Editorial Images Market - Global Outlook and Forecast 2019-2024

MARKET INSIGHTS

The global editorial images market is expected to cross USD 587 million by 2024, growing at a CAGR of over 5% from 2019 to 2024. The media landscape is changing again and so is the outlook toward revenue streams among media and publishing companies. As consumers move away from the paid TV and consuming ads, large media companies are witnessing declining revenues. Thus, the focus is back on offering “superior journalism” as opposed to depending on heavy visual content-based assets such as ads, thereby driving up the value of the images and consecutively revenues. That is shifting interest from commercial to editorial images. Publishers are increasingly speeding up their updates, requiring a greater number of pictures to support the development of a story in real-time. Players that can deliver at lightning speed and stand up to the TV channels’ instantaneous coverage can certainly witness constant growth. While North America is currently leading the market, China and India will be among the fastest-growing markets during the forecast periods due to their current state of the economy and increased accessibility to relevant imagery.

The following factors are likely to contribute to the editorial images market growth during the forecast period:

• Superior Journalism: A New Reality
• Widespread Media Layoffs
• The Rise of the De-territorialized, Hyper-connected News Ecosystem
• Syndication of Editorial Content
• AI and ML in the Editorial Images Landscape

Another trend is multilocalism, characterized by a demand for images that reflect local happenings, people, communities, brands, cultures, and products. As publishers begin to offer more niche content, the need for localized pictures is expected to increase. For instance, for Adobe Stock, queries for ‘globalism’ and ‘migration’ went up 173% and 90% respectively in 2018, indicating that the demand is not “flat” or one-size-fits-all anymore.

Engaging across broader touchpoints is becoming another trend in the market. With marketing coming to the forefront, there is a more holistic approach that is being taken by vendors to expand their purview. Another offset of this is the standardization of the pricing system, where prices are based on the size and do not cover any credits, subscriptions, or discounts. Seeing as personalized content is becoming the need of the hour, vendors are deep-diving into the recording of purchase history, analyzing data of users, and using smart technology to display the visual content that is needed.  

EDITORIAL IMAGES MARKET SEGMENTATION

This research report includes detailed market segmentation by

• Application
• Channels
• Use-case
• Geography

APPLICATION

Fast-moving fluctuations in global, international, national, and local news and politics have kept audiences buried in newspapers and news-oriented magazines and online platforms. Naturally, the demand for news images has gone up. This is bolstered by the growth in the array of news sources. Media organizations, especially messaging apps, that are experimenting with newsgroups, quizzes, broadcasts list, and more to cater to changing consumer demand for less confrontational and more private areas to have relevant conversations.  Another stand-out driver is that the millennial population is spending much less time on news than the preceding generations and heat maps have pointed to headlines and contents accounting for the most viewed elements in a news article online, thereby increasing the relevance of editorial images.

The global sports industry is in transition mode. Latin America, Eastern and Central Europe, and Asia are expected to be the key battlegrounds in the sporting landscape. The sports images market has witnessed changes in outlets and a boost in the content being used, specifically on the web. Fueled by globalization, the hotbeds for each of these sports are beginning to expand, increasing the number of leagues and matches, driving media coverage. Consequently, increasing the sports images demand in these markets.

CHANNEL   

The trend of veering away from end-to-end and self-contained text toward visual storytelling and alternative story forms is growing. Important matters in these publications are spread across double pages and heavily illustrated with charts, infographics, and maps. Such strategies are turning around the demand for visual content from newspapers as well as other types of illustrative editorial content. However, unlike earlier, circulation/quantifying eyeballs was the main goal, now it is about getting in front of the right audience, driving a holistic view of visual content across the board.

As magazines compete with other dimensions of entertainment, there has been a ton of reinvention to battle the forecasted impending decline of magazines. While a lot of magazines began with offering the same content that was made available in print on digital, there has been a movement toward multichannel publishing in 2019. Many magazines are using different pieces of content across channels or platforms. While major commercial publications are facing several ups and downs, a smart new breed of niche and independent magazines covering food, fashion, travel, design, technology, outdoor living, is thriving in part due to a strong sense of exclusivity.

The shift in business models in the publishing industry is putting the attention back on a wide variety of content such as blogs, newsletters, and eBooks. As media and publishing companies are turning the focus on retention and loyalty, newsletters are gaining prominence once again. The market is also benefitting from the influx of non-fiction titles, which have grown due to the high flexibility for the tonality of content among schools and libraries. The upsurge in social and political discourses has also increased the number of non-fiction books by celebrities and public figures, which is driving the demand for images for both covers and inside pages. As books and others such as memoirs and autobiographies get picked up more often on account of a high amount of interest in real-life stories, licenses are witnessing higher revenues.

USE-CASE

The documentary segment is expected to be driven by news organizations and specialist libraries as they are looking for more authenticity than stock image sites. Portrait-style editorial images are gaining traction, specifically those of famous personalities such as scientists and politicians as magazines look beyond conventional representations and look to feature more arresting pictures. Larger-than-life pictures and extremely tight portraits are thus doing well on stock picture platforms.

The illustrative segment is primed to grow as the winds of change in the consumer paradigm create whole new avenues for the market demand. Review sites and blogs have blown up in recent times as general distrust spreads, and consumers seek social proof. Conceptual images of products, brands, and places are being used to help tell stories and convey ideas.

GEOGRAPHY

North America’s abandonment of print channels is the fastest, with social platforms and internet-centric organizations coming to the forefront. Both newspapers and consumer magazines, while mature, are witnessing falling revenues with decreasing volumes. Publications are moving to digital and sharing and outsourcing services, and major cost-cutting imperatives are in place. The region also witnesses high investments in other revenue streams to live off, moving into spaces such as events and videos, fueled by the focus on creating better user experiences to prevent the erosion of viewership.

The growth of the European image market has picked up, stimulated by attractive financing conditions and growing profitability. Countries across Europe have shown mixed performances; however, several major economies are on their way to stabilizing this growth. Successful European news and publishing sites do not use paid tactics to the degree used by websites in North America. This makes using engaging content across websites to drive engagement and increase re-visits important. This has made the context for images imperative.

The market in APAC is growing at a stable pace. The rapidly changing media landscape is fueling the market in the region. Digital use, specifically on mobile, is on the rise due to the high number of new internet users that are connecting to the internet through their smartphones for the first time and consequently consuming news, entertainment, and sports content. Smartphones have given rise to 500 million new internet users, led by China and India.

The Middle East and Africa region is witnessing spotty growth. The Middle East dominates the news production cycle in the region, hence is the primary end-users of editorial images. The newspaper circulation has, however, been much grimmer with the decline in circulation in South Africa.

The editorial images market research report includes in-depth coverage of the industry analysis with revenue and forecast insights for the following segments:

Segmentation by application

• News
• Sports
• Entertainment
• Archival

By Channels

• Newspaper
• Magazines
• Others

By Use-case

• Documentary
• Illustrative

By Geography

• North America
• US
• Canada
• Europe
• UK
• Germany
• France
• Italy
• Spain
• APAC
• China
• Japan
• South Korea
• Australia
• India
• Latin America
• Brazil
• Mexico
• Argentina
• Middle East & Africa
  • Saudi Arabia
  • UAE
  • South Africa