StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

QuickLinks For 2008-10-26

• Hard Times for Stock Continue, Corbis to Cut Royalty Rate:
  Corbis CEO Gary Shenk said the company faces “a moment of disruptive change in the image market.”
  “Overall, we expect the image licensing market to shrink in the coming years". He showed a slide forecasting that the total stock image licensing business will fall from $2.3 billion dollars in 2007 to $2.2 billion in 2011. The traditional stock licensing that makes up most of the industry will shrink at an even faster rate.
  PDN/Daryl Lang.

Jupiterimages to be sold to Getty Images for $96 million

So where had Alan been?

In Spring 2007 it sounded like a $450 million deal (the New York Post story), now it comes down to $96 million which will "allow Jupitermedia to pay off all of its bank debt".

Getty Images´ press release, followed by Jupitermedia´s press release for Jupiterimages.

More financial details here in the last two paragraphs of this article at 24/7 Wall St.

Pino Granata: The Stock photo market crash

Barack Obama and John McCain have Joe the plumber from Ohio. We have, let´s call him, John Smith, a friend of mine who used to live between New York City and Los Angeles.

I saw him again after a few years in LA during my last trip. He told me: I have to reinvent my life which wasn´t bad.

Until a few years ago, shooting stock, I used to make a couple of thousands with one of the big three and another couple of thousands with an english photo agency.

I also used to have assignments for 3 or 4 thousands and my life wasn´t that bad.

QuickLinks For 2008-10-17

• 2008 Stock photo market crash - So where do we stand today?:
  I wouldn´t predict anyone re-inventing the stock photo industry any time soon.
  The biggest uncertainty right now is how deep the current recession will be (lets call it what it is). It could potentially squeeze otherwise well run companies out of business, period, no matter what the state of the stock photo business itself is.
  Phil Nealey/unsharpmasked.
  Related: 2008 Stock Photo Market Crash? (May 10, 2008)

Pino Granata: We have reached the bottom

Getty has changed hands and nobody knows what are the plans of the new owners to make the company more profitable.

Jupiter has reached the new low ($1.17), losing in one day 30% of its value.

A21 value is between 1 to 3 pennies.

But worse than everything is that all the photo agencies instead of promoting their pictures pointing on the quality, they promise low prices.

They should say: we have pictures that if you use them to promote your products you will increase your sales by 50%. What has happened in the magazines or newspapers for years is that when the editors get free publicity material they don´t even look at it and they throw it in the garbage.

Pino Granata: Let´s try to do the right things

 

The stock photography at all is doing very badly.

Still we have to analyze what will be the impact on the industry of the sale of Getty Images to Hellman & Friedman which is the most important event in years. This is a fact that can´t be denied.

Every day there are some more bad news. Now we get to know that Masterfile will fire some employees and other agencies will lower some prices.

But these things now happen almost every day. To lay off employees and to lower prices will not solve the problem of this industry and it will make things even more worse and this is another fact.

20 years ago I was dealing with Tony Stone to represent his agency in Italy.

Getty Images For Sale - Update

Bridget Russel, Director, Corporate Communications, Getty Images (Seattle), today:

"Regarding the New York Times article, as a publicly traded company, we cannot comment on rumor and speculation".

Similar Getty Images´ Alison Crombie (London) over at Photo Archive News:

"We cannot comment on rumour or speculation".

Getty Images For Sale - Have A Nice Monday

 

An old rumor finally becomes reality: only ten days before the next conference call on January 31st, the New York Times reports today "Getty Images Up for Sale, Could Fetch $1.5 Billion": "Final bids are due by the end of the month".

There will be a lot of noise later about the company´s evaluation, given that "for the full year 2007, Getty Images expects revenue of approximately $850 million, this implies revenue of approximately $210 million for the fourth quarter of 2007", and a gloomy future for this industry in general.

Ceterum Censeo: Pino Granata´s We are not butchers

On his blog Paul Melcher says that the photo industry never has been so healthy.

