iStock launches high-end collection Vetta and projects gross revenue of $200MM for 2009

The leading micro-stock web-site, Getty’s iStockphoto, has announced the launch of a new premium collection of imagery that will command higher prices than their regular collection. Prices for images from the new collection, called Vetta(TM), will range up to 70 credits, the equivalent of $96.25. iStock has also announced it projects gross
revenue to reach US$200MM this year.

According to Kelly Thompson, iStockphoto’s COO, the company recently completed a survey among 28,000 customers which indicated that image quality is the most important factor in customer satisfaction. The survey results also showed that customers are willing to spend more money on higher quality imagery. “It is now more expensive to find an image than to buy it,” Thompson says. The Vetta(TM) collection (the name means “peak” in Italian) will open with approximately 35,000 images all of which come from iStock-exclusive contributors only.

iStock also announced that the company projects total revenue of US$200MM in 2009. Thompson says iStock is currently tracking a contributor pay-out rate $1.2MM per week. That amounts to $62.4MM per year meaning the company pays out about 31% of its revenue to 78,000 contributors for an annual average of US$800 per contributor per year. When asked how the projected US$200MM will compare to revenue for 2008, Thompson replies, “This is the first year we won’t have doubled in size. But we are aren’t that far off.”

iStock also made public improvements it has made to its default search algorithms called ‘Best Match.”. The iStock search system has collected historical data from millions of searches such as which keywords were used and which images the customer then opened and ultimately purchased. The system can use this historical data to create Best Match 2.0 by ranking keywords accordingly and return more accurate results. A second phase of this search enhancement feature will entail matching the customer’s location with the search results. “We’ve found that a customer from Germany searching for ‘beer’ is looking for a completely different image from a customer from Mexico searching for ‘beer’,” says Thompson. The default search feature can be turned off if a customer simply wants to brain-storm and not be so literal.

Thompson feels that for the sake of iStock’s contributors, it’s important to make these changes public despite the possibility of giving away company advantages. “Changes of this magnitude make contributors jumpy,” he says. We’re dealing with significant amounts of money, and in some cases, their sole livelihood. There is no way for us to say, "This is going to affect your best-selling file in this way," because, honestly, we can’t tell. What we can do is produce great results that they can see are fair and relevant. They know in the end they’ll sell more images, if iStock gets the right images in front of people.”