Author Topic: Food for independants!! (Read 13897 times)

lagereek · « **on:** February 10, 2011, 07:32 »

This gave me food for thoughts, thats for sure.
A pal of mine, London based at the Ogilvy & Mather, AD-agency, one of the worlds biggest and most creative agencies, was appointed Creative-Director, only a few days back.
Well we got talking for ages and sooner or later slipped into pics, photography, etc. Cutting a long story short, they buy on a global basis, thousands of images per year, for ads, corporate, brouchers, annuals, the lot and unless its RM, they actually buy from independant portfolios, in the micro-stock world, there is no differance at all, he explained and when you buy in such vast quantity its a matter of cost as well.
Further more, the larger Micros are so cluttered with all similar shots and search engines so apallingly lousy that it takes a miracle to find a shot and then you move on.

Makes me wonder really, how many thousands of sales everyone in the micros are loosing, simply because they dont invest more money in expertise, trying to perfect the Search. Its the old story of wnting everything, the cake and eat it, I suppose.

helix7 · « **Reply #1 on:** February 10, 2011, 08:15 »

Quote from: lagereek on February 10, 2011, 07:32

...Makes me wonder really, how many thousands of sales everyone in the micros are loosing, simply because they dont invest more money in expertise, trying to perfect the Search. Its the old story of wnting everything, the cake and eat it, I suppose.

Well we've seen the ugly side of what happens when a company tries unsuccessfully to perfect the search. istock has tried for years to improve their search functions, only to make the site more buggy and complicated than ever. It's a great idea and a good goal for a company to have, but I think many companies underestimate the cost of having good people on board who understand search programming and can really improve things. It takes a lot more time, resources, expertise, and money than most companies care to invest.

lagereek · « **Reply #2 on:** February 10, 2011, 08:33 »

Quote from: helix7 on February 10, 2011, 08:15

Quote from: lagereek on February 10, 2011, 07:32
...Makes me wonder really, how many thousands of sales everyone in the micros are loosing, simply because they dont invest more money in expertise, trying to perfect the Search. Its the old story of wnting everything, the cake and eat it, I suppose.

Well we've seen the ugly side of what happens when a company tries unsuccessfully to perfect the search. istock has tried for years to improve their search functions, only to make the site more buggy and complicated than ever. It's a great idea and a good goal for a company to have, but I think many companies underestimate the cost of having good people on board who understand search programming and can really improve things. It takes a lot more time, resources, expertise, and money than most companies care to invest.

Thats just it, people who understand search programming! they dont come cheap but just look at the extra revenue all around. I mean, I bet you will find many of these agencies and no matter what search-words you put in, on the premiere pages, 50% are almost identical shots. What a waste.

gostwyck · « **Reply #3 on:** February 10, 2011, 08:44 »

Quote from: lagereek on February 10, 2011, 07:32

Further more, the larger Micros are so cluttered with all similar shots and search engines so apallingly lousy that it takes a miracle to find a shot and then you move on.

Sorry but that's utter nonsense. What's wrong with SS's search engine? It's very quick, weighted towards keywords that have been used previously, allows any words or names (except plurals), keywords can be excluded, you can search by photographer, etc, etc ... and it has over 14m images to choose from. It's a fantastic facility at an extraordinarily good price for any serious image buyer. In six years they've built a business from scratch with sales today of over $100M, in a highly competitive industry and are almost certainly extremely profitable. That tells me that they are probably doing a lot more right than wrong.

Show me a non-micro search engine that works better than SS and provides more choice.

Eyedesign · « **Reply #4 on:** February 10, 2011, 09:48 »

Just tried this search on Shutterstock "Black, Businessman, Standing" with 50 images showing 20 images are of White businessman standing. To get black Businessmen only would I have to put the words "African Descent or Afro American"?

lagereek · « **Reply #5 on:** February 10, 2011, 10:01 »

Quote from: gostwyck on February 10, 2011, 08:44

Quote from: lagereek on February 10, 2011, 07:32
Further more, the larger Micros are so cluttered with all similar shots and search engines so apallingly lousy that it takes a miracle to find a shot and then you move on.

Sorry but that's utter nonsense. What's wrong with SS's search engine? It's very quick, weighted towards keywords that have been used previously, allows any words or names (except plurals), keywords can be excluded, you can search by photographer, etc, etc ... and it has over 14m images to choose from. It's a fantastic facility at an extraordinarily good price for any serious image buyer. In six years they've built a business from scratch with sales today of over $100M, in a highly competitive industry and are almost certainly extremely profitable. That tells me that they are probably doing a lot more right than wrong.

