MicrostockGroup

Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: BaldricksTrousers on December 17, 2014, 05:17

Title: New subscription drive?
Post by: BaldricksTrousers on December 17, 2014, 05:17
Istock seems to have a new pop-up to encourage people to switch to subscriptions if you click on an image (at least, I think it's new). Perhaps Getty just wants iStock to compete with SS on subs and isn't much interested in credit sales any longer.
Title: Re: New subscription drive?
Post by: ShadySue on December 17, 2014, 07:24
Istock seems to have a new pop-up to encourage people to switch to subscriptions if you click on an image (at least, I think it's new). Perhaps Getty just wants iStock to compete with SS on subs and isn't much interested in credit sales any longer.

It doesn't surprise me.
Allegedly (according to Lobo):
"The introduction of the new iStock subscription offerings in April of this year, and the corresponding support from the Getty Images sales team was a very successful step in this direction. New iStock subscriptions offer high-volume customers the ability to expand their iStock usage and to access the highest resolution file in support of their projects. The customer reception has been overwhelmingly positive and has exceeded our expectations.
In only a few months, these subscriptions now represent a meaningful percentage of total iStock sales and materially increased spend-per-customer."

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=362716&messageid=7040382 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=362716&messageid=7040382)
It seems to have benefitted extremely few contributors, but that won't matter to them.
Title: Re: New subscription drive?
Post by: bunhill on December 17, 2014, 09:49
(according to Lobo):
"In only a few months, these subscriptions now represent a meaningful percentage of total iStock sales and materially increased spend-per-customer"

That's an interesting quote.  It could be technically true even if they had only one remaining customer. But their language has always been strangely Sovietesque - like trying to understand Kremlin reports of factory machine parts output during the Brezhnev era :)

Their "plans and pricing" page still deliberately creates the first glance bold impression that subscription is a one year commitment. Not sure why they cannot see that is a mistake.
Title: Re: New subscription drive?
Post by: Red Dove on December 17, 2014, 10:42
But their language has always been strangely Sovietesque - like trying to understand Kremlin reports of factory machine parts output during the Brezhnev era :)

Subscribe For Victory!

You're right though. Anyway, maybe I'm thick but I lost sight of their strategy a long time ago. If they think this will do much harm to Shutterstock they ought to read Moby Dick and find out what happened to the Pequod.
Title: Re: New subscription drive?
Post by: Jo Ann Snover on December 17, 2014, 20:53
Perhaps this has something to do with it?

https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-changes-the-outlook-of-Getty-Images-to-Negative-from--PR_314730 (https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-changes-the-outlook-of-Getty-Images-to-Negative-from--PR_314730)

Thanks to another iStocker for pointing me at that report.

They are never explicit about what constitutes Midstock revenue in their book - given they mention SS and FT as competitors in that space, one would have to assume all of iStock is midstock. Then what is microstock in Moody's view? And is anything at Getty Images mothership midstock?

The mention that any spare cash will pay down debt (thank you private equity) and that the amount of debt is till way higher than they'd like. These are burdens their competitors don't have.

They said subs were 25% of total revenue - do you suppose that was 25% of all of Getty's revenue or just of iStock's? Given drastically lower prices, an increase in volume is all but a given - it's how much of an increase that determines if overall revenue grows healthily. Subs have to grow a lot in volume to grow your revenue and if the 25% was just of iStock's revenue, it could very well be that the non-subs revenue is weak or declining.

If you look at the annual Getty revenue they give of $879m, SS expects to be just under half that size ($329m) for its FY 2014

http://investor.shutterstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=251362... (http://investor.shutterstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=251362...)

That's way up from $100m in 2013, but according to Moody's, Getty's 2013 income was $897m - down.