Friday 6 March 2015

a growing market...

The third survey of the global footage industry carried out by US trade association ACSIL (the Association of Commercial Stock Image Licensors) and Thriving Archives has reported a fast growing business, especially for those companies, many new to the market, whose approach involves dedicated units to the trade and an across the board offering. Overall there's a 40% increase in the size of the market from $394m in 2011 to $550m but underlying these figures, the trend towards more inventive online digital distribution and shrewd marketing strategies is definitely winning out. Companies like Framepool, Shutterstock and Pond5 are challenging the older archive or stock suppliers by offering a range of media from sound effects to graphics as well as stills and footage. The 167‐page report provides in-depth analysis derived from a survey, conducted over a two-month period in late 2014 with 90 stock footage companies. 






                                                                             
Surveys like this are clearly acting as something of a wake-up call to the fairly traditional business based on single media offerings and fairly hidebound licensing business models. The trade is undoubtedly in need of a shake-up to bring it into line with both current technology and the state of real world IP. Either these newer entrants will gobble up the  cottage industry operators or the business will consolidate into a few key ecommerce-enabled giants leaving the niche operators fighting over a share of smaller and smaller pieces of the pie. It's a clear warning....




acsil.org and thrivingarchives.com