In the past we never have had stock photo agencies with a turnover of $800 million a year.

In these days photo agencies are sold and bought for $200 million or more. There is a lot of money in the photo industry and that is true.

Letters from Italy with Pino Granata´s Ceterum censeo: The Stars Look Down

 

What is happening right now in our editorial and stock photo industry is unbelievable.

Getty Images is buying everything and now anybody can observe that we are under a monopoly regime.

What we do in these days is gossip. We talk of Getty Images, Corbis, acquisitions, stock market trends, but we dont talk about photographers and photography anymore.

 

New Stock Photo News Search Engine Online

Paul Melcher is introducing his new Stock Photo News Search Engine (Beta) which allows the search over qualified and at first sight hand-selected sources reporting about the small stock photo industry, similar to the concept of the Yahoo Directory.

Stock Photo Industry Survey Of The Deutsche Bank And PACA: Pricing Stability in 2006, But Issues Likely In RF Imagery

Finally the Deutsche Bank and PACA are out with the most recent Stock Photo Industry Survey.

You can download the much anticipated survey directly from PACA (9 pages), if you are a PACA member. In case you like to have access to the full survey (16 pages), you need to contact the Deutsche Bank Securities in San Francisco.

Citigroup Investment Research´s VP Matthew Troy Crowdsources Stock Photo Industry Analysis: What A Great Idea

Matthew Troy (not to be confused with Troy Mastin of William Blair & Co.), VP Citigroup Investment Research - Imaging (Citigroup Overview), has sent out unsolicited emails entitled "Citigroup Research Inquiry" to photographers and apparently to other recipients asking to contribute for free to the research study "Trends in Stock Photography 2007" for "generating earnings estimates and Buy/Sell/Hold recommendations for investors".

Corbis´ New President Gary Shenk Being Groomed For Future CEO Position, Says "No One Really Knows How Big The Marketplace Is"

The last eight years have seen incredible efforts of research analysts, investment bankers and the so-called industry experts to determine "how big is the stock photo market, how much money can we make in which segment, where should we invest our money?". In the last two years, new questions have emerged about "How big is the micro stock market really? Royalty-free flash music loops, how much money is in that?"

Pfizer´s Viagra Website And MetLife´s Ad "A Moment Of Silence" Share The Same Image: The Wall Street Journal On Stock Photo Recycling

The Wall Street Journal today runs a long story on "When Marketers See Double; As Digital Libraries Spread The Use of Stock Photography, Some Ad Images Are Recycled", quoting stock photo buying companies why or why not they intentionally decided to use images which other competitors in the same industry are using, as well as citing execs from Onrequest Images, Corbis and Getty Images.

The article points to three image examples (however, all three were provided by Onrequest Images) and additionally to a photo sharing table with "examples of companies that used the same stock photo in marketing materials". The best example quoted so far is clearly the demonstration of using the same image in MetLife´s "Why MetLife" advertising campaign ("A moment of silence") and on Pfizer´s website that "provides answers to frequently asked questions about its erectile dysfunction drug Viagra":

"Google Can Make The 20th Century Stock Portals Like Getty And Corbis Irrelevant"

This year at the CEPIC congress some got the impression that the event had been partly a meeting of dinosaurs discussing the same old topics they are discussing since years, with the same results, but nothing changes.

At the recently held PACA conference someone said during the first day that most of the exhibiting photo agencies will not survive the next ten years. On day three of the meeting, another person emended the number of years down to five.

A New Photographic Renaissance, by Pino Granata

Pino Granata recently sparked off a global discussion in the small stock photo community when he sent his declaration or manifesto "Is there any future for photographers and agents?" to the PACA.

Two weeks later Pino published here "The Bill Gates Mystery: An Open Letter From Pino Granata To The Founder Of Corbis".

Both posts were followed by a very vivid discussion, either online here and here as well as separated in a frequent email exchange of various members of the stock photo community.

Pino has written an update on his thoughts, entitled A New Photographic Renaissance:

"Just fly in a different direction"

What a great comment. Michele Vitucci/Bilderlounge on

"The Bill Gates Mystery: An Open Letter From Pino Granata To The Founder Of Corbis".

