I searched iStock for the Top 100 Best Match results for: African American, Asian, Caucasian, and Hispanic. I recorded the total number of results, and the composition of the Top 100 by Collection.
Total Number of Results:
- The above are the number of results that contain the keyword in question. So, if you looked images that only contained Hispanic models, the number would be lower.
Composition of Top 100 Best Match Results by Collection
Things That Stood Out:
- There were four times as many Caucasian images as there were of the other three ethnicities combined. I expected a disparity, just not one this pronounced. (I’m going to analyze the downloads for each of the searches to see if I find a similar trend.)
- The number of Agency & Vetta images in this dataset surprised me. 272 out of 400 (68%) of these results were in the most expensive collections.
- Top Three Agency Contributors by Number of Images: Blend Images(19), Albany Pictures(18), Rubberball(17)
- Top Three Vetta Contributors by Number of Images: Morganl(11), Uberstock(7), Bortonia(6)
I wanted to see which summer activities were downloaded the most on iStock. To do this, I searched for them on iStock using the keywords: “summer <activity>” and recorded the total number of results, and information on the top 100 images when ranked by downloads.
Total Result Counts
- The charts above show: the number of images returned when you search for “summer + keyword”, and the percentage of overall results when you search for “summer”, by itself.
- There are 680,019 images returned when you search for ‘summer’ by itself.
- The set above accounts for 330,660 images or 49% of the total summer images.
Average Downloads Per Image for the Top 100 Search Results
- The chart above shows the average number of downloads per image for the Top 100 images returned when sorting by downloads.
Items of Note:
- I was surprised to see each of the activities accounting for less than 3% of the total summer images in each case.
- Running stands out in the average DLs chart — I would have expected it’s DLs per image to be about half of what they actually were.
I analyzed the top 50 Best Match results when searching for ‘summer’ and broke out the results by collection:
Number of Images
- Exclusive collections account for 43/50 or 86% of the results.
- The total number of results for the search was: 676,858 (~8% of 8 million total)
Average Age of Image
- This the difference in years between the upload date, and the date of the analysis – May 3, 2011
Average Total Downloads
- This is the average lifetime downloads for the images in each collection.
- Given that Agency exceeds Vetta, it suggests that old images were moved into the Agency Collection.
Average Annual Downloads
- This is the total downloads divided by the age of the image broken out by collection.
Things of Note
- Exclusive+ images in this set were best-sellers that were moved to E+. This analysis doesn’t show what’s happening right now, so the impact of this move is something each person will have to analyze for themselves. (You can do this using LookStat.)
- Agency images in this result set are outperforming Vetta, in terms of downloads. Again, I find this hard to believe and it’s likely being skewed by older images. If it is true, then buyers are indeed price-insensitive, and this is good news.
Methodology:
I conducted searches for the keyword ‘vacation’ and each continent, on iStock. I summed the downloads for the first 100 Best Match results for each one. If you’re interested, you can check out the searches yourself: Australia, Africa, Europe, Asia, Antarctica, South America, and North America.
Results:
Points to Note:
- Australia accounts for 30% of the total DLs for the seven continents.
- I was very surprised by the low DLs for North America. It may be because people don’t search for ‘North America’ but rather search for ‘USA’ or ‘Canada’ (more to come on this one.)
- Editorial is live but sparse — 13 out of 700 items were editorial images (all in North America, South America, & Antarctica.)
Methodology:
I ran the searches below on iStock and summed the downloads of the top 200 Best Match results for each one:
Results:
Points to Note:
- 45% of the Total Downloads in this set of searches were generated by Valentine’s Day AND Roses.
- Valentine’s Day AND Roses generated more cumulative downloads than just Valentine’s Day.
- Jewelry and Chocolate are tiny niches compared to roses.
Methodology
I searched on istock and recorded the top 100 Best match results for the following searches:
I analyzed the Top 100 images returned for each search. This post analyzes the results by collection. Future posts will look at contributors, downloads, and search placement.
Search Results by Collection
- 76% of lifestyle search results are either Agency (50%) or Vetta (26%). This is double what you see in medical and business searches.
- 29% of business search results are non-exclusive images. Of these 29 images, 20 belong to Yuri Arcurs. (The average is 2.1 images per contributor).
- 8.3% of all results were video files and only 1 search result was an audio file.
- 40% of all results were either Agency or Vetta files. However, they only account for 4.8% of downloads. This is most likely because the files in these collections are new.
Conclusions:
- Agency & Vetta results skew towards lifestyle. Keep this in mind when shooting & submitting.
- Audio & Video are niche business for iStock (less than 9% of best match results). Invest accordingly.
- It’s great to be exclusive. 80% of search results are from exclusives, much higher than I expected.
Which searches are you interested in analyzing? Let me know in the comments.
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