GettyImages vs. iStockphoto: Old School vs. New School
Written by Andy Kazeniac (contact - e-mail) -- December 25th, 2007 |
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On the surface, this appears to be a story of an internet old-timer versus a web 2.0 darling, but this story isn’t all that it seems. The new age side of the battle started before the term ‘web 2.0’ was on everyone’s tongues. And when it comes down to it, this is far from traditional competition, seeing as how both properties are owned by the same company.
GettyImages.com, the long-time gold standard in online photo, and iStockphoto.com, the up-and-comer now in the limelight, have emerged as symbols of two methods of running a site. GettyImages provides very high quality photos from an exclusive list of photographers, but they’re hardly giving them away. iStockphoto has much less strict standards and has tens of thousands of photographers contributing hundreds of thousands pictures, all for as little as the just $1 for the customer. So is the “crowdsourcing” working?
iStockphoto now has more than seven and a half times the unique visitors per month that GettyImages does. The site was started with a sense of community for photographers in mind, and that community has taken off over the past year.
A comparison of page views per visit shows a tighter race.
A deeper look into the engagement metrics for the two sites shows that GettyImages still has a leg to stand on, with almost a 4-minute-per-session advantage in average time per session.
This could be a function of price – if you’re going to pay a lot for an image, you better take your time and make sure you get the right one. Regardless, even this advantage for GettyImages has been nearly cut in half over the past year. These numbers certainly indicate that iStockphoto is on the rise while GettyImages is holding relatively constant, but there may be room for both at the top of the stock photo industry. We’ll just have to wait and see.
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December 26th, 2007 at 12:54 am
What about Corbis’ stats?
December 26th, 2007 at 9:54 am
I’m afraid on the net, quantity will always beat quality. Having a dedicated base of regular clients and quality content providers is fine, but without growth in traffic, GettyImages is dead in the water. You just can’t afford to ‘not’ increase visitors.
December 26th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
getty’s entire biz is b2b, how is this consumer metric relevant or useful? if anything, strong growth in gettyimages.com would concern partners.
December 26th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Andy - funny you should write about this. I just read the crowdsourcing book “We are Smarter than Me” and they talk about this very subject. Getty actually bought iStockPhoto for $50 million in 2006. According to the book, the iStock library holds over 1.7 million images from 36K members and now uses Getty’s advanced search and index technology. iStock also introduced a unique payment system that became the industry standard - $12 gets you 10 credits; images cost anywhere from 1-15 credits per download. Prices rise with image size & resolution. Book says exclusive contributors earn about $1K a month for their pics. Not bad. Another interesting “player” in the space if Flickr - I know of more than one instance where book publishers have contacted an amateur photographer (myself included) with a request to use their images - royalty free - in their works.
Steph
December 26th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Getty Images Owns iStockPhoto. They purchased them back in 2006. How are they competing with one another? They are one unit and a subsidiary of Getty Images.
Your BLOG SUCKS. Find a new profession!!!!!
December 26th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Jimmy:
Great job repeating the facts provided by Stephanie in the prior comment. Are you always this helpful?
December 26th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Jimmy:
From the first paragraph of this post - “this is far from traditional competition, seeing as how both properties are owned by the same company.”
December 27th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Jimmy baby you gotta relax.
December 28th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I did a bad job raising you boy.
December 28th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Consider this, a higher pages per visit could be attributed to needing to view more pages in order to complete the same (or similar) task. For example, at least one or two more pageviews are required just to lookup pricing for rights managed images on Getty compared to the overall simpler pricing model on iStock (just one example). This brings up a question of how to interpret engagement metrics. If more pageviews are required to complete a similar task, then wouldn’t comparing pages per visit need to take that into account? I wonder if , for these particular sites, they should be comparing task completion rates or average revenue per session rather than how many pageviews it takes to complete the task.
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:18 pm
I like iStockphoto… is must sample !
January 10th, 2008 at 10:19 am
At fractions of the revenue per user, istockphoto better have x-times more users than Getty’s traditional site. Whether istock is the death of Getty’s cash cow or not, don’t be overly mesmerized by istock’s user stats. Yes, site stats bode well for istock, but unless the strategy includes ad revenue for the site, such stats don’t necessarily translate scaled revenues. I think the point that that Andy is making, which everyone has glossed-over, is that istock has utilized user generated content and community to drive a business-to-business product/service. Istock’s buyers are suppliers and it’s suppliers are buyers. This is the point to recognize. Though web 2.0 helped create this perfect storm opportunity, that is not the whole story. The other half is the proliferation of near-professional digital cameras which makes “everyone” a photographer. Put these affordable devices in the hands of people in the creative community and you now have buyers that are sellers and sellers that are buyers.
February 9th, 2008 at 5:09 am
“iStockphoto has much less strict standards” Now there speaks a man who knows nothing about the subject he’s writing about. What utter nonsense, the reverse is true, despite the price differential.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Great short bringing up interesting forces in play & the possible Pyrrhic victories between competing models…
But Whoa… whats with that correlating break sometime around October 2007 on ‘Time Per Session’? Should there be correlation over time between the two companies on this particular graph?
I’m thinking there should be a constant TPS over this span , yet at that moment between 9/07 and 11/07 there is a striking change reflected in both sites.
That’s interesting.
What happened? Correlating event or artifact?
http://www.news.com/CIA-Cyberattack-caused-multiple-city-blackout/2100-7349_3-6227090.html
conspiracy aside, what really went on there??
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