The Pivotal Shift in Stock Photography: Will the Getty-Shutterstock Union Save the Industry?

Having spent over ten years immersed in the stock photography and creative tools sector, I have observed its transformation firsthand. The announcement of a prospective merger between Getty and Shutterstock prompted me to reflect on how the stakeholders in the stock photography industry find themselves at a pivotal moment and what the horizon may look like. This is significant, but can it genuinely resolve the issues of diminishing prices, AI innovation, and discontented contributors?

Let’s examine how we arrived at this point and the possibilities that lie ahead.

The stock photography industry’s consolidation into an oligopoly did not occur instantly. Getty Images, Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, and to a lesser degree Canva, now hold a commanding position, yet their paths to this point have been dramatically diverse.

Getty Images: Growth in Early 2000s Stopped by Enormous Debt

Getty Images was among the pioneers entering the content licensing arena and is the sole entity that has witnessed the comprehensive evolution of the industry from a costly, contributor-benefiting rights-managed framework to a standardized microstock royalty-free model propelled by technological advancement and globalization. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, it established its dominance by acquiring numerous photography collections and countering market threats through acquisitions like iStockphoto and Jupiterimages. Significant acquisitions, including WireImage and Hulton Archive, solidified its editorial supremacy, which could only be rivaled by real-time coverage from Reuters or Associated Press.

In the realm of commercial photography, there were occasions when professional photographers relied on Getty above all else, and securing acceptance there was comparable to obtaining a lottery ticket. From a business perspective, Getty’s reign in news, sports, and entertainment imagery made it the primary platform for publishers, broadcasters, and marketers seeking timely and exclusive visuals. However, this rapid growth did not endure indefinitely. A private equity leveraged buyout placed tremendous debt upon the company, freezing its advancement. While Getty continues to be a robust business and an undeniable market authority in editorial, archives, and premium imagery, its revenue generation has remained nearly stagnant for the last 15 years.

Shutterstock: Tech Innovator

Shutterstock started as a creativity-centric platform, concentrating on royalty-free commercial visuals. In contrast to Getty, it sidestepped editorial content for several years. Its momentum escalated when Insight Partners infused $50 million into the organization, setting the stage for a new industry leader. Aggressive technological innovation fueled its growth, punctuated by a successful IPO. In 2014, Shutterstock reported $328 million in revenue, showcasing an impressive 39% year-over-year growth rate.

However, Adobe’s 2014 acquisition of Fotolia compelled Shutterstock to reassess its approach. This prompted the introduction of Shutterstock Editor (2015) and a series of acquisitions aimed at diversifying its offerings:

• Bigstock (2009): An early foray into microstock.
• WebDAM (2014): A DAM tool later sold profitably.
• Rex Features (2015): Entry into editorial content.
• TurboSquid (2021): Leading in 3D content.
• PicMonkey (2021): Acquisition of a design tool.
• Envato (2024): Acquired for $245 million to cater to budget-conscious customers.

Although these acquisitions aided Shutterstock in its expansion, they underscored the difficulties of achieving organic growth in recent times. Despite its broadened portfolio encompassing commercial videos, music, editorial content, and AI-powered data licensing, Shutterstock’s core downloads have either remained stagnant or have decreased. While the company’s scale is considerable, boasting over $900 million in revenue, its market capitalization of slightly over $1 billion reflects apprehension regarding the future.

Adobe Stock: The Ecosystem Colossus

Adobe’s entry into stock photography through the acquisition of Fotolia was a calculated move. By incorporating Adobe Stock into Creative Cloud, Adobe secured a dedicated user base and crafted a seamless experience for its clientele. This synergy has been a key contributor to Adobe Stock’s expansion, with Creative Cloud reporting $12.5 billion in revenue for FY2023. Unlike Getty and Shutterstock, Adobe has concentrated on its ecosystem rather than seeking dominance over the wider market.

The Present Landscape

Currently, the amalgamation of Getty and Shutterstock forms a giant valued at over $3.7 billion, strengthening the oligopoly while raising pressing questions about how they will navigate an industry contending with decreasing prices, contributor dissatisfaction, and the formidable challenge of generative AI.

Generative AI: The Existential Threat

Generative AI tools such as OpenAI, MidJourney, Stability AI, and others are fundamentally altering the creation of visual content. Lesser-known applications, like KREA.ai built on Flux, can generate tailored content on demand, though adoption is slow due to the time and expertise necessary to master the appropriate prompts. The learning curve, inconsistent outputs, and copyright ambiguities hinder the broader market acceptance of these AI tools, but this issue will eventually be addressed, as history has shown with each major disruption.

