We're on! So we still have some folks trickling in, but we'll get started here. I'm Ron Josey. I lead the North American Internet practice, Internet Equity Research practice here at Citi, and I'm pleased to have with us Craig Peters, the CEO of Getty Images. Craig, thank you very much for joining us.
My pleasure.
For those in the audience who are learning more about Getty, Getty is a leading content marketplace, offering three brands, which we'll get into, Getty Images, iStock, Unsplash, about—call it 540 million visual assets, 830,000 paying customers, 182,000 active subscribers, and just a lot going on. So Craig, thank you for joining us today. Welcome.
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
So why don't we kick off? Like, I feel as if we are a year and a month maybe; we're just past the year anniversary of being officially publicly traded.
Yep.
Just talk to us about this past year, and as you do talk to us about this past year, give us a little more details about Getty overall. Like, help us just to level set where the team is and, and what Getty is doing and, and how the company's evolved.
Well, I mean, first off, the company's been around for almost 30 years now. We've been a public company before, up until 2008, went private for a little bit over a decade, and now back to the public market. So this is not a foreign thing-
Yeah
... from the company standpoint. We basically ran like a public company for the most part while we were private. So I don't think it's been a major transition from, you know, from private to public from the company, at least relative to other companies that might be making that jump. But, you know, clearly, it's added a little bit more things to my to-do list, and-
You get to come to conferences like this.
I get to come to conferences like this. And we, you know, we have to go through a reeducation process-
Yeah
... because the business from where we were when we were public last time to where we are now, is just fundamentally transformed. It's largely a subscription business now. It, it was, you know, less than 5% of the business was sitting in subscription previously. It's largely a corporate business now, where previously, you know, agencies were kind of the primary customer segment. You know, video is, is north of 20% or around 20% of the business right now. It was low single digits, last time we were in the public markets. So there's a lot of, of change, within the business overall that we need to, to kind of educate, investors on and, and kind of give them a refreshed view. So we've been spending a decent amount of time on that.
At the same time that we went public, I think the public awareness of generative AI, which I know we'll touch more on, kind of was paired with that, right?
Yeah.
So kind of August was, I think, you know, kind of the unveiling of a lot of the large language models, as well as some of the generative image models. And so that's kind of. You know, at the same time, we've spent a lot of time, you know, I think, really educating others on kind of how we're attacking that space and what our unique assets are and how we stand up over time. But, you know, generally, I like to ground myself in pretty simple models. And what we try to do within our business is really deliver real value back to our customers, the businesses that use us. And we kind of think about that in four ways, right? There's four things that we do for our customers.
We really allow them to create at a higher level, right? Whether that's through our editorial content or creative content, or whether that's, you know, through video or stills, they can reach an end audience and engage that audience at a higher level. And that's ultimately what they're trying to do, whether you're a media company or a corporation trying to advertise, you're trying to engage. So we do that, and we focus a lot in on how well are we doing that. Secondly, we save our customers money.
Yeah.
Right? We are essentially an outsourcing play. And whether that's you don't have to travel a team to the Olympics, or you don't have to go shoot that production, you know, you can do that through us on a very cost-efficient basis. Third is, we save our clients time. Right? Again, it's timely to go and do a production, but it's also really hard to go search the entire Internet, find the right content. We kind of bring it all into one very efficient place where you can find what you need and then get back to what you need to create. And then the fourth is we save our customers risk.
Mm-hmm.
We operate in an intellectual property world where, let's face it, it's a complex world, and it varies, you know, country to country, region to region. You can get sued for using the, you know, the Empire State Building in an advertisement. You can get sued for using the Eiffel Tower at night. You can get sued for having tattoos because those are actually covered by copyright and intellectual property. You know, chair designs, and there's a number of things. So we kind of remove all of that risk for our customers. They don't have to worry about intellectual property. They know that that's our job, to be experts in that, and allow them to do that. So those four things are what we continue to focus in on every day. How do you kind of add more value into your customers?
If you're doing that, ultimately, you're building a durable business over time, and that's whether you're public or private-
Yep
... whether you're in generative or non-generative, like, ultimately, how do you deliver customer value?
