In a recent PermissionTV survey of 400 senior marketing executives, 67% of respondents said identified video as the primary focus of this year's online marketing campaigns. Video is also expected to evolve in sophistication and interactivity.
Getty Images launched rights-ready pricing in 2006 in order to meet customer demands for "simpler, faster licensing." Now, the company has discovered that "customers also want to maintain their ability to very precisely fine-tune their licensing."
Santa Monica-based GumGum, one of a handful of companies experimenting with use-based licensing of images online, has expanded its entertainment and celebrity offering with paparazzi imagery by Bauer-Griffin. GumGum co-founder and chief executive officer Ophir Tanz also told Selling Stock that the licensing platform "is experiencing tremendous growth" overall.
Though this week's inauguration of President Obama has resulted in a spike of newspaper sales, these are but a drop in a big, nearly empty bucket. Emerging studies demonstrate that 2008 was the year when news consumption on the Internet finally overtook print and newspaper ad-revenues plummeted.
The Compassionate Eye Foundation has announced that its collection of over 1,000 images has generated more than $250,000 for international aid. Distributed by Getty Images, CEF is the first organization to raise funds through stock-image licensing.
A frequent question from professional stock photographers is: "Will hobbyists take over the market?" Our answer: not even in microstock.
Many think that the stock-image industry should find a way to price images based on the cost of production. But the problem is not in the lack of a link between production cost and image price, but in the whole idea of stock photography as a primary business.
Barcelona-based age fotostock closed 2008 with 8.6 million images, which represents a 68% inventory increase since the previous year. Unlike those who say oversupply is the stock industry's biggest problem, age fotostock believes there is a direct relationship between the agency's inventory size and market share.
As compared to the list of the top 50 iStockers, iStockcharts offers a more comprehensive list of iStock photographer performance. iStockcharts is updated daily and includes 21,377 shooters of the over 60,000 that have images on iStock.
Last week's mergers among German-speaking image agencies mirror a wave of similar U.S. activity. With increased interest from leading global companies, the third-largest stock-image market may be in for a shakeout.
The Publishers Information Bureau said magazine advertising generated $23.7 billion in 2008, a decline of 7.8% over the previous year. Ad pages were also down by 11.7%.
A consortium that unites Rubberball, Glow Images, Blend Images and some of Blend's partners has become the new owner of the U.S. assets of SuperStock. RGB Ventures intends to continue to operate the company.
Stock-industry suppliers ImageSpan and JaincoTech announced a partnership that expands and cross-promotes the services each offers its clients.
India-based Dinodia Photo Library has met the New Year with a new Web site and a new image collection.
Corbis and Thought Equity Motion have partnered to take advantage of each other's strengths. The two companies will cross-distribute their footage collections, increasing Corbis' content inventory and offering Thought Equity wider international exposure.
Calling 2008 a challenging year would be an understatement.
Richard Prince, the "appropriation" artist whose work is exhibited at the level of the Guggenheim and sets records at contemporary art auctions, will have to defend himself in a copyright-infringement lawsuit brought by photographer Patrick Cariou.
The latest creative trend from Corbis is "Boomeritis:" a concept that describes the mostly self-inflicted injuries and ailments of mature athletes. In addition, Corbis expands European distribution through new partners in Croatia and Denmark.
NBC Universal of Burbank, Calif., has selected Paris-based SIPA Press to become the main international distribution partner for NBCU's archival television images.
One of the world's most productive stock photographers, Jonathan Ross of Seattle's AndersenRoss, shares his strategy for controlling costs, particularly when it comes to microstock shoots.
During this week's Macworld Conference and Expo, iStockphoto unveiled "Dexter"—a stand-alone desktop application that changes the image-search and purchasing paradigm.