As Getty Images and Corbis add to their portfolios, upstart Jupitermedia raises its profile and Adobe enters the game.The recent acquisition of Digital Vision Ltd. by Getty Images Inc. underscores the trend toward consolidation in the stock-image industry.
The market is growing, but increased competition, agency consolidations and rapid acquisitions by an upstart in the pack have transformed the industry over the past two years. To lure new customers, some stock providers have adopted new pricing models.
Read more here about Getty Images' acquisition of Digital Vision.
Market leaders Getty Images and Corbis, both of Seattle, continue to exploit this market growth by posting strong profits while increasing their offerings.
Getty Images added seven new royalty-free content partners last year and posted revenues of $622.4 million. Getty continues to expand its offerings, including its $165 million cash purchase of London-based, royalty-free content provider Digital Vision.
Corbis reported $170.4 million in revenue for 2004. In January, Corbis acquired Zefa Visual Media Group, the third-largest image licensing company in the world.
One of the more interesting developments in a market marked by consistent and steady profits is the swift ascension of Jupitermedia Corp., of Darien, Conn. A true upstart in a market dominated by Getty and saturated with dozens of competitors, Jupitermedia is positioning itself as the self-described Wal-Mart of stock imagery.
Jupitermedia entered the market with its purchase of ArtToday.com in June 2003. Since then, the company has made a series of acquisitions, including the recent $38 million purchase of the Dynamic Graphics Group. The Dynamic Graphics acquisition makes Jupiter the third-largest stock imagery company in the world in sales and distribution, according to a Jupiter news release.
Jupitermedia has embraced the royalty-free subscription model for some of its brands, something market leaders Getty and Corbis haven't done, although Getty CEO Jonathan Klein said in a statement that Getty is exploring this option with its purchase of Digital Vision. With royalty-free licensing, customers generally have unlimited and unrestricted license to use the images they buy.
Other smaller agencies, such as Index Stock Imagery, of New York, have adopted the subscription model, even for high-resolution images.
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"The newest and, in my mind, hottest trend is the popularity of new pricing models like limited distribution and subscription models," Heidi Tolliver-Nigro, an analyst at TrendWatch Graphic Arts, said in a recent e-mail to Publish.com. TWGA explored the state of the stock market in a special report entitled "Stock Images 2004."
While a subscription may be ideal for creatives who want to use a bunch of photos for cheap, there are tactics to get access for even less.
For example, the Jupitermedia brand Photos.com sells three months of access for $249. Its photos are good quality, and their "high" resolution (2,400 by 1,800 pixels) comes in at about 6 inches by 8 inches. If you let the subscription lapse, expect more than a few "reminder" e-mails. They will culminate in desperate yet direct "we want you back" e-mails with deep discounts for six-month and one-year subscriptions.
At Index Stock Imagery, subscribers can download as many as 25 images per day, but all original use of the images must take place during the term of the subscription.
Tolliver-Nigro said recently that when it comes to royalty-free CD collections, "Creatives continue to show greater interest in higher-end collections" costing $249 and up.
One place for page-sized collections is the bargains area at Creatas. Now a Jupitermedia brand, Creatas sells high-resolution photo CDs (2,657 by 4,016-pixels) that will cover a whole letter-sized page with bleeds for $129. But beware: Images from these CDs didn't come embedded with source profiles, which are good to have in color-managed workflows.
Next Page: Adobe jumps in.
One new player in the stock image market is an old name in desktop publishing, Adobe Systems Inc., of San Jose, Calif. Adobe's new Creative Suite 2 offers access to a new service, Adobe Stock Photos, which lets users launch a stock-photo search right from their desktop publishing software.
While the jury is still out on the impact of this new service, stock photo aggregation has long been a practice in the industry, with one company selling content from multiple content partners. Some online aggregators are not much more than a search engine, some splashy marketing and a shopping cart hooked into provided content.
When it comes to buying stock, there is one good rule: Buy direct. You can search using your favorite tool, be it an aggregator or the new Adobe Stock Photos service, but you can typically get the exact same image, minus any middleman markup, from the original content provider.
While Adobe notes that images downloaded using its service have the added benefit of attached metadata such as "the image ID, image type (comp or purchased), supplier information tracking, purchase price, and image resolution and size, which Adobe CS2 applications automatically recognize," that benefit may not be worth any extra cost.
After a decade of expansion, early survey indicators are hinting at a saturated stock photography market, according to Tolliver-Nigro.
In the stock photography, illustration and footage market, look for continued availability of image subscription services and pressure to reduce prices. Stock agencies will battle tooth and nail to avoid competing on price—something that happened to the low end of the market years ago. Instead, companies in a maturing market want to battle on value.
Stock photography agencies already do this by redesigning their Web sites, adding to their libraries, speeding searches, offering more services, and promoting their brands and the quality of their images. They also do this by strengthening customer relationships with bound catalogs, personal account managers and promotions aimed at keeping customers' eyes on their images only.
