Category: Jupiter Media
Jupiterimages, a subsidiary of Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM), is considered by industry experts to be the world's 3rd largest stock licensing company with more than 10 million rights-managed and royalty-free images. The company is widely considered to be leading-the-pack in the subscription licensing model. In addition, Jupiterimages offers footage, flash animations, music, clipart, animations and greeting e-cards.
Key executives:
Alan M. Meckler - Chairman and CEO
Christopher S. Cardell - President and COO
James Alexander - SVP & General Manager of Jupiterimages
Rick Thompson - VP of Sales, North America, Jupiterimages
Maria Kessler - VP of Creative Business Affairs, Jupiterimages
Mark Nickerson - VP of Image Operations, Jupiterimages
Features
Mr. Stock Smarty Pants sends a pre-holiday missive
Mr. Stock Smarty Pants normally reserves this time of year exclusively for lounging in the hot tub and consuming fine brandy by the snifter while awaiting his next excursion out onto the slopes here at St. Moritz. However, I was caught in an unguarded moment (not to mention a compromising position) several months ago by the editors of About the Image, and thus I’m obligated to answer one of the many annoying pleas for enlightenment they have forwarded to me. So, let us consider this tale of ignorance from a chap named Ron who resides somewhere in the bleakness of Oklahoma:
News
Jupiter bringing up shooters from the “farm team”
Jupiterimages has announced a program to allow contributors to its micro-stock site, StockXpert (the sister product to the popular stock.xchng free image site), to submit images for possible distribution under its mid-price range RF brand, Dynamic Graphics (DG.) On a page on the StockXpert site dedicated to the program, the company invites contributors who have been members for at least three months to submit exclusive-only imagery.
News
Jupiter’s 2Q: RM up, subscriptions up, online media down
Jupiter Images released their 2nd quarter results earlier this week. Surprisingly, given industry leader Getty Images’ recent difficulties in the single image RM revenue category, Jupiter reported steady growth in RM of 30% from the first half of 2006 to the same period in 2007. The company’s subscription business grew by an astounding 200% in the same period. In his conference call with analysts, CEO Alan Meckler stressed that JI is positioned to thrive in the changing image environment, unlike its major competitor (read Getty) who relies so heavily on single image RM sales.
Editorials
Editorial: The real villain is oversupply, not micro-stock
Certain friends who attended CEPIC conference in Florence earlier this month tell me the issue of micro-stock put a cloud over the whole affair. Of course, those comments did not come from my friends among micro-stock company personnel, whose outlooks remain decidedly sunny. I wonder, though, whether the old guard can fairly blame micro-stock for the commercial stock photo industry’s troubled outlook. Naturally, the micro-stock model can only have a detrimental effect on the traditional business, over-all. But what if micro-stock never happened? Would the industry truly be much better off? I doubt it.
News
Getty Images enters music licensing business with $42 million acquisition of Pump Audio
Getty Images, Inc. (NYSE: GYI), The industry leader in image licensing has made its first foray into the world of commercial music licensing with the acquisition of Pump Audio. Getty Images a business that currently dominates the world of still image licensing has touted strong growth in its footage business recently and appears to be focused on building the business into a more comprehensive content provider for its media, advertising and corporate customers.
News
JupiterMedia acquires adsoftheworld.com and creativebits.org
Jupitermedia Corporation announced last week that it has acquired the assets of AdsOfTheWorld.com and CreativeBits.org. The two sites were created by Ivan Raszl, a Hungarian advertising creative director currently living in Bahrain. The combined traffic of the two sites exceeds 1 million unique visitors per month. Both websites will become part of Jupitermedia's Graphics.com network providing user-generated content for the creative and design community.
News
Kendall Higbee joins Jupiterimages as VP of Marketing
Jupiterimages, has announced the appointment of Kendall Higbee as the Vice President of Marketing. In this role, Kendall will oversee the global marketing of Jupiterimages for both direct and partner channels. Kendall comes to Jupiterimages with more than 12 years of industry experience and has held key positions in marketing at Corbis, MediaVast (owners of Wireimage) and JBGPhoto, an agency known for its celebrity archives based in Los Angeles.
News
Jupiter posts weak 1q07 - Stock price sags
Jupitermedia posted weak first quarter 2007 results with a 2.5% increase in total revenue over the first quarter of 2006, but a simultaneous decline in operating profitability, especially from the Online Images division, which accounted for 80% of revenue in the most recent quarter. The company’s income from continuing operations swung from a gain of $2,833,000 in 1Q06 to a loss of $1,041,000 in 1Q07. The company spent $1.9mm in legal fees associated with the acquisition talks with Getty which ended with no deal. Even without that extra expense, however, income from continuing operations would have come in at only $859,000 for the most recent quarter, a decrease of 70% from 1Q06. The stock price dropped by 14% on the news to close at $6.17 at the end of the day on May 10.
News
Jupiter brings subscription service to Japan
Jupiter Images has launched Photostock.jp, a Japanese language version of its Photos.com image subscription service. According to CEO Alan Meckler, this move exemplifies how Jupiter approaches the market in Japan differently from its competition. Currently, Jupiter’s presence in Japan takes the form of a partnership, started in 1999, with the Japanese software and gaming site company, AERIA. In addition, Jupiter already offers another Japanese language subscription service in the country, clipart.jp, the Japanese counterpart to Clipart.com, and has managed the Japanese news and information web-site, www.japan.internet.com since the mid-90’s. Jupiter plans to build a creative image team in Japan, but not to set up a full-scale stock image business the way Getty and Corbis have done. “Japan can be a black hole for business,” says Meckler. Nonetheless, he added that Jupiter will soon make more announcements about their growing offerings in the Japanese market. These new initiatives will be consistent with Jupiter’s strategy to build and work with Internet-based photo communities, another approach that separates Jupiter from its stock photo industry rivals. As for the rest of Asia, Jupiter has stated plans to continue working with representative agencies in the Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and China. Click here to view the original press release.