Show me a non-micro search engine that works better than SS and provides more choice.

What are you dribbling about? firstly I wasnt the one who said it, just quoted somebody who buy in the thousands, secondly: not reffering to a search of "most popular" like SS. The by far most effective search should be "relevance" or " best match", used by almost every single buyer all over the world.
I suppose you gonna tell me the "best-match" and relevance are astounding as well??

massman · « **Reply #6 on:** February 10, 2011, 11:36 »

Quote from: gostwyck on February 10, 2011, 08:44

Show me a non-micro search engine that works better than SS and provides more choice.

Google?

click_click · « **Reply #7 on:** February 10, 2011, 11:50 »

Quote from: Eyedesign on February 10, 2011, 09:48

Just tried this search on Shutterstock "Black, Businessman, Standing" with 50 images showing 20 images are of White businessman standing. To get black Businessmen only would I have to put the words "African Descent or Afro American"?

Absolutely correct.

Disambiguation is the key IMO.

iStock did not do everything wrong in that regards but the IT side is messing up constantly, otherwise the concept of the search is great.

I was wondering how any of the other agencies would be able to switch their current search system to a disambiguated system which could be performing a whole lot better than now.

With images coming in by the the thousands every day the search function will be the make-or-break feature of any agency.

helix7 · « **Reply #8 on:** February 10, 2011, 12:27 »

Quote from: click_click on February 10, 2011, 11:50

...iStock did not do everything wrong in that regards but the IT side is messing up constantly, otherwise the concept of the search is great...

Without proper functionality, the concept is useless. Sure it's a great idea, but I think buyers would prefer a working less-feature-rich search engine than a feature-heavy but extremely buggy search. Until istock gets the proper manpower and expertise to do it right, I think they're losing the search battle.

That said, it's not like any other microstock agency is making strides in search. Right now it looks like they are all just sticking with what works. But as you said, while thousands of new images hit the sites every day, the search function will ultimately become a major breaking point for some in the future.

cthoman · « **Reply #9 on:** February 10, 2011, 12:38 »

There's no "filter out crap I don't want" button on any of the searches.

ShadySue · « **Reply #10 on:** February 10, 2011, 12:55 »

Quote from: massman on February 10, 2011, 11:36

Quote from: gostwyck on February 10, 2011, 08:44
Show me a non-micro search engine that works better than SS and provides more choice.

Google?

Google images search is next to useless for most searches other than celebrities.

Perry · « **Reply #11 on:** February 10, 2011, 13:24 »

I think it's possible to develop a search system that works fairly well just by tracking customer behavior and connecting the customer behavior to keywords and images.

I have developed a system (just a simple diagram on paper) how a better search could be done, without disambiguation. I won't be sharing it here, I might use it someday

I can only tell that it's a formula that calculates a "relevancy factor" for every keyword that an image has.

Scenario: 1000 people search for "flower". Image #1 gets shown 200 times but only 2 clicks. Image #2 gets also shown 200 times but gets 58 clicks and 12 purchases.
Result: Image #1 gets a low "relevancy factor" for keyword "flower", and gets pushed back in the search results in the future. The image #2´s keyword gets a very high "relevancy factor" and gets positioned better in search results in the future.

BUT, this does not mean number image #1 will be in the back of the search results, it only gets pushed back when someone searches for "flower".
This ranking could also be used for keyword combinations.

I'm sure some agencies have similar systems, but they don't seem to work that well.

ShadySue · « **Reply #12 on:** February 10, 2011, 13:29 »

Quote from: Perry on February 10, 2011, 13:24

I think it's possible to develop a search system that works fairly well just by tracking customer behavior and connecting the customer behavior to keywords and images.

I have developed a system (just a simple diagram on paper) how a better search could be done, without disambiguation. I won't be sharing it here, I might use it someday

I can only tell that it's a formula that calculates a "relevancy factor" for every keyword that an image has.

Scenario: 1000 people search for "flower". Image #1 gets shown 200 times but only 2 clicks. Image #2 gets also shown 200 times but gets 58 clicks and 12 purchases.
Result: Image #1 gets a low "relevancy factor" for keyword "flower", and gets pushed back in the search results in the future. The image #2´s keyword gets a very high "relevancy factor" and gets positioned better in search results in the future.

