owl image title for Getty note
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section heading icon     holdings

This note considers Getty Images, one of the dominant image libraries.

It covers -

subsection heading icon     introduction

Getty Images is a dominant image library. It licenses still and moving images to book and magazine publishers, advertisers, broadcasters, film and multimedia developers.

Its library includes around 70 million still images (including the UK Hulton photo archive and Stone Images) and 30,000 hours of film.

Revenue in 2000 was around US$500 million. In 2003 it reported profits of US$64 million on revenue of US$523 million, up from US$21.5 million on revenue of US$463 million in 2002. As of late 2007 it claimed an average service of 3.2 billion images and 4 million unique visitors at its web site each month.

The group had roughly 2,400 employees as of 2006 and is probably best known in Australia for services provided by its PhotoDisc and The Image Bank arms.

Its corporate site is here.

subsection heading icon     development

The group was founded by Mark Getty and is independent of the Getty Foundation established by his oil billionaire grandfather.

In 2001 it announced that it was close to selling Art.com, its online retail operation. Art.com was established in 1997 as Artuframe, to sell limited edition prints, photographs and posters using the Amazon.com model. Contrary to local opinions that a 'generic' domain name is a licence to print money, shedding the clunky Artuframe name in favour of something catchier didn't result in overwhelming success.

It was acquired by Getty in 1999 (for around US$110 million) to serve as a B2C unit but revenue's proved elusive in the face of online and offline competition. Rivals such as Eyestorm (now repositioning itself as an offline retailer), Artnet.com and eArtGroup were also doing poorly.

Getty had expanded through acquisition of image libraries, for example paying US$183 million for Eastman Kodak's Image Bank in 1999 and £8.6 million for the Hulton Deutsch Collection (which traced its origins to Hulton's Picture Post) in 1996.

In 2000 Getty paid United News & Media US$225 million for Visual Communications Group (VCG).

VCG encompassed four major brands, licensing images in separate geographic regions: Telegraph Colour Library in the United Kingdom, FPG in the United States, Bavaria Bildagentur in Germany and Pix in France. VCG also distributes in other markets through third party agents. VCG specialty image collections including Giraudon (a Paris-based fine art library), Planet Earth (natural history), Space Frontiers (space imagery) and Colorific (celebrity news and features agency). VCG had acquired Definitive Stock - a Seattle-based provider of royalty-free online images - in 1999 for US$20 million.

In 2006 Getty acquired bought Calgary-based stock photo company iStockphoto for US$50 million. iStockPhoto originated in 2000 as a venue for designers to swap images, subsequently establishing a credit system through which users could license use of an image for C$1. In January 2006 it relaunched its web site, with high-resolution images priced at C$5, medium at C$3 and low-res at C$1. It also licenses illustrations and runs a higher-priced spin-off called iStockPro. The company boasted that

the acquisition demonstrates that Getty Images recognizes, supports and embraces the power of the culture of participation that is sweeping the Web and is continuing to implement its stated strategy of serving image buyers at all price points on all platforms and in all markets.

In February 2007 Getty announced that it had agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman for US$2.4 billion. It had earlier announced it was for sale, with analysts forecasting the price would be around US$1.5 billion.

Mark Getty
has specialist publishing interests, centred on the Wisden Group. In 2003 Wisden acquired Cricinfo (sold to Disney's ESPN in June 2007). Getty sold The Wisden Cricketer magazine to BSkyB and The Oldie through an MBO in May 2007.

subsection heading icon    
studies


There has been no major study of Getty Images.


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