Masterfile has announced that it restructured its marketing operations and established a department for product development and innovation. Picture-agency president Steve Pigeon tells Selling Stock that this reorganization will make operations more efficient, as well as allow key executives to focus on “some very cool product development initiatives.â€
Jupitermedia’s Q3 2007 revenues were $34.766 million, up from $33.784 million in the same period last year and from $34.7 million in Q2 2007. Revenues for the Online Images division, which represents 77% of the company’s total business, were $26.824 million, up from $26.177 million in the same quarter last year, but down from $27.383 million in the previous quarter. The decrease was primarily due to lower revenues from third party distributors. Total revenues for the first 9 months of 2007 were up $1.5 million from the first 9 months in the previous year.
In July Mike Watson launched moodboard.com and introduced a new usage-based pricing strategy for the high end RF images offered by his agency. These images are available under the brand name moodboard+. moodboard has just announced that they have licensed an RF image for non-exclusive usage for a fee of over $1,000, a price they believe is a new record for a non-exclusive sale of an RF image.
Microstock sellers insist they are focused on developing an entirely new market -- the SOHO (small office, home office) buyer -- that has been, for the most part, ignored by traditional sellers who charge much more for image use than SOHO buyers can afford. There is no question that the vast majority of microstock customers fit this category.
In an effort to move beyond the often-repeated cliché of photographers not being good businesspeople, this article series will endeavor to highlight business decisions that are often made by stock shooters and agencies to their detriment.High on this list is the over-reliance on the opinions of others when deciding on the next stock shoot or the future direction of an entire image collection.
The potentially cannibalizing effect of microstock on traditional licensing is an issue that comes up often, and the panel discussions at last month's PhotoPlus Expo and the annual conference of the Picture Archive Council of America were no exception.
Our recent coverage of Veer was unexpectedly timely, given today's announcement of Corbis acquiring the Canada-based stock-image retailer and type foundry for an undisclosed sum. Though this purchase is unlikely to be in the vicinity of the failed Getty/Jupitermedia deal valued at about $350 million, the alliance of Veer and Corbis may still have a rather significant effect on the industry.
The stock photo industry lost an irreplaceable leader when Jane Kinne passed away this past weekend. For more than 50 years Jane fought for the rights of photographers and stock agencies. No one has given more to our industry.
Imagestate Media has announced the receipt of £2 million (about $4.2) in investment capital from Beringea. The investment will enable Imagestate Media to further expand its already comprehensive digital content base and extend its offering of still images to motion and other rich media content.
Given the microstock discussion that took place during the recent Getty Images conference call with industry analysts, there may be a misinterpretation of iStockphoto’s strength in the worldwide marketplace.
"Due to client needs, increased stock photography resources, and improved quality of those resources, our stock photography purchases have increased over the last few years," says Richard Davia, the principal of brand experience at Continuum....
While stock-industry insiders and analysts tend to focus most of their attention on the Big Three, it is noteworthy that buyers often look to a less publicized, smaller company: the Alberta, Canada-based Veer. In a recent survey of stock-photo buyers conducted by the Piper Jaffray investment bank, Veer outranked Getty Images, Jupiterimages, Corbis, Punchstock, Mastefile and Fotosearch, emerging as today’s preferred royalty-free brand among high-end image buyers.
In addition to entirely unauthorized image use, reuse of images beyond the scope of the original licensing agreement is a prominent issue in the business of stock licensing.
Despite the generally disappointing figures released by the industry leader last week, Getty Images' stock was trading above its 13-day moving average last Friday. Figures from Yahoo Finance showed GYI trading in the range of $28.68 to $31.47. The stock was approximately 7% up from the previous day’s closing figures.
During the recent Getty Images conference call, Citigroup analyst Matthew Troy asked CEO Jonathan Klein to talk about the company's dialogue with image suppliers relative to the $49 Web use for nearly all RM, RR and RF images.
The Getty Images Q3 2007 numbers show a downward tend in both RM and RF revenue.
Total RM revenue for the quarter was $71.86 million, down almost 10% from $79.79 million in Q2 -- and the lowest quarterly sales since Q3 2004. RM revenue for Q1 2007 was $81.64 million. The highwater mark for RM revenue was $86.18 million in Q1 2006. Thus for almost two years the company has seen a steady and increasingly rapid decline in RM revenue.
Noor, the newest photojournalism collective launched in September during France's Visa pour l'Image festival, also presented itself to U.S. audiences with a two-day gallery exhibit in New York. Created in the tradition of the field's most respected agencies, including Magnum, Sygma and VII Photo Agency, Noor's mission is to promote a deeper understanding of the world by producing independent visual reports on important social, political, environmental and cultural issues.
Quantity vs. quality is a never-ending debate topic in the stock photo industry. Based on discussions I had at the recent PACA International Conference in Las Vegas, I think we are about to see another of the periodic shifts in emphasis, with quality coming to the forefront.
As of November 2007, photographs by British royal photographer Tim Graham will now be available exclusively through the Getty Images Hulton Archive.
Corbis added a specialty royalty-free collection MedicalRF to its image inventory. Launched in July by the Dublin, Ireland-based Moore Film Ltd., MedicalRF contains 10,000 digital illustrations of human anatomy, disease states, medical devices, microscopic organisms and related concepts.