"We are a broken industry that only has three choices: adapt, change or die," says Jack Hollingsworth. Though the veteran photographer continues to see immediate opportunity in traditional stock, Hollingsworth believes long-term success in this business requires a fundamental change in the business model.
Image Source has made about 6,500 of its images (approximately 5% of its total collection) available on several microstock sites. Prices have been discounted up to 80% below the fees charged for images from its core Imagesource.com collection.
The American Society of Media Photographers disclosed that last December it received $1.3 million from the Authors Coalition of America, an organization that distributes non-title specific royalties generated by photocopying American works abroad to its members. Permissible uses of the funds are restricted to educational and advocacy activities.
Stay-at-home dads and Generation V, where "V" stands for "virtual," are emerging as two important consumer groups. Both are the products of a convergence of several cultural and economic trends in Western society.
On July 15, Steve Kapsinov, Jupiterimages' community manager for StockXpert, announced on the contributor forum that the company planed to offer StockXpert's microstock images on Jupiter's subscription site, Photos.com. Photographers were to be paid $.30 per image downloaded from the Photos.com site.
Thomas Crampton, a former International Herald Tribune and The New York Times correspondent who covers Asian politics, economics and culture, has uncovered what he described as a case of "stock photo usage gone wrong."
Though researchers using different methodologies often arrive at different figures, most experts agree that digital media is on the rise. Specifically, researchers are putting emphasis on interactive advertising's growth as a percentage of total ad spending.
GumGum has announced that the ad-supported licensing platform has secured financing from First Round Capital and Crosscut Ventures. Both venture firms specialize in providing seed capital. With two new members on its board of directors, GumGum exits beta with technology that no longer uses Flash and is reportedly more flexible.
Getty Images announced that it has shot and is distributing the most coveted news images of the moment: exclusive first pictures of the twins born to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. The deal follows a 2006 arrangement in which Getty's Brent Stirton photographed the couple's daughter Shiloh, and the company negotiated licensing terms on behalf of Jolie and Pitt.
Below is a list of the Getty Images revenue for the various segments of their business quarter by quarter from Q3 2002 through Q4 2007. At the beginning of 2008 Getty stopped supplying quarterly breakdowns.
For an industry that talks about creative research, the amount of pre-Olympic promotions that focus on mundane concepts and imagery is baffling.
After a period of sustained economic softness, U.S. print magazines are beginning to show a significant decline in ad revenues. According to figures released by the Publishers Information Bureau and TNS Media Intelligence, the first half of 2008 closed with a 3% revenue decline over the previous year. Ad pages went down by over 7%.