursue legal action against Wikipedia. Following the download of 3,000 high-resolution images from the its Web site and their subsequent appearance on Wikimedia Commons, the Gallery has attempted to discuss the issue with the online encyclopedia and, in the absence of a response, issued a lawyer's letter to a Wikipedia administrator. Wikipedia is saying the Gallery does not have a case, as the public has the right to access public-domain content.
The Stock Artists Alliance reports that the first two months of its getMETAsmart program have seen nearly 800 picture professionals attend seven free seminars across the U.S. In addition to SAA-sponsored sessions on metadata, five events included presentations on search-engine optimization by online-archive company Photoshelter.
A recent WhatTheyThink survey found that 70% of the owners of printing businesses in the U.S. expect 2009 revenues to decline compared to 2008. If less is being spent to create printed products, less is being spent on the photographs that are used in them.
London-based Ingram Publishing announced the release of Creative Symbol Collection Part 2, which consists of 5,000 vector images. The entire collection is also available through PurestockX as single-file downloads.
iStockphoto's move to segment its microstock collection into standard-priced images and the premium Vetta collection, priced 10 times higher, complicates the choices of contributors when trying to determine where to place images in order to maximize return. Should photographers enter into exclusive agreements with iStock in hopes that some of their images will be selected for the Vetta collection, or continue to distribute their images through multiple microstock sites?
California start-up GumGum has closed a Series A-1 financing round with $2.6 million in new financing from GRP Venture Partners and First Round Capital.
Those looking for free images, bloggers in particular, are getting a lot of attention from media and technology companies. In addition to GumGum securing another round of financing and the recent launches of Fotoglif and OffiSync 2.0, both of which endeavor to make it easy to source free images online, Google has integrated sort-by-usage-rights into Google Images.