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Getty Images, Flickr And The Reinvention Of Outdoor Advertising

Yesterday Getty Images received the "2005 Business Excellence Award for Innovation". Jonathan Klein, the co-founder and CEO of Getty Images said, "Throughout history, imagery has proven to be an astounding force for change".

Last year on December 08, 2004, Getty Images announced the "Five Top Imagery Trends For 2005" (More in "The Future Of Stock Photography And Imagery Trends For The Future") and stated:

We will also see a virtual re-invention of outdoor advertising, as companies push to leverage plasma and LCD screen technology. These screens will be enabled to receive rich visuals through digital signals, creating "mini Times Square-like" displays on bus shelters, in office and hotel lobbies, elevators, sports arenas, and on billboards and other traditional out-of-home venues.

Now, with its astounding force for change, Flickr is responding and apparently some might not have fully understand the consequences of what is happening.

Mediamatic, an Amsterdam based company, created Playing Flickr v2.0 ("Imaginative Keyword Conversations in Public Space"), a public space installation in the bar/restaurant/club 11 that "allows its visitors [via SMS] to select tags or keywords which will project associated Flickr images onto the club’s panoramic wall screens" (holly marie).

Note that the images showed during the installation are not necessarily the best images available at Flickr and in fact they are not. Flickr should set up a professional image management department and hire some picture editors, pick up the best images for possible selling and marketing through distribution channels, improve the keywording/tag system, solve the legal issues with licensing, rights clearance, model releases etc. with a workaround and figure out a way to pay the photographers. Flickr has perhaps a stronger daily input of noteworthy stock photos than the micropayment sites. Flickr has some jewels in its hands, and the only problem remaining is if and how are they able to select and market these jewels. All it needs is a "can-do" attitude.

I don´t know the details of the deal between Mediamatic and the owner of the club 11. But for shure he has been able to generate some bucks more than without the installation. If he can hire Mediamatic (this includes the Flickr users as the producers) and if Flickr is able to solve some remaining problems, then any businessman, company or ad agency can showcase noteworthy stock photos in "bus shelters, in office and hotel lobbies, elevators, sports arenas, and on billboards and other traditional out-of-home venues" and elsewhere.

The quality will certainly not/never have the peak quality of some of the Getty imagery and a difference will remain for ever. But this difference is getting smaller in the low-end part and I´m sure there is a bigger market for Mediamatic/Flickr. What has happened in Amsterdam sounds pretty much like: "Getty, we don´t need you. You have great artists for sure. You have great images for sure. No doubt and no disrespect. But for the moment WE TAKE OVER. We did the virtual re-invention of outdoor advertising as you were sleeping. These are our images and our lifes and some of our images are pretty great. This is what we want to see in our sports arenas and our offices."

Imagine the power of a temporary joint venture of Mediamatic/Flickr, some micropayment sites and some of the best photoblogs (photoblogs.org currently lists 11,851 photoblogs in 93 countries and 42 languages).

As a play of thoughts: it would take a new independent distribution company to negotiate with Flickr, micropayment sites and some photoblogs to become the “outlet factory” for the best images of these sources and to streamline the offerings. The problem for the moment is the keen competition beetwen the micropayment sites, but, if their best imagery would be united as one force (like a normal classical photo portal), they will gain more visibility as if they were acting alone. This new company would represent in a nutshell the best imagery from these three sources and market them as a single pool, unifying their imagery as one force (and still the micropayment site can pursue their own business, for them it´s just another way to generate revenues). As a search engine (not as a independent distribution company), Yotophoto -- like Pixsy -- is a early and first step in this direction (see "Interview With Mark Thomson/Yotophoto"). - It´s juicy to notice how VCs with experience in the picture business are interested in these ideas, starting to fund both sides of the table. So, towards the notorious objection raisers at the PDN online forums ("What is flickr"), this is not satire.

