Design and Photography Highlights

2.4 BILLION. That’s B for billion and 2.4 as in 2.4 billion. That is a hefty sum to pay for this woolly, slow moving mammoth, rich in content though. Getty Images Inc got snapped up today by private equity shop Hellman & Friedman affiliates for $34 per share in cash, in a deal it said was worth $2.4 billion, including the assumption of debt. That is a nice premium to the $1.5 billion everyone thought was the asking price only a month or so back and a premium of 55 percent over their closing price in January. Seems like H&F might have overpaid a bit and I’d love to know how they came up with that valuation but I know that Getty wasn’t going to sell themselves for the 1.5 or 1.6 billion, which was the amount dangled in front of their eyes a month back. They have until the second quarter of this year to close the deal which I expect will.

What does this mean for the industry? Well there are going to be some big changes over at Getty which has been in a sink hole the last few years. Everything will still run through the giant image and footage company but I wonder if Jonathan Klein’s job will be safe. I doubt it. How much of their workforce will be cut? Probably more than should be but they always have a place at Cutcaster What changes will be made in strategy and how will the company now report those changes to the people under contract with them? Will H&F be able to turn Getty around and alleviate the uproar photographers under contract with them have been creating?

More to come later but a fun way to start off the week. If you have any thoughts on the deal lets start a discussion below.

According to this Techcrunch article, Google AdSense is rolling out a video-based ad placement service. Apparently, “Google is finally opening up the advertising program to any publisher in the U.S. that serves one million or more video streams per month.” That’s a fairly big threshold to reach so clearly only top-rated streaming sites will be able to participate in the program.

Funny, but one of these sites is Google’s very own YouTube, which means the 70 million videos available may begin to feature what are arguably minimally intrusive text/video banners (see the article for some screenshots). It will be interesting to see how this very rapid transformation of the YouTube viewing experience will be taken by its loyal user base. If it’s successfully incorporated (which would make it instantly mainstream), then that could mean significant additional revenues for any number of video content sites (including Cutcaster) that find traditional site banners either too annoying or too tacky.

As of April 1, 2008, the Adobe® Stock Photos royalty-free image service will be discontinued. We made this decision in order to focus our efforts in other areas, and we want to share this news with you and let you know how it affects you.

Over the next few months we will be making changes to Adobe Stock Photos. On March 4, 2008, search functionality will be disabled. You will be able to purchase images through our service until March 31, 2008.

So from now on that means you have to get your photos at Cutcaster or take them yourself.

Anyone know the real reason why they are shutting their doors on stock?

I hope everyone is having a great Valentine’s day.

Here are some great Videos uploaded by Julien for Valentine’s Day.

Here.

And again.

And one last time

Images today are generally licensed for a flat fee, exclusively or non-exclusively. GumGum founders Ophir Tanz and Ari Mir think a better way is to charge for impressions, or on an advertising-supported basis.
GumGum allows any publisher to search for images (there are thousands available now via a number of photography agencies) – here´s an example search for “Britney” [these images are from the X17 photo agency]. Images can be licensed on a CPM basis (generally $0.20 or so, but determined by content owner), or for free with an advertisement.
Any photographer can now upload images and sell them. And any publisher can create an account to license images. Down the road, GumGum says, they´ll be adding video, audio and text content for licensing as well.

This is interesting. I think I understand it conceptually, but not practically.