StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

A21 Reports Q4/2007 + Full Year 2007 Financial Results

A21 (ATWO), the parent company of SuperStock, the Royalty-Free brand Purestock, the subscription brand PurestockX, of Ingram Publishing/Ingram Stock, ArtSelect and the upcoming MediaMagnet, has released Q4/2007 and full year 2007 financial results (in T$):

 

A21 Revenues = Total, Image Licensing = Im. Lic., Art Select = Art S.

YEAR	2005	Q1/06	Q2/06	Q3/06	Q4/06	2006	Q1/07	Q2/07	Q3/07	Q4/07	2007
Total	9.563	2.935	4.511	5.904	6.283	19.633	6.124	5.696	5.387	6.099	23.306
Im. Lic.	9.563	2.935	3.022	2.986	3.032	11.976	3.168	3.038	2.765	2.936	11.907
Art S.	--	--	1.489	2.918	3.251	7.657	2.956	2.658	2.622	3.163	11.399

 

Unlike in previous quarters, I currently lack the time to describe more details publicly. Please read the fine print in the Financial Exhibits section here and do your own math.
The recent SEC filing has more details: please read all details here.

Rich Pearson on Attributor

A recent HyveUp video interview with Rich Pearson, Attributor´s VP of marketing:

   

QuickLinks For 2008-03-22

• Those suing Getty Images, be thankful a buyout came at all:
  Some businesses can easily be ruined by crowdsourcing.
  Jon 0gg/Blogging Buyouts.
  Related:
  
  • Law Offices of Brian M. Felgoise, P.C. Announces Class Action Lawsuit on Behalf of Shareholders of Getty Images (Mar. 19, 2008)

QuickLinks For 2008-03-19

• Picollator beta:
  Picollator allows you to upload any picture you like with a person´s face. It searches over the Internet for all matches, without the need to type text queries or rename the picture with specific keywords.
  Techpin.

Jupitermedia Releases Financial Results For Q4/2007 + Full Year 2007

Jupitermedia, the parent company of Jupiterimages, today released the results for Q4/2007 and the full year 2007. In contrast to previous quarters, I lack the time this quarter here on this blog to take a closer look at some financial details publicly, and actually readers used to read the fine print will find all details for their Excel sheets here in the press release. A quick and very general overlook:

 

(1) Jupiterimages Rev.  (2) JUPM Rev.  (3) Jup.images Rev. in % of JUPM Rev.

Y	2005	Q1/06	Q2/06	Q3/06	Q4/06	2006	Q1/07	Q2/07	Q3/07	Q4/07	2007
1	80.658	26.565	26.807	26.177	27.087	106.636	27.914	27.383	26.824	26.783	108.904
2	113.754	33.941	35.026	33.784	34.779	137.530	34.771	34.699	34.766	36.128	140.334
3	70.9%	78.27%	76.53%	77.48%	77.88%	77.536%	80.28%	78.92%	77.16%	74.13%	77.60%

 

QuickLinks For 2008-03-16

• Corbis´ SnapVillage says Goodbye to Beta Soon:
  In January, we announced that we´re ramping up our marketing efforts. We´re primarily targeting graphic designers, art directors and other creative professionals. You can find our first print ad in the February issue of Creativity Magazine, introducing SnapVillage to future buyers. You´ll see more ads in the March issue of Creativity, GD USA and the April/May issue of Photoshop User.
  SnapVillage Blog.

Jupitermedia reports Q4/2007 and Full Year 2007 Financial Results

... next week on March 18th, and not today, as it was announced this morning in a separate press release.

This is partly disappointing since many people were waiting for the new key numbers of one of the few remaining publicly traded companies in what was once is called the Stock Photo Industry, and since Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler said two weeks ago in a meaningful statement "I think we are doing better than Getty. Getty´s numbers cast a bad light on the stock image business and us. Now we move forward without Getty Images' numbers hanging around our neck".

QuickLinks For 2008-03-09

• Interview with CEO and Founder of PhotoShelter, Allen Murabayashi:
  Question: As an entrepreneur or investor, what are your thoughts on competition? How do you view competition?
  Allen Murybayashi: The competition is really Getty Images, and in this respect it´s tough because they are a very well established player with lots of big contracts in place. However, there´s also a lot of unrest in the industry and people are looking in particular for ways to license images very easily for usage on the web. In this respect, there is a huge opportunity for an Internet upstart to come in and shake things up. Getty uses the Internet as a channel; they are not an Internet company. We think this distinction actually ends up being pretty crucial in the operating philosophy.
  Darren Herman/Marketing, Advertising, Media and Technology Blog.
  Related:
  
  • Interview With Allen Murabayashi, CEO Of Photoshelter (July 25, 2005)

PICTA Hamburg

I´m off to the PICTA, organized by the German Association of Picture Agencies, the three-days picture agency fair in Hamburg, which claims to be the second largest event of its kind in the world (which is probably the reason why their website is only in german), so there won´t very likely be any updates here until Monday next week.