Imagine this pool (neither Flickr, a micropayment site nor an aggregation of photoblogs can do this alone) would have access to Adobe Bridge. Imagine a pool image subscription model (no one would care anymore about low-end subscription services from other companies because of the jewels of Flickr, micropayment sites and photoblogs). Imagine some kind of a unified PLUS licensing system for those pool images (the problem for the moment are the specific conditions at each micropayment site). Imagine these source would have access to the GalleryPlayer. Imagine if these pool images would be searchable via Visual Search, then the task of keywording (Flickr´s problem for the moment) would be less important. Besides this, imagine if Flickr would create an own micropayment site with constant influx of imagery. A reader wrote, "just think if they create a contest for specific subjects in the low-end part, then you´ll have a correspondent OnRequest Images business model" (ok, this latter is now really weird!).

Finally Flickr should hire Thomas Hawk (1; 2; 3) for business development. He was right: instead of Yahoo, Getty or Corbis or another player should have bought Flickr.

Related:

• An Interview with Flickr's Eric Costello: "We’re working on new features to increase the relevancy of tag search results. It’s quite exciting because there are a lot of fantastic photos on Flickr that people don’t always find. I think it’s going to change the nature of Flickr a little bit. It’s pretty cool."
• Flickr: How To Displace Getty Images and Corbis

[Links to larger image sizes here and here]

 

QuickLinks For 2005-09-27

• Masterfile expands with direct sales operations in Germany, Italy, Netherlands, the U.K and has hired Tomas Speight (formerly co-CEO at zefa visual media, later sold to Corbis) as Senior Vice-President International. Tomas feels that he "always thrived in an entrepreneurial environment". Details here.

• SuperStock/A21 closes deal with Art.com: details here.

• Thomas Hawk, quoted here different times, is somehow obsessed with the subject "High Quality Stock Photography and Flickr". Look at his blog to see the many entries related to this subject. Now he writes about "Public Domain Art on Flickr" with a recent blog update.

Related in general: The Stalwart-Markets-Business-The Economy: "Coming With Their Battering Rams" and his earlier post he mentions.

• I had to take down the earlier post "QuickLinks For 2005-09-26"; more later. So this is a unusual short QuickLink list. But here are tons of interesting things.

• Besides "monitoring video feeds in real time", Images Get Their Own Search Engine looks at "within five years we'll see some 'simple but cute' consumer applications for visual search".

Stockxpert: Run, Forrest, run!

"Run, Forrest, run!"

The next new stock photography micropayment site is open for business: Stockxpert, launched on Sept. 11, 2005.

Earlier, in 2004 ("Free" Stock Photography and Royalty "Free" Stock Photography Sites without Breaking the Bank) and in 2005 (Free High Quality Stock Photography), I published here two lists with micropayment sites.

Meanwhile no one knows exactly how many of these stock photography micropayment sites do exist out there. Some of the bigger ones are certainly Dreamstime, Shutterstock, iStockPhoto.

One of the earliest (and also a "major") player had been stock.xchng. The creators of this site are also the people behind Stockxpert. The blog stainedscreen offers a nice comparison chart (iStockPhoto, stock.xchng and Stockxpert) and looks at some details.

I don´t know if he expected to get an answer to top his post, given this kind of audience, but recently Jean-Pierre Lescourret (Corbis) wrote ironically in the Stockphoto.net discussion group about "260000 stockphotos for $139": "...the progress we should support".

Via stainedscreen and sitedesignmagazine.

Related:

• New Yahoo Group For Micropayment Stock Photo Agencies
• Free High Quality Stock Photography
• The Future Of Stock Photography And Imagery Trends For The Future
• istockphoto.com: "Bringing the price down to a level where everybody can afford to buy a stock photo"
• Paradigm Shifts In Stock Photography
• Where to Find Free Images and Visuals for My Blog

SuperStock/A21 Closes Deal With WireImage To Push Its Purestock RF Collection

SuperStock today announced that it has closed an agreement with WireImage, one of the largest entertainment and sports photo wire services in the United States. SuperStock will provide WireImage with non-exclusive distribution rights to 6,000 images from its Purestock Royalty-Free collection.

SuperStock content is available through the Creative Tab on WireImage's website. Including already WireImage Stock and other image offerings from third-party RF collections, this new label is called WireImage Creative.

