agefotostock, Your Global Offer

When one analyzes the market for images, it is easy to see that the stock photography business seems to be classified in three image groups that clients can browse and license. Press and news images, creative photographs and a mountain of other visual content that goes from cheap to very cheap, defined as Microstock, although if we want to go lower on pricing, we can also find masses of free pictures from unknown, if not desperate authors, produced to generate internet traffic.

agefotostock has very recently launched its newest website classifying images in precisely the three groups we believe the market for photography is organized today.

These three distinct sections are identified as, “Hot off the Press”, “Creative Stock Photography” and our “Micro-priced” collection that goes by the brand name of “easyFotostock”.

While “News & Press” is our brand-new offer, we have, for many years, been serving up creative, editorial and educational images and adding on other collateral offers; video and vectors are very present on our website and while our micro-priced “EasyFotostock” collection doesn´t reach rock-bottom prices nor dole out traditional subscriptions, it offers EasyPacks and excellent microstock content at competitive pricing on the low-end spectrum without killing the rooster.

agefotostock has been in the market for 48 years and is one of the longest existing stock photography houses in the world today. We are obviously not ready to abandon the business yet and are pushing forward to continue competing in photo licensing. Our fundaments are based on our technological developments, the most remarkable being the “Technological Hosting Platform,” or THP for short (www.thpservices.com), which handles the 83 million images from more than 450 collections supplied to agefotostock by over 200 providers of pictures and thousands of our photographers. The collection is growing by some hundred thousand images a month and has seen a huge increase in the daily amount since having started to offer press images.

This latest PRESS and NEWS service launched comes with a separate search functionality integrated within the same THP engine, therefore capable of offering the PRESS service to those THP distributors interested in such distribution. The Press & News section provides an open and accessible approach to the business, as compared to the closed door policy of traditional press agencies where access to browse images is only allowed after formal and procedural registration. In this aspect, agefotostock welcomes a more modern concept, watermarking images on the fly and making them available to anybody at any time.

This means most of the 74 agefotostock distributors worldwide, all using different levels of functionalities from their THP connection, will be able to increase their offer in their local markets by also distributing Press & News imagery, benefiting from multiple API services that varies from single searches to remote database ingestion, high-res downloads as well as photo, vector and video storage services.

Alfonso Gutierrez, CEO of agefotostock, commenting on the company’s move to simplify the business into three main segments and to push for a “global content offer”, said: “We have seen the business change profoundly in recent years thanks to the internet functionalities that helped to transform it from licensing images at sustainable prices to one that’s now struggling to live out of licensing millions of images at few cents each, and we had to do something about it. Our “global offer” – Press, Creative and Cheap in one single website offers convenience to a larger client base while giving new opportunities to many of our THP users and distributors.”

Lynn Poh, agefotostock’s International Manager, added: “we’re seeing a definite interest from clients and THP partners, who have been requesting for us to expand our offer from the creative to more editorial and press content. Our IT team has tackled this great challenge very adeptly, transforming our website and internal systems into something more modern and in tune what our clients and distributors are demanding, and within such a short timeframe.”

With the launch of this “global offer” of creative, editorial and low-priced images, agefotostock continues to work towards improving and developing new functionalities so as to provide a better service and strengthen partnerships with existing and new clients and collaborators.