In partnership with PicScout, Corbis will soon be offering free images to social media, while monetizing the free content with advertising.
For many photographers, gross revenue might still be strong, despite a falloff in U.S. sales. The goal is to find work overseas, since the Euro is stronger than the dollar.
SnapVillage, the microstock Web site launched by Corbis in June, has reached 125,000 images in its inventory. According to senior vice president Adam Brotman, this exceeds expectations.
The book publishing industry has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and the stock photo industry has struggled to keep up with those changes. The biggest problem has been in establishing reasonable prices for increased circulation.
Continuing to focus on business segments least affected by the proliferation of low-cost imagery, Corbis has engaged 16 high-profile celebrity photographers to contribute new imagery to its Outline brand.
Recently, when Alamy reported estimated 2007 revenues of $28 million, I speculated they were the fourth-largest seller of stock images in the world after Getty, Corbis and Jupiterimages. New information about Japan's amanaimages places them in fourth place and moves Alamy to fifth.
Both Corbis and Alamy adjust their prices based on image size and circulation. This makes sense to book publishers because that is the way they have priced usage for decades. Yes, publishers want to be able to print an image in more copies than originally anticipated, and include electronic uses, which Alamy offers for an additional 50% and is included in Corbis' price. But is it necessary to give larger uses away?
U.K. editorial stock library TopFoto has struck a deal to represent a 130-year-old photo archive from German publisher ullstein bild.
The Bucharest, Romania-based microstock provider Dreamstime.com has recently announced reaching the 2 million image milestone. The company also said the number of buyers tripled last quarter.
Survey data of Publishing Forecast 2008, the latest research report by The Industry Measure, suggests that this segment's demand for stock imagery is on the decline. Though close to 40% plan to purchase royalty-free images and about 30% expect to buy rights-managed stock, planned spending has decreased by 3% to 13%, depending on license type.