Let's dig into that a little bit more because—and this is something we get, you know, often in terms of questions, the three-brand strategy between-
Yeah
... Getty Images, Unsplash, iStock. Just, you know, each one is going after a different market-
Yep
... as you try to do those or as you accomplish those four key things. Talk to us how you bifurcate or maybe look at each one of those brands as you build them up to their respective end market.
Yeah. So, those three brands are actually all trying to accomplish those same four things.
Right.
There is no differentiation in terms of what we're the value we're trying to provide to the customers, but the customers are fundamentally different. So Getty Images really services larger enterprises. So these are your large agencies like WPP or IPG. These are your large media companies like NBC, Comcast, Universal, Walt Disney, as well as large corporations. So think IBM, think Citi, across the board. And they have certain needs. They have certain service needs, they have certain quality content needs, they have certain processes about how they interact on things like contracting and AP, and they have multitudes of users, they operate in a multitude of languages and a multitude of currencies.
And all of those things is what Getty Images in that website and that service and the corresponding staff are focused in on serving well. iStock is focused in on small and medium-sized businesses, largely e-commerce. 99% of the customers that we deal with there, we never talk to. They give us their credit card, they self-transact, and they go. They still want high quality, you know, assets, so they want to look like, I say, small businesses wanna look like a big business online, right? You have to come across credible on your website, in your social media presence, etc., but you do that with an expectation about how you want to interact. And so iStock is focused in on that. Very simple, again, very e-commerce driven. And then Unsplash is kind of out into the creator economy.
So even beyond the businesses, there's freelancers, there's individuals, that are creating today that weren't creating just five years ago.
Yeah.
It's got tremendous reach into that community. And so we're building solutions, again, that allow those customers to create at a higher level, you know, save time, save money, and avoid the risk as they move into those markets. And again, all of those individuals and customer segments are very distinct. And if we try to serve that individual creator on Getty Images, we'd serve it poorly. If we tried to serve the enterprise on Unsplash, we'd serve it poorly.
Yeah.
So you really need to kind of be very customer focused, understand those end needs. The value delivery doesn't change, but how we service them needs to match up to those specific needs of the customer.
Question just about how you manage those three brands and how you manage... You talked about the corporate business now, larger subscription biz largely is what?
Mm-hmm
... what you're doing. Internally, each one, Getty, iStock, Unsplash, has a general manager, and is that how?
No, we have, so we manage to largely one P&L within the company.
Okay.
That means that we can avoid duplication of costs. So, you know, you look at our platform, like, you search on both websites, so we don't want to duplicate search, right?
Okay.
You download on both websites, you register on both websites. So, like, how do we make sure that we're fluid and efficient in our cost base, so we don't kind of create what we call silos around a P&L? The one exception to that is we do operate, you know, Unsplash currently kind of standalone. More from the standpoint that it's a small, you know, it's a small business. It was doing, you know, run rate of maybe $5 million when we acquired it.
Mm-hmm.
And we wanted it to have the freedom in order and to develop at pace, right? There was, at that point in time, less than 30 employees when we acquired it. As I say, you know, 1,700 well-meaning employees at Getty Images would squash a company that has, you know, 25 staff. So allowing them to operate with some level of independence and draw on the Getty capabilities and expertise as necessary, but not necessarily get thrown into a mixture-
Sure
... where they get lost.
That's helpful. That's helpful to understand how you, how you think about it. Maybe one more just around what I think is a differentiator for Getty before we get into GenAI, because that is the topic, as it seems. But just the importance of editorial.
Yeah.
You know, exclusive content, I think that's 20% of content, maybe two-thirds of revenue or something like that.
A little bit more. I'd say if you looked in totality, it's probably maybe a little bit closer to 30% of the exclusive content and probably pushing a little bit north of 2/3, but yeah.
So talk to just about the competitive advantage here. So I feel like not everyone has this editorial focus, and-
Yeah
... and that's an advantage of Getty, maybe. Well, talk to us about-
Well, first, I would say, like, our exclusive content is not something that's just in editorial. I think it's certainly we can talk to that and the levels of differentiation there, but we have exclusive content across all aspects of our business and all brands. So Unsplash, iStock, Getty Images, across our creative. Again, those stats of the count of our exclusive content relative to the revenue mix would hold in creative just as well as it holds in editorial.
