Warc, 12 September 2014
NEW YORK: Shutterstock, the fast-growing platform for stock
photos and video, is tapping the surge in demand for this content among brands
and publishers by using a "super-analytical" approach to
understanding its audience.
Jon Oringer, Shutterstock's founder/ceo/chairman, discussed
some highlights of the company's current strategy, and how it addresses
changing customer needs, while speaking at a recent conference.
He reported that gathering data relating to what visitors to
Shutterstock.com view, click, search and download - along with tracking their
path to finding the right image or clip - is essential to enhancing its
service.
"We collect all the data we possibly can and store it.
We never know what we're going to need," he said. (For more, including
further details of the comapny's strategy, read Warc's exclusive report:
Shutterstock taps into an internet marketing phenomenon.)
Every 24 hours, Shutterstock accrues a terabyte of
behavioural data - equivalent in size to over 470 hours of broadcast-quality
video. And this material extends all the way down to the 40 million images sold
via its site.
"A lot of … images give us a ton of metadata that
drives all the [search engine optimisation], drives our international search
algorithms, and drives the looks and feel of the website also. So we're
constantly making improvements to all this stuff."
Such a "super-analytical" approach, he continued,
is also employed when assessing the impact of the company's own communications.
"We do a lot of marketing. From the very beginning,
it's all marketing. We started with Google – with Google Adwords – then ramped
up," he said. "Today, we spend tens of millions of dollars a year on
marketing."
By carefully scrutinising its output, the firm has gained
vital knowledge about essential subjects like customer acquisition.
To take just one example, the organisation has learned that
for every photo customer that is attracted by paid-for media, two arrive
through free channels, a figure rising to four when discussing video.
Data sourced from Warc
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