The parent company of WireImage -- and of WireImageStock.com, FilmMagic.com, ContourPhotos.com and WincReps.com -- is MediaVast. Investors of MediaVast include Time Warner and a nice bunch of other fellows, even my beloved Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. More details here at the Press Release Cemetery.

QuickLinks For 2005-09-22

• Hard core: "On September 7th I signed with Wijeya Publishers to redo their IT Times magazine ... anyways, I end up needing stock photography so I use Flickr"; Indi Samarajiva in "Free Stock Photos From Flickr".

• Times Company Announces 500 Job Cuts: "The announcements by two [also Knight Ridder] of the biggest newspaper companies in the country reflect the uncertain outlook for newspapers as some readers and advertisers move to other media ... Colby Atwood, vice president of Borrell Associates, a media research firm, said, "I expect to see more of this over the next 10-plus years as the newspaper industry adjusts to its smaller role in news dissemination and advertising"; NYT.

• Vertical Growth Drivers - Image Search on the Rise: "Image search was the main vertical driving the growth experienced by four top five search engines"; Nielsen//Net Ratings, p. 2 of the pdf-file.

• The future shines bright ahead? Ron Rovtar of the The Stock Asylum discusses the future of the stock photography industry in "Future Stock...", Part I one three articles.

Next, the Stock Asylum has published "The Second Annual Stock Asylum 103", a list of 103 quality rights-managed stock distributors "helping stock buyers find fresh photography". The index is separately searchable in a standard and an extended version. Especially fresh imagery can be found at UpperCut Images, Halo Images, Gallery Stock Limited, Desert Dolphin, Millennium and Glasshouse images. (Link to the Press Release)
 

• "The ultimate value of Flickr will be in the 5% of their photos that represent superior photography"; Thomas Hawk in "The Rise and Rise of Flickr".

• Andre Nantel/Digital Apoptosis in "One small piece at a time":

For a bit more than a year, I was using a "regular" agency to see if I could make some equipment money with this hobby of mine. It didn't work out.

To put it simply, contrary to what some may say a 3.5 MP camera simply doesn't cut it in the stock photography world. On the other hand a new market has opened up. Microstocks will sell your images for about a dollar and they count on volume to make it worth your time. For the past five weeks, I have submitted about one hundred images to three of them, Dreamstime, Shutterstock and iStockPhoto.

So, does it work? In the past 5 weeks I have sold 184 images for $58.

• After Scoopt and SpyMedia,the next new photo agency for citizen journalists is Cell Journalist; details at picturephoning.

• "If you happen to be in the Bay Area next week, the Aurora Forum is presenting what looks to be an interesting panel discussion on documentary photography and democratic ideals" ["Cameras and Cultures: The Myth of Objective Documentation"]; John Nack/Adobe in "Photography event this week and next".

• "A new service now available: A MINOX laboratory copies pixel by pixel onto traditional chemical film"; Mark Goldstein in "Copy Your Digital Photos Onto Film".

• Please modify your browser security settings:

"GalleryPlayer Media Networks (www.galleryplayer.com) is now available on Windows XP, bringing the world's finest HD art and photography to millions of PC and high-resolution displays.

GalleryPlayer Media Networks has signed license agreements with over twenty-five of the world's leading sources of rights-managed art and photography including The New York Times, National Geographic, The Time Life Picture Collection, New York Public Library, The Andy Warhol Foundation, Rachel Hale, Bruce McGaw Graphics, Corbis, Dorling Kindersley, George Eastman House, America 24/7, Art Resource, Artist Rights Society, and other major museums, brands and collections" (Link to the press release with prices etc. and here´s the link to the Imagery Content Partners).

GalleryPlayer announced on July 18, 2005, that it has closed a $4.0 million series B financing round led by Menlo Ventures.

• This is great! Graphic Design USA has released the 12 webpages thick study "19th Annual Stock Visual Survey" called "The New Face of Stock", including a review of the Getty Images portal; via the uncle of Natalie.