Mm-hmm.
So we believe you need to have a differentiated product, and we believe our customers need high-quality content, and we believe small businesses need it just as much as large businesses. And so, that's fundamental to our go-to-market, our points of differentiation, and how, you know, we feel we help our customers, right? We're not providing them with a commodity. We're providing them something that garners an end audience's attention, that grabs attention. That's hard to do-
Yeah
... especially in this world. So it's critical to our strategy. So we work very much to develop that content so that it in fact does grab attention. Within the editorial space, you know, we have, I think, you know, clearly a very differentiated offering in terms of how we've brought together partners over time. And so we have over 100 partners in our editorial business. These are companies like BBC, Sky News, NBC News, NHK. You know, and then we have our sports partnerships with the MLB and NBA and NHL and NASCAR and PGA, across the board, that brings incredibly unique access, incredibly unique content and coverage... and brings unique rights in many cases to be able to activate.
So for sponsors of, like, right now, the US Open, you know, clearly we can work with those sponsors to activate at a, at a level that other players can't. So yeah, we've built a really unique franchise, at scale. And, and we're, we're quite proud of it, and it's, it's a really, really, you know, strong piece of the business and durable piece of the business, that we think is, is fantastic. But again, it all kind of plays into, you know, the overall company overall.
Right.
We don't kind of portion it off on its side or manage it-
Sure
... separately. We kind of, you know, really try to understand what our customers need.
Right.
Sometimes Citi needs editorial content in order to activate its own sponsorships. So, you know, as we sit down with Citi's team and go through that, you know, we're drawing on creative and editorial.
That, that's actually a perfect segue into the topic of [du jour,] which is just generative AI. You know, as you sit down with a Citi or someone, or a Citi sits down and thinks about the content that they're looking for, just talk to us about maybe bigger picture, and we'll get into more details.
Mm-hmm.
But just bigger picture, the opportunity, the challenges, how you think about what generative AI offers, sort of this industry, this community?
Well, I think... initially, I think there's the novelty of what it can do, and it's neat.
Sure
... right? Then you start to think about: How do I apply this in the context of a business? How does it help Citi, again, engage its end audiences and drive to that? And I think, that's where we've spent a lot of years thinking through, knowing these technologies were coming, how do we play into that? So first, let me just say, we think generative AI is not a fad. We don't think it's something that's, you know, just gonna disappear overnight.
Yep.
We think it's actually gonna be something sizable over time. So therefore, first and foremost, we want to build an ownership position within that space. We think we have unique assets in our data, in our customer reach, in our content, and in our expertise and teams, right? We know how to produce content that actually does engage that end audience. So, you know, we're focused in on building solutions that where we can have an ownership stake ultimately in the revenue streams that are coming out of being generated by generative. We aren't focused in on kind of just short-term data licensing or things along those lines. So we took a step back and again, knowing this was all coming, and we really applied it to those four value propositions.
How do we use this technology to allow our customers to create at a higher level, right? How do we use this technology to save time, save money, and reduce risk? Now, that last piece is actually a pretty big one in-
Yeah
... generative AI, right? There's real questions about training data, whether their, these platform models are allowed to train, under fair use or not. We have a certain position, but that'll get settled outside, either by the courts or regulatory bodies or, legislative bodies. But, you know, that's a risk that businesses don't necessarily wanna be exposed to.
Yep.
There's risks around ultimately using these services on a commercial basis. So as an example, this is our world, but you wouldn't understand, but this is why we add value as Getty Images. If you were asking for a sneaker, typing in your prompt sneaker, these generative models today might throw back a Nike. They might throw back an Adidas. You can't actually use a Citi ad that has Nikes in it.
Yeah.
Nike's not gonna love that, or Adidas is not gonna love that. Or, so how do you remove that intellectual property risk out of the generative models? Again, these generative models don't know that you can't use the Empire State Building, or you're gonna get sued, or that tattoo is actually covered, or the firework of the smiley firework, it's actually copyrighted.
