French-born stock-industry veteran Paul Melcher is the new director of the North American division of leading British editorial agency Rex Features. Melcher will head a soon-to-open New York sales and production office. Rex also has U.S. operations in Red Bank, New Jersey, and in Los Angeles.
The week following Getty Images' exit from the New York Stock Exchange sees a second major announcement from the industry leader, which now delivers imagery to celebrity-hounds via Apple iPhone and iPod touch. The new JAMD Mobile application is joining others available at the new Apple App Store, a built-in feature of the portable product line, as well as the online interface of the iTunes software.
According to Allen Murabayashi, Getty Images went to Flickr only after PhotoShelter repeatedly turned down offers to have its image collection distributed through gettyimages.com.
Getty Images and Yahoo!-owned Flickr have partnered to offer a new creative-image collection exclusively through gettyimages.com. With a goal of launching the offering within months, Flickr is currently building a platform to allow Getty photo editors to invite select members of the popular photo-sharing community to participate. At launch, the Flickr Collection is expected to number in the tens of thousands, with thousands of images added each month.
The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies, which regularly surveys pricing trends, has released initial findings on the U.K. publishing industry. The industry, which is growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy, is the largest local media segment, eclipsing film, fashion, music and television. While publishers have always been a key image-licensing market, this year’s big trend is the rise of the ebook, both in the U.K. and other leading and emerging global economies.
At the recent CEPIC conference in Malta, Bruce Livingstone, CEO of iStockphoto said the company currently represents 60,000 artists and about 4,000 of them are exclusive. He also pointed out that gross sales in 2007 were $72 million and 30% of that, or about $21 million, was paid out to contributors. Last year, the average price per image downloaded was $4.10, but the price varies depending on the size of the file. Non-exclusive photographers get 20% of the sales price and exclusive photographers get 40%, so the exclusive photographer would receive approximate $1.64 per image downloaded.
The Digital Railroad blog has published details on the rationale behind the company's 50% increase of its share of image sales through the Marketplace. CEO Charles Mauzy also revealed some useful sales statistics and planned allocations of the newly generated revenue. But not all contributors are happy.
We are on the cusp of dramatic changes in the way educational information is supplied to students. The major technological issues have been solved. The potential economic benefits for new players in this market - Amazon.com being the most obvious - are overwhelming. Creatives will make more money. School systems will have more choice in teaching materials and save millions.
The last two Corbis "Creative IQ" reports profile business trends the company said were responsible for current and future image needs. On the entrepreneurial front, startups by ethnic minorities are outpacing their Caucasian counterparts in both the U.S. and the U.K. In addition, retiring boomers are causing a shortage in skilled science, engineering and technical employees.
Alamy's blog has been filled with negative comments relative to Alamy's Novel Use Scheme introduced last month. The concept of selling pictures for low prices is difficult for traditional stock photographers to accept, particularly because an increasing number of their customers are using microstock images for commercial projects.
At the close of market on July 2, Getty Images stock will cease trading on and be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.
Advertising spending on the Internet will increase 26% in 2008, overtaking radio, and is expected to be more than 10% of the market. By 2010, Internet ad spend is predicted to reach $61 billion, slightly ahead of the $60.5 billion magazine ad segment of the market, per ZenithOptimedia.
The Associated Press has often been the subject of criticism among freelance photographers, whose complaints have ranged from low rates to corporate policies. As a result of several new policies, this summer has seen a surge in negative coverage of the news conglomerate among photography, online-publishing and the AP's core newspaper markets. There are also indications that the once-unshakable monopoly is beginning to lose bread-and-butter clients.
Social-networking teens indicate that they are receptive to advertising on these sites. This could be good news for PicApp, which is making images available for free to bloggers and those creating social-network sites. Each image published is accompanied by an ad and image creators share the ad revenue.
Historically, video has been the domain of Hollywood and TV studios. The Internet has democratized video production, giving rise to user-generated and Web-only content. According to Thought Equity Motion and its client WatchMojo.com, these new content types have increased the options available to marketers and ad agencies. At the same time, they have caused a decrease in production budgets, fragmented target audiences and impeded attempts to monetize online video content. Thought Equity and WatchMojo.com say they have cracked the monetization code by combining resources to produce high-quality low-cost content designed to satisfy Web and out-of-home advertisers.