The Bill Gates Mystery: An Open Letter From Pino Granata To The Founder Of Corbis

The following is an open letter from Pino Granata (Flickr portrait) and from my point of view an addition to Pino Granata: "Is there any future for photographers and agents?" (Sept. 16, 2006), the letter Pino wrote recently to the The Picture Archive Council of America (PACA), discussed here. Pino is working in this industry since 42 years.

The Bill Gates Mystery

The photo business is a very tough business and when you realize that one of the major players in this field is his majesty Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, you start shaking.

Pino Granata: "Is there any future for photographers and agents?"

Pino Granata (Flickr portrait), founder and president of Milan-based Granata Press/Granata Images founded in 1985, recently wrote a letter to the The Picture Archive Council of America (PACA) to express his concerns on what is happening in the stock photo industry currently and the content is for sure of interest to a broader audience:
 

Letter from Pino Granata/Granata Press

Is there any future for photographers and agents?

I guess there are a lot of people that are crossing their fingers while reading these words, but I do think it’s a proper question to ask. Getty, Corbis, Jupiter and some other agency are fighting to control the market and in this war there are a lot of casualties. Now I think with the subscription we have reached a point of no return.

Google Trends And The Stock Photo Industry: A First Quick Look

Google introduced yesterday Google Trends, another Google Labs product in an early stage of development. With Google trends, you can see the search volume of a given keyword over time. The tool "analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time" (About Google Trends) and displays the result in the search-volume graph.

Listen! Black Star Starts Weekly Podcasts

Except for the webcasts of Getty Images, podcasts still haven´t entered the stock photo industry.

Legendary NYC-based photo/publishing agency Black Star was founded in 1935 by the germans Kurt Safranski, Kurt Kornfeld and Ernest Mayer. Today the company operates divisions like Assignment Photo (also here), Stock Photo (also here) and the Editorial PhotoJournalism service.

According to John P. Chapnick, Black Star is soon starting a weekly podcast. The podcast series will "cover trends in the photographic industry, for photographers, agencies, and clients" and is going start in late March 2006. Generally, estimates are that podcasting is a 1,2 - 2,3 billion dollar industry currently.

Tags: Black Star; Podcasts in the Stock Photography Industry

The 23 Best, But Still Unwritten Stock Photo Industry Headlines For 2006

• After The Biarritz Gala Party With The Mayor Of A Vicinal City, The CEPIC Decides To Organize The Next 2007 Congress In Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia; Delegates Completely Overwhelmed: "Best Flight Connections Ever!"

• Photographers Choice: Getty Images Acquires Shutterstock And Fotolia

• Morgan Stanley Acquires MadPixBiz: "Damned! All Of Your Predictions Were True!"

• Corbis Hires PR Genius Steve Rubel, Announces Immediately The Date For Going Public

• Corbis Hires PR Genius Steve Rubel, Skips Immediately Going Public

OnRequest Images Releases Corporate Brand Imagery Survey

This is the rare case of a useful press release (or, as Steve Rubel puts it so eloquently here in a late description of the Press Release Cemetery, "wouldn't it be great if press releases had comments, trackbacks and a Technorati in-bound linkmeter actually attached to them?").

[Update] "By Far The Best Year In Our History": Getty Images Announces Quarter IV 2005 and Year 2005 Results

Getty Images (Quote, Profile, Research, Upgrades/Downgrades History) has announced today the results for the Q IV/2005 and the full year 2005.

When Getty Images announced the Q III/2005 Results (October 20, 2005), the company predicted that "for 2005, we expect to report revenue in the range of $735 million to $739 million."

When Getty Images announced the financial guidance for 2006 as part of its 2005 Analyst Day (December 08, 2005), the company cautioned that its fiscal 2005 results would probably fall at the low end "of both the revenue guidance of $735 million to $739 million." (Getty Images: Probably Lower 2005 Results)