Mm.
So you can't have that in your ads. So we sat down and really started figuring out, all right, well, we think this can be something that can help our, our customers be creative. We don't think in each and every case, because in a lot of cases, it's not as authentic, and as the end audience, and it's being judged, this imagery is being judged by an end audience that you're targeting, right?
Yep.
But we do think it can enhance creativity. So how do we build something that can be creative? How do we build something that can be efficient, so you don't have to be an expert in prompt and writing prompts? How it can be cost effective relative to what you might be doing today, but ultimately address those risk items. And that's where we engaged with NVIDIA to kind of build our own proprietary model using our proprietary data and content. Ultimately, repatriating some of the revenues from that back to the creators that produced the content that it was trained on. And being able to go to Citi and say, "This is a tool that your teams can use-
Mm-hmm.
- and that content is safe, and we're gonna back it up as Getty Images. And so that takes time. It's the technology is there in order to do produce generative, but to produce something that companies will use, and have confidence in, and not wind up on the wrong side of an intellectual property debate or issue, that's really what, you know, I think you need to do in order to make it a commercial business, and that's where our focus has been.
In that example, Citi would go look up sneakers or tennis shoes, and we would not get a Nike-branded shoe back-
Yeah, I mean-
We would get something else.
Our tool doesn't even know what a Nike is-
Something that could be used.
... or it, it hasn't been trained on it.
Right.
Right? When you train on everything that's out on the internet, you're training-
Everything.
Again, there's a question of whether you have the rights to do that, but you're training it... Right? So it knows what a Nike is, because Nikes are out on the internet, right? And you're scraping from everywhere. So but it doesn't know that you can't do that.
Right.
Right? Because these weren't put together by people that neither are experts in, nor in some cases care about intellectual property rights. So, but businesses do.
Mm-hmm. And you brought up the partnership with NVIDIA, definitely something we wanna understand a little bit more. I think it's in Alpha today.
It's in Alpha today.
But what is the partnership? Like, why is NVIDIA involved in helping to train, maybe a foundational model for this?
Well, I mean, I think-
Obviously, we know NVIDIA does chips and everything else.
Yeah. I mean, I think— I can't speak for NVIDIA and what their-
Right
... commercial, you know, aspirations are and all of that. But, you know, one of the things we have great fundamental assets I described, right? One of the most core things that we have is not just data, but it's our expertise. We have a commercial, you know, understanding of what imagery actually engages end audiences. That's why we work with Citi, you know, and your marketing team, and ultimately, you know, that's a very unique asset. We understood that we weren't necessarily experts in GPUs-
Okay
... which are, by the way, very scarce, and very expensive, and in ultimately developing some of the generative models. We use AI and machine learning a lot. We do a lot within our search, but this is a very small set of individuals that truly are experts in this. And so we wanted to partner with, with a company that had the best expertise-
Sure
... that has been at this the longest. The first generative image model, guess who produced it? NVIDIA. Right? And oh, by the way, has the most processing power. So anybody can train a model, but you wanna get a really good model, you really need to throw GPUs at it. And you're gonna go through lots of training cycles, and that is not an inexpensive thing to invest. So you're talking, you know, well into the millions and millions of dollars in order to produce this, and keep it current-
Sure
... and continue to produce it. So we didn't want to basically partner at a level that was below the quality, outcomes, and expectations that Getty has. You know, generative models still can't do a lot of things, and our generative model won't be able to do everything. But I'm convinced over time, that we've got the right partner, there with the right capabilities-
Right
... in order to give it its best shot to be the very best offering that, that is in the marketplace.
So in Alpha, but—in Alpha today, any insights on timing when we might see this go live or Beta, or what, what's a roadmap? Is this a 2024 event? And I don't wanna front-run, obviously, this is not a product event.
I think you'll see it fairly soon.
Okay.
I think you'll see it in market fairly soon, and I think, so keep, keep, keep your eyes-
Okay
... and ears posted.
That's exciting. So another thing that came out on earnings was this Getty's new natural language-enabled search-
Mm-hmm
... so NLP. I'm curious, talk to us about usage.
Right.