BUT, this does not mean number image #1 will be in the back of the search results, it only gets pushed back when someone searches for "flower".
This ranking could also be used for keyword combinations.

To be fair, iStock's BM2 was moving towards being very good before F5 and then facetted search.
I'm a bit concerned about how some bits of best match worked, and your system would be the same. I had a pic that was for several months on the first page of searches for 'elephant', but (at the same time) on the very back line on a best match search for "African elephant", and could never work that out. It was behind many non-exclusive wrongly-tagged pics of Asian elephants. :-(

PeterChigmaroff · « **Reply #13 on:** February 10, 2011, 13:39 »

Quote from: lagereek on February 10, 2011, 07:32

Makes me wonder really, how many thousands of sales everyone in the micros are loosing, simply because they dont invest more money in expertise, trying to perfect the Search. Its the old story of wnting everything, the cake and eat it, I suppose.

Ask not what the micros can do for you but what you can do without the micros. I sell quite a bit now on my own and I find I can easily get many times the price for my micro portfolio images as compared to the pitiful amounts the micros sell for.

stockastic · « **Reply #14 on:** February 10, 2011, 13:43 »

Once you have 10 million products on your shelves about which you (the shopkeeper) basically know nothing - labelled with tons of keywords you neglected to control - no amount of search technology is going to be the answer. It's too late for that.

New agencies need to get started on a better footing by being more selective as to subject and composition - having high but consistent and sensible quality standards - vetting all the keywords without setting up a tedious CV nightmare - correcting minor keyword problems at submission without wasting everyone's time with rejections for trivia.

They need to keep submission time down to the point that contributors can make payback on the time spent producing an image, without needing hundreds of sales of that image.

What it all comes down to is finding reviewers who understand what they're doing, then paying them enough to keep them around. Mindless crowdsourcing has been tried, and it worked for a while, and made some people a lot of money. But that's over.

All we need now is a way to connect with buyers on our own. I have faith that one will emerge.

lagereek · « **Reply #15 on:** February 10, 2011, 13:53 »

Quote from: Zeus on February 10, 2011, 13:39

Quote from: lagereek on February 10, 2011, 07:32

Makes me wonder really, how many thousands of sales everyone in the micros are loosing, simply because they dont invest more money in expertise, trying to perfect the Search. Its the old story of wnting everything, the cake and eat it, I suppose.

Ask not what the micros can do for you but what you can do without the micros. I sell quite a bit now on my own and I find I can easily get many times the price for my micro portfolio images as compared to the pitiful amounts the micros sell for.

Yes, thats it. I sell more and more RM shots to clients, corporations then I have ever done and the funny part is: I use the old Trad-agency search technique.

djpadavona · « **Reply #16 on:** February 10, 2011, 14:17 »

Quote from: helix7 on February 10, 2011, 08:15

Quote from: lagereek on February 10, 2011, 07:32
...Makes me wonder really, how many thousands of sales everyone in the micros are loosing, simply because they dont invest more money in expertise, trying to perfect the Search. Its the old story of wnting everything, the cake and eat it, I suppose.

Well we've seen the ugly side of what happens when a company tries unsuccessfully to perfect the search. istock has tried for years to improve their search functions, only to make the site more buggy and complicated than ever. It's a great idea and a good goal for a company to have, but I think many companies underestimate the cost of having good people on board who understand search programming and can really improve things. It takes a lot more time, resources, expertise, and money than most companies care to invest.

Controlled vocabularies do not work outside of the agency itself. They had their place 15 years ago, but today they are archaic. This is why iStockphoto struggles to find placement in Google Images. That, and keyword stuffing, which is also causes Google to lower relevancy rankings. Of all the micros, iStockphoto is probably least responsible for keyword stuffing because of its controlled vocabulary (no need to put "ocean", "water", "sea", "sea water," "salt water", etc in as keywords). However its controlled vocabulary is not well recognized by Google (ie, "Nobody")

djpadavona · « **Reply #17 on:** February 10, 2011, 14:23 »

Quote from: ShadySue on February 10, 2011, 12:55

Google images search is next to useless for most searches other than celebrities.

