StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

a21: Third Quarter 2005 Financial Results

A21 (ATWO), the parent company of SuperStock, the Royalty-Free brand Purestock, Ingram Publishing, has released the QIII/2005 numbers. Some highlights:

•Revenues for the third quarter of 2005 were $2,064,000
(compared to $2,077,000 for the same period in 2004)

•Revenues were $6,703,000 in the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2005
(compared to $5,402,000 in the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2004)

More details here. Related:

• A21 Aqcuires Ingram Publishing; New Stock Photo Subscription Service Ingramstock Launched
• a21 Reports Second Quarter Financial Results
• All a21 related recent entries here (a lot!)

Technorati Tags: A21; SuperStock; Ingram Publishing; Stock Photo Industry

Interview With Fotolia´s CEO Thibaud Elziere: "Microstock Sites Can Capture Up To 30% Of The Existing Market"

I discovered the new start-up Fotolia via a TrackBack of their blog back in April 2005 and, after their six month beta period, was impressed by their concept and thus the difference to other micropayment sites. It´s about time that new and young people are entering the stock photo industry game of "I´ll buy you before you acquire my competitor", together with new ideas and fresh blood.

A game, that is still dominated by 40+ years old grandpas with starting gray hairs. Some of these grandpas were about 26 years old when they started their own businesses. Regarding the traditional media, also still ruled by 40+ years old grandpas, it´s sometimes difficult for these young companies to find the attention they deserve. So I peppered Thibaud with some questions and here are his reponses.

Andy: Thibaud, could you describe your professional background and your experience in the stock photo industry, as well as the experience of your two co-founders, Oleg Tscheltzoff and Patrick Chassany?

Thibaud: I am still young, 26 years and I did an engineering school in France and a management school in Germany. My experience in the stock image industry is more as a buyer than as a photographer. I was in charge of marketing/communication in some start-up web agencies and had to deal with images quite a lot. Oleg is an very advanced amateur photographer, who shots with a Canon Mark II. Moreover our team is composed of two professional photographers (Chad and David) and one famous model (Aiste). Last but not least, we have Patrick who is an online service specialist with demonstrable successes of creating and selling web services.

Spam Blogs In The Small Stock Photo Industry: A Weird Phenomenon

Although we probably all feel that we´re all pretty much important individuals, this is not reflected by the overall size of the stock photo industry, which is in terms of money -- admit it -- very small, if compared to other industries.

One might add that in Central Europe a mid-sized cheese producing creamery company generates just the same annual revenues as industry leader Getty Images.

Remember that years ago Jim Pickerell of Pickphoto wrote that North Americans are spending eight until ten times more money for toilet paper than for stock imagery (quoted from memory).

Finally, a lot of investors would still be satisfied and happy people today if they had sunk their money not into some special stock imagery companies in the past 15 years, but instead in the toilet paper industry -- ok, that´s another story.

With this in mind, I´m astonished to notice that more and more spam blogs stealing content from other stock photo industry related websites are appearing. Apparently, there must be lots of money in "stock photo industry spam blogging".

[© Cartoon JD Frazer]

International Stock Imagery Association Looking For Contributors And Board Directors

Frankly, although there had been about 4 posts in 4 weeks on the recently founded International Stock Imagery Association (ISIA), this is not going to become an ISIA-dedicated blog.

But is has always been my understanding that it´s necessary to support young auspicious companies and associations in start-up modus.

So here´s the recent declaration of ISIA Executive Director Clarence Walker:

What’s In It For Me? More News From The International Stock Imagery Association (ISIA)

I wrote earlier about "StockImagery: A New Yahoo Group For Professional Stock Photographers", founded by Clarence W. Walker (Stock Imagery was the old synonym of ISIA), then "International Stock Imagery Association: Continues To Grow, Selected Interim Board Of Directors" and that ISIA selected the Board of Directors (Link to the new ISIA forum).

Executive Director Clarence Walker mailed today an official declaration named: "International Stock Imagery Association: What’s in it for me?"