Are consumers or customers, your corporates, your agencies, are they searching in a way that is in a natural language way?
It's evolving.
Yeah.
So I would say, you know, within our industry, over time, we've kind of trained our customers to search with keywords, and that's and it works, and that's how a lot of our customers have kind of learned to interact within our space. But as Google and other search engines start allowing for natural language processing, it starts setting a new framework about how you search.
Sure.
And so it starts with Google, and then you move into generative models, and that adds further. You know, so the behavioral element, that behavioral shift is real, and we are seeing more and more of it. And so what we wanted to make sure is that as people would put in, you know, these longer, more descriptive search terms, that our content came back. And the reality is, within the entirety of our industry, that wasn't the case. And I think we've done a very good job of being kind of first in really solving that within the content licensing space. And again, solving a real problem for our customers is, how do they find the very best content that matches the specific needs that they have?
So yeah, we're quite proud of the team in terms of the innovations that they've done there, and there'll be more coming out along those lines. But yeah, because we have fantastic content, but sometimes search could be an hindrance to actually finding that-
Right
... if you wanted to search in a really descriptive way.
I'm curious, when do you think that we hit a tipping point, maybe when, you know, we consumers evolve from looking at keywords and searching this natural... Is this a 2024 event, 2025? I don't wanna put numbers to it, but, you know, when we think—we started out the conversation, this is a long-term trend-
Yeah
... this is not a fad. We're laying the foundations with the NVIDIA partnership, with all the work you're doing. So, you know, help us understand where, how, how maybe you're thinking adoption goes.
I think it's... You know, I think you're gonna look, and you're gonna see different generational adoption.
Yeah.
Right? So like most technologies, right, you know, different generations adopt them and become native to them from the outset, and then others kind of are slower to adopt. And so I don't think we're gonna see, like, a flashpoint where everybody's gonna be searching in natural language-
Yeah
... or not, but I think you're gonna see it over time, increase, and that's kind of what we see in the data that we're providing there today. Obviously, as we respond positively back with natural language processing returns that actually meet those needs, we're accelerating it in our own search base as well because, you know, historically, if you were to search for a long string term like that, you would have been disappointed.
Yeah.
And so you wouldn't do it again. So this is a way of us training that that's absolutely acceptable, and you'll get the great results.
So I wanna shift a little bit, and go back to the core business today.
Mm-hmm.
But I figure we've just spent a good amount of time talking about GenAI. I don't know if there are any questions in the audience on this topic. We can obviously come back to it, but it's fresh in our minds. I'll throw it out there... All right, let's,
First group I've ever had that never had a question on AI. So-
We're still trying to understand it, too.
Yeah, everybody is, everybody is.
Early days. Let's go back to the business a little bit, and let's see, subscriptions.
Yep.
You know, we're seeing more subscription businesses launching. Unsplash came out with one as well.
Mm-hmm.
Just talk to us about how the mix shift to subscriptions and the impact to the overall business. So, in other words, you know, subscriptions becomes a bigger impact, that helps visibility. But talk to us bigger picture, and how we're seeing subscriptions change this business going forward.
Well, go back to that stat that I talked about in terms of the corporate mix. Corporations have ongoing needs for content: their website, their social media, you know, their sales and marketing collateral, you know, on down, and they're constantly refreshing that and updating it as they built internal teams. They also like budgets, right? My CFO is sitting right over there. People like to have budgets, and they like to know what the cost is gonna be, and they don't like, to have that be variable.
Yep.
So I think subscription and media has always kind of gone together, right, with big media companies kind of drawing down on the subscription with Getty Images, like CNN or others. But corporate was kind of like, when we talked to our customers, listened to our customers, whether they were small businesses or large businesses, they really wanted this kind of subscription in order to be able to facilitate their needs across the business in a way that they weren't, you know, constantly trying to understand what the cost impacts of that were. So, you know, that's the key driver of subscriptions, and I think we launched these, you know, really first on Getty Images at scale. And, you know, we kind of went through a penetration and kind of maturation curve there.
