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Corbis closing SnapVillage offering micro-stock under Veer brand
Corbis has announced that it has decided to do away with SnapVillage by the end of this year and move its micro-stock offering onto Veer.com under the name Veer Marketplace. That the company has decided to shut down the seemingly ill-fated SnapVillage comes as no surprise. By all appearances, the site has made no dent in the micro-stock sector, where Getty’s more dynamic iStockphoto dominates and several other brands – Dreamstime, Fotolia, and Shutterstock – are the presumed runners up.
More intriguing is how Corbis has decided to go about the change, by placing its new micro-stock offering on the Veer web-site and even branding it “Veer Marketplace.” One can’t help but wonder whether, by such a move, the company might dull the shine of the Veer brand, considered by some to be its brightest star. We note that, as far as its customer-facing presentation goes, Getty has maintained a clear separation between its micro-stock platform and its conventional brands platform. The other micro-stock players, independent companies unencumbered by old-guard business models, don’t face the problem.
Upon receiving the news about SnapVillage and the companies plans for micro-stock on Veer.com, we asked Corbis directly to respond to a few questions about this move. Our questions and the responses form Corbis follow:
1) Doesn’t Corbis increase the risk or likelihood of cannibalization of its successful Veer brand by mixing its micro-stock offering on the same platform? In this regard, how does Corbis view the overlap (or lack of overlap) between micro-stock and conventional licensing customers?
Aaron Booth, Director, Commercial Media Partners and Community Content at Corbis, responds: “Veer is successful because it has always focused on the customer, on every level - inspiring brand, design savvy marketing, great website UI, superior customer service, and a wide range of quality commercially relevant content.”
“Veer customers buy images from across the whole content spectrum for varied usages, from RM, RF and micro-stock collections. There is no overlap as you suggest, between micro-stock and conventional licensing customers at Veer – they are one and the same.”
“With the launch of Veer Marketplace, Veer will once again be fulfilling all its customers’ content needs with the addition of micro-stock content (in separate search results) to Veer.com. Veer will not compromise on overall quality, however, given that designers often use micro-stock images to build composites, the Marketplace collection will also feature images that appeal for their utility.”
“Where micro-stock and RF were once “two solitudes”, the two models are now converging into a single entity as professional content producers create images for both models and designers license images from both models. Veer is simply evolving with the reality of the current market and with the needs of its customers top of mind.”
Nairn Nerland, SVP, Networks, responded to the rest of our questions:
2) Other than the new name and the new web-site location, how will Veer Marketplace differ from SnapVillage?
“The teams from both SnapVillage and Veer have looked closely at both the successes and challenges of SnapVillage and applied this knowledge to the development of Marketplace to ensure it will offer both contributors and customers a richer experience and differentiated offering than competitors in the industry. Using the same development team who worked on the launch and rapid growth of Veer and its award-winning website, the Veer Marketplace experience will be consistent with the Veer brand that resonates so well within the creative community.”
“We can’t get into a lot of details regarding our differentiators prior to the launch but Veer Marketplace will be breaking new ground, as the first image licensing company to offer microstock and traditional stock (RM, RF and microstock) on one website. As a result, Veer Marketplace will capture customers’ needs for all their creative projects. In addition, in late 2009, customers will also be able to license type, illustration and vectors within the Veer Marketplace as well as on veer.com so it really will be a one-stop destination for creatives.”
3) What’s the rationale behind the two-phase launch of Veer Marketplace?
“We took a two-phase approach to ensure we can meet the needs of both our contributors and customers. It will take time for the Marketplace team to roll over hundreds of thousands of images and during this process we needed to ensure we actively communicated with all of our current contributors (SnapVillage, Corbis and Veer contributors) about the changes on SnapVillage and the new opportunity on Veer Marketplace. We also need to engage other potential contributors to join the Veer community.”
“During the transition between phase 1 and phase 2, it is equally as important to continually address our customer needs. As microstock has continued to grow, we’ve heard from Veer customers about their interest in seeing a low-priced image offering from Veer. To meet this growing customer need, we felt we could begin delivering a wider range of products and pricing options with a small sampling and this product offering will continue to grow as we’re able to add product.”
4) Where does the 25% figure come from, as in, "Corbis anticipates that within the next few years, micro-stock photography will represent more than 25% of the overall stock photography market."? On that same point, do they mean 25% of the number of images licensed or 25% of the revenue?
“We’re referring to 25% of the revenue and we base this figure on our knowledge of the images market and our internal research. This growth potential is why we’re putting our resources into developing a better model for the microstock space.”
[Editor’s note: While we know of no sure way to find an overall average price for micro-stock imagery or for all other licensing models, it’s interesting to consider the following: if micro-stock prices were to average $5.00 per download and all other licensing models were to average $400 per license, in order for micro-stock to account for 25% of all revenue, micro-stock images would have to represent approximately 96% of all images licensed. Even though our average price assumptions are, by necessity, rough, the exercise reveals Corbis anticipates a startling dominance by micro-stock imagery in the marketplace. Selling Stock’s recent article by Jim Pickerell about tracking iStockphoto sales, indicates we have already reached this point. Pickerell shows iStock tracking to achieve 25,690,000 downloads this year while Getty licensed 1,500,000 images in the conventional RF and RM businesses in 2008, i.e., assuming iStock stays on this track and RF and RM remain flat over last year, micro-stock images will represent 96% of all the images licensed at Getty in 2009.]
5) Does Corbis anticipate placing imagery from micro-stock photographers higher up the food chain and vice-versa?
“We invite any photographer to submit or contact our Products team () if they would like their commercial work to be considered for our RF and RM collections and of course our products team is always looking for talented photographers who stand out in the crowd. However, we are much more selective with our RF and RM collections and there is a different stream to review and build relationships with our professional shooters. Corbis and Veer RF and RM photographers work collaboratively with our product teams and become part of our production teams to co-produce images for our collections.
Posted in: Corbis, Features, Micropayment Stock Photography, News, Stock Photo Companies
