London-based Mary Evans Picture Library has launched The History Album. The Web site, which aims to become an online repository of user-uploaded historic photographs, borrows from the community-based photo-sharing business model, with some commercially oriented enhancements.
This summer, the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies will be hosting a series of training courses that focus on image-licensing workflow. To present the courses, BAPLA has partnered with London neighbor Electric Lane, a digital-imaging and picture-archiving consultancy established by former BAPLA CEO Sarah Saunders.
RM and traditional RF sellers are only addressing 10% to 15% of the total market for stock images. Some readers asked how I arrived at that number. First, this is the percent of images licensed, not revenue. That 10% to 15% of images used represents about 90% of current revenue. The other 85% of images used is responsible for only 8% to 10% of revenue. However, there are strong indications the revenue relationships are about to change dramatically - and not in favor of RM and traditional RF sellers.
This week, stock image site BrightQube launches a credits-based payment system, similar to that used by microstock companies. It also won the 2008 FITC People's Choice Award. According to Sharon Tczap, BrightQube vice president of marketing, the company's increasing momentum in the stock-licensing industry is the result of its user-centric philosophy.
Internet advertising revenues reached an all-time high of $21.7 billion in 2007, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers. This was 26% higher than 2006 and surpassed radio advertising and cable television advertising in total U.S. ad spending.
On a company basis, the best year-to-year percentage of growth overall came from Alamy with 18%, even though Getty Images had a respectable 10% growth overall on a much higher gross revenue. And, of course, one division of Getty, iStockphoto, had an amazing 124% growth. But we need to look closer at the actual numbers.