Now we are pushing more aggressively into the iStock, so we're going through a fairly significant conversion element, which tends to net to higher ARPU, for those customers, on a more committed basis. But that, that's what's been driving a lot of the numbers, and when you look at our growth in subscribers, that's, you know, the key driver is really turning that on to the e-commerce side of things. And then, obviously, you know, monetizing Unsplash, and, and they've got a really engaged user base and doing that through subscription there.
Mm-hmm.
That's, you know, the only model in which you can license is through an annual or monthly subscription. And we're seeing some growth there. And again, when we talk about subscriptions, when we report them, we're only talking annual subscriptions.
Right. Okay.
Right? If you're in a monthly subscription, that's great. It's a great way to consume, but we don't consider them subscribers. We consider that kind of a limited level of commitment.
Okay.
Although, you know, we do see good renewal rates and things like that, but that's really... It's that corporate model, and it's this notion that you are constantly refreshing. You constantly have to maintain your presence. You constantly have to be, you know, updating. And so therefore, subscriptions really work well with that, and it's kind of a low-friction product, very customer-centric in terms of the end view.
That, that's a good segue when thinking about how the business has shifted with agency and corporate and sort of where things are going longer term. So as subscriptions become a larger part, and obviously, we just talked about, you know, annual subscribers, but talk to us on just the relationship within Shutterstock within Getty, between corporate versus agency and that mix shift overall.
Yeah, well, you know, the agency business, again, used to be about north of 50% of our business.
Right.
It was all à la carte because that's how they work.
Mm-hmm.
They work with their clients on project-by-project basis. And it was one where, you know, you know, that over time, agencies are still a decent, you know, part of our, of our customer mix, but it's 20% or less. And over time, what happened is you saw an insourcing, right? You saw corporations realizing that they were paying a lot of money to maintain those presences. Doesn't mean that they're not working with agencies on campaigns and media spend and all of that, but the day-to-day of operating your website, your social media presence, those were things that they needed to do and could do more effectively in-house. And so that's that shift, kind of away from kind of what I'd say is largely acquired media-
Yep.
Right? Purchased media and thirty-second commercial spots and things like that, versus owned media and how do I maintain and drive that, which became much more visual, which shifted into the corporate. And so that, those are kind of offsetting elements, puts and takes within the business, but overall, kind of net to growth overall on the overall business.
An agency, I guess, on the last earnings call, we just talked about some macro challenges overall.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe it's that à la carte that's impacting agencies.
Yeah.
Was that something that was highlighted?
Yeah. So when you see, obviously, you know, downturns in the macro, you know, people can pull back on that spend, right?
Yeah.
They're not doing as much big campaigns, and that tends to be what the agencies, you know, are working on. And therefore, then you see, you know, kind of the creative impacts. Specifically, I think it's important to note that, you know, we work with the creative side of the agency. So there's a lot of pieces to agencies. There's their consulting groups, there's their media buying, there's their data side of things-
Right
... right? So those parts of the businesses tend to be doing better in this environment, especially as you looked at, you know, people were potentially moving some of their media buying, but again, off of something like a Twitter or Facebook for periods of time, and putting it back into the agency. So agencies have benefited in other parts of their business. But within the creative, that's where I think you've seen the real crunch on kind of some of their project volumes and ultimately the revenues, at least when we talk to them and when we read their earnings reports.
That's the big campaign. That might be macro-driven, the uncertainty-
Much more macro.
and visibility going forward.
Exactly. And then you've got segments within that, right? Their client bases. And we can see that within our corporate portion, where we work direct with corporations. So, you know, you would say tech and telecom, financial services. So some of those segments are more impacted. And then you layer up, you know, again, an entertainment strike, the writers-
Which we'll get to for sure.
Yeah, over the top of that.
Yeah.
But there's certain segments that you would expect, again, that are impacting both on the agency and then in the corporate. And then there's other segments that are doing quite well, you know, travel and tourism-
True
... obviously, you know, rebounding, so.
As agency, less than 20%, I mean, you always have it because the creatives will always need-
Mm-hmm
... the content. We're looking for a more stable environment, macro-wise. Do you think we're getting to that stability or still uncertainty because risks are going so high, you know-
You know-
... interest rates are as high as they are?
