Nielsen Net/Ratings, a global leader in Internet media and market research, has recently announced a new system for ranking online sites called "Total Minutes." This move could open tremendous opportunities for short-form videos.
There is no good way to estimate how many RF or RM sales are being lost because the customers are buying microstock instead. There are indications that Getty's RF sales in 2006 were declining about 10,000 units a quarter or 40,000 for the year. However, this is hard to confirm because Getty acquired Stockbyte last year and that acquisition should have boosted the total number of RF units sold. If 40,000 units were lost at an average price of $250, that would be $10 million.
A number of PhotoDisc photographers have become increasingly upset at the non-payment of royalties for almost two years - and Getty is in a legal situation where they can't do much about it.
Alamy has released their second quarter 2007 figures on contributors, percentage revenue and average pricing which shows no major change from the previous quarter. In the quarter they added 897,277 images to their collection, slightly fewer than in the previous quarter. They now have over 9.15 million images on their site.
Recently, I've been made aware that some photographers don't understand the difference between Return-Per-Image (RPI) and Return-Per-Image-Licensed (RPIL) and they are drawing some incorrect conclusions, particularly when Alamy reports its quarterly numbers.
There are traditionalist out there who are very upset that microstock exists and wish it would go away. It won't. It's here to stay and one way or another traditionalists need to find a way to live with it. This article tries to take a balanced look at microstock and how it will affect everyone's future.
Serban Enache, CEO of Dreamstime, asked two questions. "Aren't the costs lower now for a traditional photographer, just as they are for a micropayment photographer? Why does an image of a corn field need to cost several hundred $$$ when it costs $10 to produce?" This article is my response to those questions.
Corbis has launched the beta version of SnapVillage, (www.snapvillage.com) its entry into the microstock arena. In the beta stage the site will only be available to U.S. customers and will only accept payments on Visa, Master Card and American Express. The site will remain separate from the main Corbis site in the same way that iStockphoto is marketed separately from Getty Images.
After publishing the story on Tom Grill earlier, I wanted to check out what, if anything, he was doing about video. His response raised the issue of whether Video is as lucurative as stills and this story deals with that issue.
Expect the business of producing and distributing still stock images to go downhill in the rest of 2007 and 2008. Among the issues to watch are: Crowdsourcing, Micropayment, Cannibalization of RF, Oversupply, No Growth in Customers Paying Traditional Prices, and a Decline in Use of Print for Information or Marketing.