Two very interesting charts from www.marketingcharts.com, a site that provides easily digestible snapshots on media and advertising. Both of the charts below focus on display advertising i.e. some form of banner ad. This is where you’re most likely to see microstock & stock photography in action.

Top Online Advertisers by Category – Feb 2010

It’s quite clear that financial services at, 22% of total, is the leader of the pack in terms of ad impressions. This also lines up with business imagery being one of the top selling categories in microstock in general.

Top Financial Services Advertisers – Feb 2010

This too is a fascinating list. Online trading, credit scores, insurance, taxes, retirement – a rich array of conceptual categories worth exploring in your finance shoots if you’re not doing it already. Tax searches are highly seasonal as you would expect, with a steady increase in search volume from Jan-March followed by a dramatic spike during the week of April 15.

Food for Thought – Seasonality

I often think of seasonal events as being more related to holidays and greeting cards, but as the tax example shows, there are often seasonal cycles in other aspects as well. This isn’t something I’d explicitly considered when thinking about categories like business or medical shoots, but it does make sense.