Recent Analysis On Getty Images, New Numbers From Corbis

Newratings.com in Getty Images "neutral," target price raised:

Analysts at Robert W Baird maintain their "neutral" rating on Getty Images Inc (GYI.NYS). The target price has been raised from $75 to $84.

In a research note published this [September 20] morning, the analysts mention that the company's main competitor, Corbis, has reported its 1H05 revenues and ex-FX organic growth at $111.5 million and 4.6%, respectively. The results were significantly lower than Getty Images’ revenues and ex- FX organic growth of $363 million and 13% for 1H05, the analyst says. Getty Images is likely to have gained market share during the period, according to Robert W Baird.

The Q3 2005 Earnings Conference Call of Getty Images takes place October 20, 2005.

The mentioned Corbis revenues of $111.5 million corresponds to the revenues for the first two quarters of 2005 Corbis recently reported and indicates a 33% growth over the full year 2004, with a pro forma growth of about 6.6% (Getty: about 16.5%).

Corbis said that 79% of its revenue were related to the licensing of RM, 10% to the licensing of RF and another 10% to other services. The company generated 42% of its revenues in the Americas, 53% in Europe and about 3% in Asia with a overall revenue split of 40% in Editorial and 60% in Commercial.

This year, Corbis had acquired eMotion (Link), image100 (Link), Zefa (various links) and the Roger Richman Agency (Link).

a21 Reports Second Quarter Financial Results

A21, the parent company of Superstock, recently raised $1M through stock sale (see the bottom of the linked page). Today the company announced the financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2005.

Gross revenues for the second quarter of 2005 were $2,327,000 compared to $2,527,000 for the same period in 2004. Gross revenues were $4,639,000 in the six months ended June 30, 2005 compared to $3,325,000 in the six months ended June 30, 2004.

"Second quarter revenues are up over the first quarter of 2005," said Albert H. Pleus, Chairman and CEO of a21. "Additionally, revenues for the first two quarters of 2005 are up 12% sequentially over the prior six month period."

"During the last quarter, we introduced "Purestock," a Royalty-Free brand designed to provide the professional creative community with quality images at the highest resolutions and at competitive pricing. The collection launched internationally in more than 100 countries, and the second wave of Purestock content will be available in September 2005, followed by a full schedule of releases in 2006," Thomas V. Butta, Vice Chairman and President of a21 and CEO of SuperStock, added.

More here at the Press Release Cemetery.

QuickLinks For 2005-09-20

• Adobe Photographers Directory wins a WebAward for outstanding achievement in website development. Adobe says " now that the directory is linked from Adobe Bridge, we hope that more photographers and designers, ad agencies, and other clients will find each other through it."

• During the ASPP´s (American Society of Picture Professionals) Fourth Education Conference next year in San Francisco (March 23 -26, 2006), VIMA Technologies and Idee Inc. will present a session about Visual Search and Image Monitoring. -Hey, where´s PicScout?

• ZUMA Press, Inc. the largest independent picture agency and wire service in the world, and Meximerica, a U.S-based Spanish-language newspaper publisher, joined forces to broaden the reach of Meximerica's content. The deal grants ZUMA worldwide rights to license the daily picture production of Meximerica's network of RUMBO daily newspapers.

ZUMA properties include DOUBLEtruck Magazine, KONA Pictures, zReportage.com, ZUMA Press and the KeyStone Picture Agency.

• In the recent issue of Visuell, Klaus Plaumann, Marketing Director at Picture Press and manager of the STERN photo documentation, explores the current situation in the german picture business, taking into account especially the recent developements in the US (new subscription services, Adobe entering the game, Royalty Free still rising etc.).

  According to Plaumann, it seems that the status in this special segment is as wonky and shaky as the overall status in Germany (read "With Germany´s Surprising Economy, Karl Marx Comes Back" and "Germany Loses Its Own Election"). His article starts with "Change your business NOW" and ends with "If we don´t change and adopt, we clearly set ourselves aside".
  

  The article is interesting to read (although recent developments like micropayment sites or OnRequest Images are missing), but in german and requires registration.