Conversely, editorial imagery remains relatively insulated from this disruption. It is impossible to generate real-time images of significant events, celebrities, or sports matches using AI. However, the same forces that are driving down prices of creative content are also affecting editorial collections, albeit at a slower rate. For Getty and Shutterstock, their united editorial offering will serve as a competitive advantage, ensuring its position as an essential resource regardless of advancements in AI.

On the creative front, AI training data has emerged as a vital revenue source. Both Getty and Shutterstock have been licensing their extensive libraries to AI companies, leveraging their proprietary content to train generative models. When these efforts are amalgamated and aligned within a singular organization, it will provide considerable leverage that may lead to success in copyright conflicts. Entities such as Stability AI, which currently faces legal challenges from Getty Images, might find themselves with limited options other than settling before facing defeat in court. Nonetheless, depending solely on data licensing as a safety net is unsustainable. As AI models evolve to become more self-reliant, their dependency…on authorized training data will decrease, leaving platforms anxious to substitute this revenue.

Contributors: The Foundation Under Strain

Most evaluations overlook contributors, but I shall not. Contributors have consistently been the foundation of stock photography platforms, yet their connection with these platforms is becoming increasingly tenuous. Historically, Getty compensates contributors with low percentages of the prices paid by customers. In contrast, Shutterstock has sustained higher royalty rates and set minimums for RPD, offering greater stability for contributors. Nevertheless, both platforms are likely to exert more pressure on contributors as they contend with rising pricing pressures and disruptions from AI.

Exclusive contributors may discover fresh prospects as platforms seek to distinguish their collections, but for non-exclusive creative content providers, the reduction of royalties appears unavoidable. The surplus of creative imagery and the contributors’ inability to collaborate for action only intensifies the dilemma. The last significant achievement was the anti-DollarPhotoClub initiative a decade ago.

Does It Truly Matter?

The harsh reality is that technological advancement, globalization, and the competitive race for growth among agencies have resulted in an overabundance of creative imagery. Instances of this surplus are evident everywhere. Search for any generic keyword on a stock platform, and you’ll encounter thousands, if not millions, of comparable images. This excess, combined with AI’s capability to produce hyper-specific content, has diminished the value of creative imagery universally. Platforms must re-envision their role within this new framework. For enterprises, this signifies that stock photography platforms need to deliver more than just image access—they must provide tools, integrations, and distinctive value propositions.

Getty and Shutterstock have substantial motivations to adapt. Their extensive libraries provide them leverage over AI companies, allowing them to monetize their data for training while they still have the opportunity. Concurrently, both platforms must urgently integrate generative AI into their ecosystems. Although they currently have numerous AI-related agreements and functionalities, to maintain their relevance in the creative content marketplace, they may need to invest heavily in proprietary generative AI models or consider (if not acquire) ethical platforms such as BRIA.ai.

This could entail offering proprietary AI-enhanced tools that enable contributors and users to generate and adjust visuals on demand. Without this transition, they risk losing significance as businesses move towards platforms that present seamless, on-demand solutions.

The merger of Getty Images and Shutterstock is a strategic move in a swiftly evolving industry. It forms a dominant entity with extensive content libraries and operational scale, yet it does not resolve the core issues confronting the stock photography marketplace. Generative AI is transforming how businesses conceptualize content creation, imposing considerable pressure on traditional stock models. Contributors, already under distress, will likely encounter further royalty reductions or may be excluded entirely as platforms adjust to new market realities.

For Getty and Shutterstock, the way forward lies in capitalizing on their strengths while welcoming the future. They must invest in AI technologies, transcend the era of merely claiming to have the largest content library, and redefine their value proposition. To stay relevant, they should evolve from simply selling images to truly becoming a creative platform and find methods to integrate seamlessly into their users’ workflows. The merger grants them some time, but the critical question remains: Can they innovate swiftly enough to remain essential in an industry being disrupted from all sides?

About the author: Vadym Nekhai is the previous CEO of Depositphotos, where he began as the Chief Marketing Officer in 2012. He served as Vice President of the company after it was acquired by Vista Print, now known simply as Vista, from 2021 until 2024. For further details on this topic, Nekhai published a more extensive version of the above in a blog post on LinkedIn.