The ACSIL Global Survey of Stock Footage Companies Report is Now Available
David Seevers
The ACSIL Global Survey of Stock Footage Companies 4 (AGS4), the fourth market research report on the global stock footage industry from the Association of Stock Image Licensors (ACSIL) and Thriving Archives, is now available for immediate purchase and download.
The AGS4 examines current business conditions, key trends and best practices within the footage industry. Results highlight market stability, confidence in future growth and shifts in customer demand, with Netflix and other streaming services representing the most significant source of new revenue for footage licensors. For more detail, please click here to read the Executive Summary.
ACSIL and Thriving Archives have worked together to publish three previous AGS reports, achieving strong industry support and participation in each effort. Like it's predecessors, the AGS4 provides a snapshot of the global stock footage industry, tracks evolving trends and examines how footage companies operate, market and serve their customers, providing footage industry leaders with strategic, practical information to help them compete more effectively.
Assessing the overall health and well being of the footage industry has been a top research priority since the inception of the AGS series. Based on the performance of the 84 companies within the 2018 dataset, which represent 20% of the estimated 415 footage companies in operation currently, the footage industry is in solid shape, with total industry revenue now estimated at $570 million, a 3% increase over the 2015 estimate of $552 million.
“While we did not find significant growth in the dollar value of the overall industry, we did find that the mood had shifted on many key topics, and individual companies appear to be more stable, confident and optimistic,” said Matt White, ACSIL executive director.
Highlighting this sense of optimism, the majority of companies said that their revenues had increased over the last two years; that demand for footage was up; and that they expect their revenues to grow over the next several years. Conversely, only 37% believe that production budgets have gotten smaller. All of these findings represent improvements over previous years.
“Another key takeaway from our current survey is that while footage companies have rallied to integrate the tools and benefits of the digital revolution, many long-standing business practices have endured,” said David Seevers, president of Thriving Archives and the principal author of the AGS series. “And while online media marketplaces are now fixtures in the footage licensing business, they do not appear to have displaced the older, more traditional footage licensing operations, which seem to be co-existing with these technology driven powerhouses.”
While traditional buyers such as “independent producers” and “broadcast networks/commercial TV” remain leading customer types, newer categories such as “SVOD Services,” (which includes Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc.) increased the most in terms of overall importance to 2018 companies’ billings, followed by “independent producers” and “ad-supported streaming services,” underscoring the growing importance of these newer streaming services, as well as their future potential.
The AGS4 is based on an anonymous 47-question survey completed by a group of 84 stock footage companies, launched in mid-July 2018 and running through late September 2018. During this roughly two-month period, multiple attempts were made to contact as many footage providers as possible and make the existence of this survey known to the industry at large.
The 191-page report includes 85 pages of detailed analysis and 90 full-color charts visualizing results from the 47 questions asked in the survey. The report covers 11 separate categories, including: Business Conditions; Company Types; Footage Holdings; Headcount; Ecommerce & Order Processing; Order Volume; Pricing; Licensing Practices; Customer Types; Marketing, Customer Development & Growth; and Threats & Opportunities.
The AGS4 is now available for purchase for $950. Please click here to purchase and download your copy, or click here to read the full AGS4 Executive Summary.
AGS4 participants are entitled to receive a 50% discount on the purchase of the full report. If you participated in the AGS4 survey and would like to purchase the report for $475, please send us an email at davidwseevers@gmail.com.