• a21 Inc./Superstock raises $1M through stock sale. As the Business Journal of Jacksonville writes,

  a21 Inc. has raised more than $1 million by selling 7 million shares of the company's common stock to a trio of investors. a21 sold the shares to Ahab International Ltd., Ahab Partners L.P. and John L. Steffens.
  Jacksonville-based a21 is the parent of stock photography company SuperStock Inc.
  Last month a21 announced it had changed auditors and would file its quarterly earnings report late.
  a21 (OTCBB: ATWOE) has still not filed its quarterly report with the SEC, and is listed as delinquent on the OTC Bulletin Board. If it does not file the report by Sept. 22 its shares of common stock may be removed from the OTC Bulletin Board.
  a21 noted in an SEC filing last month that its board named Thomas V. Butta chief financial officer. Butta, the president of a21 and CEO of SuperStock, replaced William E. Murphy IV, who resigned from the company.

  More in "Non Reliance on Prev Financials, Audits or Interim Review" (September 19, 2005):

  In addition, the Company determined that it had not properly reflected the SuperStock purchase price allocation of goodwill and the deferred tax liability in conjunction with the SuperStock acquisition.

• Shortly after the Fotofinder, Picturemaxx relaunched recently the portal website Picturemaxx.net.

• Pro domo: the FeedBlitz subscription service is currently not working for the Press Release Cemetery. More later.

One Item Less On The Shopping List: Reuters Acquires Action Images

Last year, EMPICS, the UK based international sports photography and photo marketing agency, which was established in 1985 and offers Picture Buyers a digitised sports photolibrary of over 650,000 images (another 1.4m images are held offline in physical storage), had been sold to The Press Association (PA), the national news agency of the UK and Ireland.

Now Reuters, the world’s largest international multimedia news agency (revenues in 2004 £2.9 billion, 15,300 staff in 91 countries), has acquired London-based Action Images, the specialist sports photography agency "in a deal designed to continue the expansion of Reuters global picture business".

Action Images owns an archive of more than 7 million sports images with more than 1.5 million available online, is number one for football and the UK’s largest independent sports photographic company. Clients include FIFA, UEFA and all of the UK’s national newspapers.

According to Reuters, "the deal enables Reuters to expand the sale of its pictures beyond its traditional media client base into the commercial market, and to build the Action Images brand in markets outside the UK. Action Images will also have access to Reuters world class sports news text and graphics, and will use these to create multi-media products for its clients."

Action Images´ founder David Jacobs remains as Managing Director of the Action Images. Monique Villa, Global Head of News and Pictures at Reuters, becomes Chairman of Action Images, and Philip Kelly its Chief Executive.

Reuters notes also that it "has acquired Image Group Limited, the holding company of the Action Images group. The gross assets of Image Group Limited as of December 30th 2004 amounted to £1,821,494."

More here at the Press Release Cemetery.

QuickLinks For The Weekend

• The Time/Richard B. Woodward in "Picture Perfect: In the age of citizen photos, Witness shows that professional news photography is still peerless" about the new book of Reuel Golden ("Witness: The World's Greatest News Photographers"), a senior PDN editor:

The book nonetheless reinforces certain clichés about the profession. Golden must know that war photographers aren't all selflessly heroic, and he fails to mention the crushing might of the industry's superpowers, Getty Images and Corbis, which have gobbled up independent agencies and driven down the price that unaffiliated news photographers can earn for their work.

It is television that generally dictates what becomes a memorable image these days by endlessly repeating video clips ... this book gives a select group of photographers a chance to try to even the score.

Related: "Journalist deaths in modern conflict" (APAD blog)

• The September Issue of Photoblogs Magazine is online (download link for pdf-file).

• Alexa rankings again. As QT Luong of Terra Galleria writes, he had a look at the Alexa rankings described in "Avanti, Avanti! Randy Taylor On Search Methods, Technology Providers And Marketing Channels" (see the links there to the Alexa-pdf-files of StockPhotoFinder):

"It is interesting to note that several individual photographers have achieved Alexa ratings for their own websites that exceed ratings of most of the agencies listed."