LookStat – Microstock Analytics

I decided to analyze the orientation of the Top 60 images from the Active Seniors searches that I’ve been writing about and the results of that analysis are in the table below:

Key Points

• Horizontal images are the most numerous & best performing, on all metrics – conversion (dls/views), views per image and downloads per image.
• No square images in the top-sellers, in spite of the notion that square thumbnails do better.
• You are leaving money on the table if you don’t shoot horizontal and vertical formats

This isn’t really all that surprising. When we last analyzed the impact of shooting horizontal vs. vertical vs. square across millions of transactions, we came to the same conclusion – Revenue per image for Horizontal shots was twice that of other formats. Our reasoning was that as usage shifted online & microstock is purchased for online uses, horizontal image formats work best.

Are you using LookStat collections to see these trends in your sales? What are you seeing?

As I mentioned in my earlier post, couples were the most popular theme for active senior images. I was interested in the setting for the images (indoors vs. outdoors) and decided to analyze the impact on downloads and downloads per image.

I found the difference is very interesting. Even though there are over three times as many pictures of active seniors in outdoor settings vs. indoor settings, the downloads per image are significantly higher. Indoor shots perform 28% better in terms of downloads per image.

The average for all couple shots is 781.3 downloads per image, so indoors are doing better there too. I think it would be worth adding some indoor compositions to your portfolio if you’re shooting active seniors.

As part of an ongoing series of posts about active seniors (see part 1 & part 2), I took at look at what the models were doing in the best selling images. The table below shows the Top 60 images (Top 20 @ iStock, Fotolia & Dreamstime) categorized by what people are doing in the photos.

The most common activity by far is hugging. It’s interesting that images of seniors hugging perform slightly worse than average from a downloads per image perspective. Also, I realize that hugging is a loose interpretation of activity, but I’m the messenger here. 14 of 17 images were couples hugging; (2 were friends and 1 was of grandparent/grandson.) Love must get stronger with age

One of the factors I looked at when analyzing 60 best selling images for ‘active seniors’ was whether the subjects were looking at the camera, or elsewhere (e.g. at each other, out at the ocean etc.)

I was pretty blown away by this result – 72% more downloads per image when subjects were looking at the camera? The average for the set was 777.1 so the ‘looking at camera’ group performed well above the mean. This was also true for conversion rate (downloads/views) – Looking at Camera: 11.16% conversion; Looking Elsewhere – 9.24% conversion.

The Eyes Have It

According to this eye tracking study, viewers look at people’s eyes and they look where people are looking. As a result, I’m fairly sure that images of people looking at the camera are more engaging in search results and lead to higher click through and ultimately more downloads. This may also work in ads whereby people find eyes more engaging and arresting and therefore stop to look.

A Potential Problem

As you can see from the screen shot above (which is from the above-linked study), people look where the models are looking. If the model is looking at your text, more people read your text. As a result, the problem is the following:

• Model Looking at Camera -> Arresting ad, people look at it BUT they don’t read about your brand.
• Model Looking Sideways -> Less arresting ad BUT those who look will likely read your ad copy.

We may be caught in a little trap where buyers purchase images that engage them, produce ads that grab attention but make the customer look at the model, not at the product being advertised.

Conclusions

• Looking at the Camera images had more downloads per image and better conversion than images where people were looking elsewhere.

• It’s possible that even though these images are more engaging, they may lead to less effective ads.

• I think this is only something that can be answered by A/B testing, but I’d love to hear what you think. Also, if you create collections to explore this in your own data, I’d love to know what you find. I’ll be looking at this factor as I analyze more categories for future posts.

• Microstock photographers should shoot both.

• Maybe the ideal ad has two people – one looking at the camera to engage the viewer and another to look at the copy to get the viewer to read it   What do you think?

Source: National Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association

The chart above shows the Top 10 Leisure Activities for USA participants aged 55 and older from 2007.

Points to Note:

• Swimming & Fishing were higher on the list than I expected
• Overnight camping in the USA often involves a car or a recreational vehicle (RV) (if you look at the top searches for camping, the first two terms related to RV camping)

Walking for exercise was the most popular activity in terms of number of participants and was in the top ten when it came to year over year growth on our list of top leisure activities. Given an aging population, and a tough economy, it’s not surprising that walking is a popular leisure activity. To provide some context, in 2008, there were 96.6 million people who participated in ‘walking’ compared to ‘golf’ which had 25.5 million participants. Also, the number of walkers in 2008 was 11% higher than it was in 2007 which saw 89.9 million participants.

This will be a two part series. In this post, I’m going to look at:

• Demographic & Gender Trends for Walking in the USA
• Footwear Spending by Category
• Walking Shoe Purchasers by Age & Gender
• Top Search Keywords

The second post will focus on stock photography related to ‘walking’ and will link back to this one.

Participation by Gender

Source: NSGA, Statistical Abstract of the USA

Participation by Age

Source: NSGA, Statistical Abstract of the USA

Walking as a means of exercise clearly skews older (49% of participants 45 or older) and female (62.5% female). This data is also supported by the footwear spending data as you’ll see below.

Footwear Spending by Type of Shoe

Walking shoes accounted for 33% of the $12.5 billion dollars spent on footwear in 2007 (data for 2008 were projected to be similar and 2009 data are not available yet but if anything, I’d expect this to be more pronounced.)

Walking shoe Purchasers by Gender & Age

Digging into the walking shoe purchasers show that the same trends apply as the overall participation in walking. 45-64 is the biggest age group and the percentage of female users is identical to the percentage of female walkers.

Search Trends for Walking & Walking Shoes

The chart below shows data from Google Insights for ‘exercise walking’ and ‘walking shoes’ from 2008 to 2010.

There isn’t much seasonality, but ‘walking shoes’ are searched for 5 times more often than ‘exercise walking.’ This surprised me initially, but intuitively it makes sense that people would be searching for ‘walking shoes’ as opposed to for ‘exercise walking.’ The same caveats as those in our comments on running shoes apply – be careful of trademarked designs & logos.

Top Searches Related to ‘Exercise Walking’

Conclusions

• Walking for exercise is the top leisure activity in the USA in terms of participation with close to 100 million people taking part in 2008!
• Demographically speaking, the participants skew older & female; the top age segment is 45-64 years old.
• Walking shoes represent the top footwear category in the USA and the demographics (not surprisingly) map closely with walkers.
• ‘Walking shoes’ should be part of your keywording strategy since they are a high volume search query
• Top related keywords are: “exercise, weight loss, calories, walking shoes”

I think the demographic trends around walking are fairly clear. This lines up well with general demand for imagery around ‘active seniors’ and this is something I’ll dive into in more detail in the second part of this post. Stay tuned and comments and feedback are always appreciated!