Your opinion doesn't agree with recent industry studies which show the majority of buyers looking to license images use Google Images. And many of these buyers don't even know agencies exist, let alone shop there. The name "Getty Images" is well recognized because most people see it as a byline for a newsworthy photograph in the media. But by the same token, most photo buyers in the internet era do not make the connection that they could buy images from Getty. The name "Corbis" is barely recognized outside of the photographic community (whatever that is, lol).

stockastic · « **Reply #18 on:** February 10, 2011, 15:12 »

Stocky imagery search is a market that Google hasn't gotten around to exploiting yet, but it's no doubt on one of their lists. When GoogleStock finally shows up - with options like "show RF images only" - today's microstocks could find their business melting away like a popsicle in the sun. Hope so anyway.

Or if not Google - why couldn't we sell through Amazon? It's all possible.

lagereek · « **Reply #19 on:** February 10, 2011, 17:51 »

Youre right as rain! when google finaly gets around to it, which ofcourse they will, it will be an agency nightmare. I sincerely hope the big four have given this some thought.

pancaketom · « **Reply #20 on:** February 10, 2011, 18:05 »

A lot of the sites are trying to improve things with various tweaks, but they are mostly all hampered by the weak link - the keywords, this is especially bad at the sites that split apart multiple work keywords. The problem for contributors is different for buyers, because if there are 100 images (or 1000s) that would work for the buyer, any of them would be fine, but the contributor wants the buyer to at least see their specific image. Looking at the search terms that DT provides most of the searches are one or 2 words, but if a buyer wants to drill down to more specific images they need to have more specific searches.

Still, for example in SS you can choose various properties that are linked to model releases.

IS could have locked things up with their CV, but in my opinion the way they implemented it both encouraged spam and makes things that aren't in the CV but are similar just not work at all. They could still come up with something that works well, but I haven't seen much encouragement there lately. The few times I tried their search it just didn't work at all, so who knows what is happening with it.

visceralimage · « **Reply #21 on:** February 10, 2011, 18:15 »

If you have a crappy title and crappy keywords, the search engine will deliver crappy results. The reviewers need to do their job and they need some reviewers to go through the old stock and cull out the bad stuff.

lagereek · « **Reply #22 on:** February 10, 2011, 18:17 »

You know, I have seen so many buyers, in ad-agencies, designers, God knows and the way they work when searching for a specific shot. They will first go to their favorite site, there they spend 3 minutes at the most, flicking through no more then 5 pages, that your lot mate and if they dont find it there they move on to next site.

They all like the keep-it-simple method, not having to choose between diferant search methods, not having to see any rolling lists falling down, not having to explain the search word and ofcourse the real search-killer, NOT having to wade through pages with series of almost identical files.

Ofcourse, today with agencies housing more then 10 million files, well its a bit too late, isnt it.

cathyslife · « **Reply #23 on:** February 10, 2011, 18:23 »

Quote from: click_click on February 10, 2011, 11:50

Quote from: Eyedesign on February 10, 2011, 09:48
Just tried this search on Shutterstock "Black, Businessman, Standing" with 50 images showing 20 images are of White businessman standing. To get black Businessmen only would I have to put the words "African Descent or Afro American"?

Absolutely correct.

Disambiguation is the key IMO.

iStock did not do everything wrong in that regards but the IT side is messing up constantly, otherwise the concept of the search is great.

I was wondering how any of the other agencies would be able to switch their current search system to a disambiguated system which could be performing a whole lot better than now.

With images coming in by the the thousands every day the search function will be the make-or-break feature of any agency.

And after they all perfect their search engines, they need to publish a manual that buyers and contributors can read so they understand what and what not they should search for, and what and what not they should include in their keywords. How many posts have I seen at the IS forum where a buyer is asking why he can't find something using basic search terms, and it takes a few of the regulars to proceed with a whole long list of what to include and not include in the search terms. If you have to surf the web, ask the question, wade through a bunch of irrelevant posts on a forum to get the answer, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the search engine isnt all that user-friendly.

ShadySue · « **Reply #24 on:** February 10, 2011, 18:43 »

Quote from: stockastic on February 10, 2011, 15:12

Or if not Google - why couldn't we sell through Amazon? It's all possible.

Now you're talking!

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Author Topic: Food for independants!! (Read 13897 times)

lagereek

helix7

lagereek

gostwyck

Eyedesign

lagereek

massman

click_click

helix7

cthoman

ShadySue

Perry

ShadySue

PeterChigmaroff

stockastic

lagereek

djpadavona

djpadavona

stockastic

lagereek

pancaketom

visceralimage

lagereek

cathyslife

ShadySue

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