It's interesting. I think, you know, because the creative process, you know, is out in front of the, actually, the media buying and all of that, I think we, you know, we're kind of, you know... My team is like: "We're in a recession right now," in terms of, like, what we see businesses behaving and how they're behaving. And I think that's been the case for several quarters, specifically within the agency side of things. So, I think we have the potential to see that, you know, improve.
Mm-hmm
... going forward. You know, a lot of what we're seeing in terms of, you know, if you look at, like, our media clients, like, we're seeing clients that are posting, you know, quarterly numbers, where their revenues are down 10% plus, and that speaks to the media buying-
Yeah
... side of things, right?
Yeah.
Maybe not so much in Facebook or Google, but-
That was my next question. So online, we're seeing-
Or Amazon, those-
Yeah.
But in terms of like, you know, advertising across, like, you know, name your media company, they're kind of coming in light. So I think we're seeing, you know, again, a kind of a recessionary element there. I think you're seeing, you know, that follow through into the creative side of the agencies. We're seeing, you know, again, sector-based kind of tightening. The thing that's been offsetting that has been the consumer and the consumer's willingness to kind of take price. I think that's kind of waning, but ultimately, I do think we're starting to see a better kind of stability that people will be able to invest in behind.
Yeah.
But, you know, one thing I've learned over the last three to four years is don't try to make predictions.
Exactly.
We'll see.
So.
Well, talk to us about the Hollywood strikes.
Yeah.
Speaking of predictions, I think, you know, underlying assumption is maybe any insights on the Hollywood strike? How do we think about the Hollywood strike relative to Getty's business? And we can go in a lot of different ways.
Well, I mean, I would think it's a... First off, it's not our entire, you know, editorial business, or and we also sell, again, creative assets into those. But it's certainly some sectors of our business. So think about, you know, there's the production side of things. So movie production, show production, late night shows, you know, use a lot of our content.
Mm-hmm.
Those are all currently on hold, at least within the U.S. You think about, you know, the promotional side of things, so a red carpet, in order to pro-
Mm-hmm
... you know, promote that movie. You think about, you know, the award shows, that set out there and, you know. So you're seeing those productions shut down, you're seeing those promotional elements shut down, and you're seeing, in a lot of cases, things shift out, right? Now, people were shifting them kind of to the assumption, I think, of a kind of a end-of-year type resolution, but I am the furthest thing from being in those talks.
Right. Yeah.
And there's some contentious issues within those talks. I mean, AI being, you know, a key one of those.
Yeah.
But, so, you know, we think that ultimately, you know, there's rational reasons for both sides to come together and solve for this, and we think, obviously, things will re-ramp up. But it does have a chilling effect on our business because, you know, there just isn't that level of production, and then corresponding promotion that goes along with it. And that's, you know... The good news is that's a great part of our business, almost, you know, 99% of the time, but in these moments, it's actually something that we feel. But we also have confidence in that it'll come back, and.
Right
... and that, you know, people want entertainment.
I think that's fair. Yes-
Yeah
... yes, and yes. I mean, one of the things that we just continue to be impressed with, Getty, is just the 70% gross margins.
Yeah.
It's a very high gross margin business. You've been delivering consistent 30% EBITDA margins or around there for some time. Just as you think about the investments for gen-- the opportunities, how do you balance the opportunities with the investments? We talked about Unsplash and subscriptions, we talked about the mix shift to corporate, we talked about GenAI teaming up with NVIDIA, offset by there's macro challenges with agencies. And so talk to us a little bit more, just how you think about the allocation of capital.
Yeah, I mean, we make long-term decisions.
Yeah.
I think it's one of the things that, you know, that I really wanted to carry over from being private, and most notably, being private with Mark and Koch Equity Development, you know, starting in 2017. You know, we really made good long-term decisions. And that's how we wanna continue to make decisions.
