Global Stock image market Survey 2012 [Report]

In 2012 the GSIM Research Group carried out the first ever global survey on over 2,400 image suppliers on a truly worldwide basis. With a response rate of over ten per cent, the survey covers detailed information on 250 image suppliers that commercially trade usage rights on pre-produced still (photography, illustrations etc.) and moving images (video footages). The findings of this survey are published in a series of three reports of which the first one is now available.

$2.88 Billion Gross Global Revenues

The global market estimate is the sum of two components.

The first component is a projection of the revenues reported in the survey to the global population  of image suppliers. This projection has been calculated as conservatively as possible in order to avoid overestimates. Based on the measure of median rather than mean revenues, the model predicts individual revenues for different segments of firm-sizes. According to the estimate in 460 micro (single-member) companies generate $17 million; another 1,077 micro firms achieve  $272 million, and 397 small firms gain $1.03 billion.  The combined revenues of these micro and small businesses add up to $1.32 billion in 2011.

The second component includes financial reports  on the large players as well as moderate estimates for ten medium-sized firms in our sample. Based on media  reports and expert estimates, the four largest suppliers  Getty, Corbis, Shutterstock and Fotolia account for a total of $1.4 billion In addition, medium-sized photo agencies such as Dreamstime, Alamy and several  anonymous respondents in the survey sample make up for another $156 million.

As a result of this composite estimation approach, we calculate $2.88 billion gross global revenues in the  stock image market in 2011 .

Only 18% according to the research is original content the other material is re-licensed via 3d parties.

The research distinguished three large segments in the market: still images (photos) account for 94 per cent of total  image stock, while moving images (video footage) and other images represent 3 per cent. Several footage suppliers reported their image stock in hours of recorded content rather than in number of units. Thus, we underestimate the true size of stock video content.  With still photos, traditional rights-managed images  (64%) clearly prevail over royalty-free and microstock  (30%).

So this figure for video seems very low. According to the latest available report from Getty in 2008 this was then 11% of their business and the growth specially in microstock footage has been large. I presume only video resellers were not included in this report.