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Author Topic: Thinkstock promotions - does that mean business is slow?  (Read 3930 times)

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« on: January 03, 2011, 21:39 »
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I thought I'd check out Thinkstock to see if there were any new nasties started by Getty since I last checked in the summer to find the "image packs" - ppd with another name.

They have a 10% off sale for January, a monthly payment plan for an annual subscription and 25% off purchases at Getty Images during your Thinkstock subscription.

As some of the content that isn't at Thinkstock is at Getty - e.g. all the Vetta and Agency from iStock - I assume this discount is trying to entice buyers to subscriptions when they object that there's only a subset of the content available at Thinkstock.

I pulled my Vetta files, so it doesn't affect me personally, but I assume any exclusive who has Vetta/Agency will be paid less on a sale via Getty that's at a 25% discount (i.e. it won't be Getty paying the bill for this promo) - i.e. I assume it's 20% of the actual sales price, not "list".

Seems pretty ballsy to me to pass on the costs of promos for your low end subs site to the contributors at your higher end image site. I'm sure they'll suggest that this is incremental business, not cannibalization, but they also said Thinkstock was a totally different market with different customers and then started selling credits image packs.


ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #1 on: January 04, 2011, 06:28 »
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They have a 10% off sale for January, a monthly payment plan for an annual subscription and 25% off purchases at Getty Images during your Thinkstock subscription.

Seems pretty ballsy to me to pass on the costs of promos for your low end subs site to the contributors at your higher end image site. I'm sure they'll suggest that this is incremental business, not cannibalization, but they also said Thinkstock was a totally different market with different customers and then started selling credits image packs.

It just gets worse.
Thanks for posting this, JoAnn, it's good to be informed. I've been ignoring TS since I pulled out after that promotion to iStock buyers. Just shows you should always be checking up on what they're up to.

lisafx

« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2011, 10:50 »
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Perhaps this is good news, ITLR.  As you suggest, business at TS must be less than expectations.

Weren't they conceived to go after Shutterstock's business?  SS has shown significant growth this year, so apparently it isn't working. 

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2011, 10:58 »
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I see that TS still has the statement:
"Download up to 25 images a day with a subscription. And once you've used an image, you can keep using it - over and over - in future projects." (no time limitation mentioned)
on the front page, but in the licence information, which you have to dig deep to find, and I bet less than 1% of buyers see, it says:
"Thinkstock grants to Licensee a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, worldwide right to access the Thinkstock subscription and Reproduce the Licensed Material made available to Licensee through the subscription an unlimited number of times during the term of the Thinkstock subscription purchased as identified in the Invoice ("Term") in any and all media for all purposes other than those uses prohibited under Section 3 of this Agreement."
The latter is totally unenforceable, and even if someone did somehow manage to prove an image was still being used after a subscription had ceased, the buyer could still quote the statement from the front page.
Does no-one ever think things through?

« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2011, 06:17 »
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Perhaps this is good news, ITLR.  As you suggest, business at TS must be less than expectations.

Weren't they conceived to go after Shutterstock's business?  SS has shown significant growth this year, so apparently it isn't working. 

We thought they were but that doesn't seem to be the plan at all. They could have discounted heavily on subscription rates to attack SS but they didn't, they just matched the pricing. That won't lure anyone anywhere. As with many things Getty, the master plan remains obscure.

« Reply #5 on: January 13, 2011, 10:50 »
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Perhaps this is good news, ITLR.  As you suggest, business at TS must be less than expectations.

Weren't they conceived to go after Shutterstock's business?  SS has shown significant growth this year, so apparently it isn't working. 


We thought they were but that doesn't seem to be the plan at all. They could have discounted heavily on subscription rates to attack SS but they didn't, they just matched the pricing. That won't lure anyone anywhere. As with many things Getty, the master plan remains obscure.


So photos.com - relaunched - undercuts Thinkstock pricing - cheaper image packs and cheaper subscriptions. But you get fewer sizes and a smaller collection (Comstock images are at Thinkstock, for example, but not at photos.com).

Given photos.com as such a spectacular name for a stock photography site, why is that the clipart.com-equivalent in the Getty stable? Thinkstock is the higher end cheapo site - see here for some more on my attempts to figure out how these all fit together.


 

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