As it certainly will no be very easy for this young association to reach its audience via the traditional media, here´s what he wrote in detail [Update: here´s the full press release with more details]:

PicScout Monitoring 1.2 Million RM Images Of Corbis

Getty Images had just extended its partnership with PicScout back in August this year, monitoring Getty Images´collections on the Internet and in over 2,000 magazines throughout Europe and North America.

PicScout is now extending the partnership with Corbis for monitoring the usage of 1.2 million Corbis Rights Managed images. PicScout states that it is meanwhile tracking the usage of over 4.5 million images at all for the "world's most prestigious" image libraries.

QuickLinks For 2005-11-20

• Photos That Don't Capture Reality, but Change It. A follow-up on the four-day international fair Paris Photo: "Clearly, the market for art photography is booming"; NYT, via FotoStoria

• The new International Stock Imagery Association has selected the Board of Directors. The officers are:
  
  • Jim Hunter- President
  • Theodoros Papageorgiou- Vice President
  • Chuck Goodenough- Secretary
  • Clarence Walker- Executive Director

The new ISIA website, although already online, will officially launch in a few days: "The International Stock Imagery Association announces the upcoming launch of its brand new web site and member forums. We hope to "GO LIVE" no later than November 30, 2005." I´ll link to the site when everything is ready to run.

• The Flickrization of Yahoo. How the founders of a hot young photo-sharing site are helping to change the focus of the search engine giant; Business 2.0

• Using Flickr for product marketing; Hypergene MediaBlog (via Steve Rubel)
  • Related: Getty Images, Flickr And The Reinvention Of Outdoor Advertising

• FlickrNation, Episode 2; Thomas Hawk

• Here are the links again (some readers were asking) to
  • The New Face of Stock, 19th Annual Stock Visual Survey; Graphic Design USA
  • Just My Type; Graphic Design USA

From A CEO´s Blog To An Employee´s Email Response: More Strange News How To Abuse Google Ads

I had been reluctant to comment the Getty/Google/JupiterImages issue mentioned here, because when I read it first last tuesday, it was not possible to reproduce the findings Meckler described any more. However, the history of the back and force at all is interesting, and so are some new findings (notice the screen shot to the left, after clicking this Google search for "Getty Images"):

• Alan Meckler, Nov. 15:

"Now let's turn to Getty Images' marketing tactics on Google in France and the United States. Taking the low road in Internet marketing, Getty has been busy buying Google keywords for JupiterImages' trademarks such as "Thinkstock", "Comstock" and even more amazingly "AbleStock" (our Canadian brand that Getty has never distributed). Of course this is illegal and wrong. One wonders why a company of Getty Images size and stature would resort to such low level and illegal tactics?"

• Ron Rovtar some 10 hours later, Nov. 15:

"There is case law on our side," Meckler noted when ...

What´s This? A Conceptual Superior High Class Or An Outrageous Micropayment Stock Photography Bread?

What´s your guess at first sight?

Had this picture been taken by any photographer of any micropayment site, like iStockphoto.com, ShutterStock, Dreamstime, Stockxpert, stock.xchng or Can Stock Photo?

Is this bread beyond the realm of human understanding?

Or was it simply delivered via of some of the new subscription services?

MediaStorm Launches Special Online Publication

Short note for the people who are tired of the acquisition game "I´ll buy your competitor before you´ll grab this company". Back to the roots:

MediaStorm´s Brian Storm (Ex-VP of News, Multimedia & Assignment Services for Corbis), Robert Browman (Ex-Senior Editor for News, News Assignment Representative and Multimedia Producer for Corbis) and Joe Santa (Ex-Multimedia Design Director for Corbis) have launched a new online publication with projects by renowned journalists, filmmakers and artists. Details (this press release doesn´t show the images of the original, so point your browser to MediaStorm).

Among others, also involved are Elodie Mailliet (CD for Corbis Outline) and Eliane Laffont (Editorial Director for Hachette Filipacchi Media).