QuickLinks For 2008-03-05, II

• Einstein Inc., in death, he mastered the science of making money:
  "When I heard what the licensing fee was, I freaked out", says Ingrid Sinyor of Euro­graphics, a poster manufacturer in Canada. To print five Einstein posters, with a run of 5,000 each, Sinyor says she paid Corbis $20,000 in licensing fees in addition to $5,000 for the images themselves.
  In an effort to maintain its grip on all things Einstein, Corbis and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ) have trademarked the Einstein name and image.
  "Suppose I were at a conference and I took a picture of Niels Bohr and Einstein. What if Einstein gave me a picture of himself? Would I have to pay to use it?"
  "We get calls literally every day", says Martin Cribbs, the director of rights representation at Corbis. "And the vast majority are small companies that want to do an Einstein key chain or something like that. Ninety-nine percent of those get turned away. We´re not in the business of one-off Einstein novelty items".
  Even if a company hoping to make an Einstein yarmulke manages to assemble the cash and to get a call back from Corbis, it must leap a final hurdle: getting approval from HUJ. Every single reproduction of an Einstein likeness or creation of an Einstein product must be approved by the university, and, according to several manufacturers, the process is extremely demanding.
  Discover Magazine, two pages (comp.), with A Brief/-er History of Time about the Schroedinger equation, The Roger Richmann Agency, Corbis and the thrill of licensing images of Albert Einstein.

• Search engines, Image conscious:
  Idée Inc. needs to bulk up, both in servers to crawl and index the Web´s unknown billions of images, and in employees to beat bushes for new business partners - and that means getting venture capital. Leila Boujnane needs a VC willing to invest the $10 million or so she thinks the company has to raise.
  Canadian Business magazine, two pages.

QuickLinks For 2008-03-05

• Corbis Creative IQ Trends: travel imagery is changing towards Ethical Tourism.
  Corbis in a PDF about the impact of eco and ethical-tourism on the image business.

• Reuters web content tracking deal with Attributor has revealed thirst for lifestyle and entertainments, the 'infotainment' stories:
  Maria Molland, global head of strategy and business development: "We have been a little surprised they [online readers] are moving more toward fluff stories, infotainment, as a result we are putting a lot more editorial resources behind sport and lifestyle.
  [That] is very different from those Reuters core elements - business, finance and hard news. That was one big shock. The second was understanding how photos are used in conjunction with text.
  Our theory, and I think it has been backed up by Attributor, is that people are using photos and text in conjunction, so it´s becoming much more important to find out how we can create links between different types of stories".

• Associated Press and picturemaxx deepen their cooperation from Dec. 2004:
  All AP Images are now available on i-picturemaxx/APIS, +3,500 new images/daily.

QuickLinks For 2008-03-04

• In "a tough business" Vator Box takes a look at ScanScout, Adify and Pixsy:
  Citigroup Internet analyst Mark Mahaney joins our usual crew to help us rate pitches from ScanScout, Pixsy and Adify. Pixsy is a video and image search startup that also sells white-label search platforms to networks and sites that don´t want to spend the resources to build their own.
  One of the company´s main value propositions is that it does image search better than Google, and image search is one of the fastest-growing search categories, according to Pixsy CEO Chase Norlin.
  
  But as Mahaney points out, how much capex [capital expenditure] spending will be acquired to build the server farms needed to scale the business? A more likely path for Pixsy is the same one taken by Truveo, the video search provider that was acquired by AOL. Advice to Pixsy -- "find a big media company who loves what you do and squeeze a term sheet out of them".
  Vator.tv (the part about Pixsy starts at 12:10 and ends at 15:40).

New Getty Images SEC Filing Form 10-K

From a real long document:

We believe that our best opportunities include growth in non-English speaking markets, growth in micropayment licensing and the introduction of new products and services. [...]

We plan to accelerate growth in licenses of editorial and creative imagery and other digital media content in non-English speaking countries by expanding our product and service offerings in markets that we have not fully penetrated, by creating or acquiring locally relevant content.  [...]

In 2007, we saw continued change in the competitive dynamics in the stock photography market. Our customers have increasing access to, and awareness of, a variety of imagery sources on the Internet.  [...]

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.