Yeah
... right? So I fundamentally believe AI is going to be a transformative element. We want to own that, a piece of that, right? We wanna generate real business from it, that's sustainable, recurring, and long term. We believe that the creator economy is something that's gonna continue and exist, and so therefore, we're gonna invest in Unsplash and make that acquisition. So we believe, again, entertainment's going to be around, and productions, and how do we continue to invest in that?... So we're investing in things that we think are durable over time. Economies ebb and flow, but we're not gonna pull back-
Mm-hmm
On those investments. Obviously, you know, there are areas where, you know, maybe there aren't as many new customer opportunities in certain segments or certain geographies at the moment, and so we'll be conscious about cost. Again, another good thing I think we took from being a private company is we're incredibly cost-conscious and cost-efficient. So we'll rightsize the cost base as we see opportunities, but we're not gonna de-invest. We like the space. We fundamentally believe that our customers are gonna need more content tomorrow than they needed today.
Yep.
We're not gonna kind of pull back on that investment or do it. You can even frame... You know, we talked a little bit about the legal costs that we have. Now, a lot of that is due to warrant litigation, but, you know, us investing in order to pursue, you know, a legal pursuit against Stability AI and their scraping of our content, and using it to build their models, I mean, ultimately, that's our belief that, you know, we're investing in the long-term value of our IP, and we're not gonna cut back on that type of investment, because of some short-term, you know, challenges, either in the macro or within the, you know, the entertainment industry.
Sure. We have a few minutes left. Anything in the audience might like to ask Craig? Can you talk about the macros in basic geography? Specifically Europe, which was pressured.
Yeah. I'd say it, you know, it's a little bit mixed across Europe. So I think you'd probably point to Germany being the kind of most challenged environment that we see today, at least from our business. You could then kind of move out to, you know, France and some other, you know, kind of economies. But it's a bit challenged here and there. Clearly, they've felt more pressure on the energy side of things and war with Ukraine and kind of corresponding impacts, and then policy changes. But I'd say it's a bit softer in Europe, and kind of, again, Germany kind of being the one that really jumps out in terms of our view.
But again, I think long term, I still think we think that, you know, we're bullish on our opportunities within those markets, but we're certainly seeing that pull back. The other thing I would say is that Europe's still much more agency-based-
Mm.
In terms of their go-to-market and marketing. So because of that, we probably see maybe a little bit higher impact in Europe than maybe would be generally applied. So maybe I'm slightly overstating, given the fact that we have a slightly higher percentage of revenue, given how clients still interact with agencies a bit more in Europe.
Any other questions? Then keep going. Okay, we got a minute and a half left. So this is one we haven't really touched on too much, but I was just thinking more and more about Unsplash, about the creator economy-
Mm-hmm.
being the internet analyst that we are, you know, we just think about where engagement is going overall, and we can't not stop thinking about short-form video.
Right.
So Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Snap Spotlight, the list goes on and on. Talk to us just a little bit how you view engagement trends online, how that impacts Unsplash. Maybe it's unfair of a question, but I'd be curious.
No
... how you think about the creator economy and these trends-
So-
- for short-form video.
I mean, I don't think it's our job to ever really predict engagement, where it shifts to, but I think we know that it shifts.
Yep.
Right? I mean, it and it can shift quite quickly. I think, you know, TikTok being a perfect example of that, but you can go back over time and look at Facebook and Instagram. And, so our job is to arm our customers, which are businesses, in order to be able to address those shifts and to work within any format, right, video or stills, right, in any platform, right? And give them, you know, ultimately the best capability to grab attention within those-
Yep
... within those environments. And so, we don't get really fixated around, you know, whether it's this or that platform. Clearly, there are some platform-specific items about, you know, like the orientation of assets, so, you know, kind of 16 by nine versus vertical.
Right.
And we need to make sure that our content is there, and we kinda have to work to shorter form. But end of the day, we know that there's gonna be, you know, 10 more shifts from that-this. And so how do we just, again, enable our customers to move quickly-
Yeah
... and be there and grab attention in those formats? And again, grabbing attention is hard. And if you do it with commodity content-
Yep
... guess what?
It's gonna be harder.
It's harder. Yeah.
Yeah.
You just made your job really tough.
Mm-hmm.
So, that's the good part of what we get to do, is we get to help our customers engage on any platform to meet their end audience. And in many cases, doing that in an incredibly authentic way. In other cases, they'll maybe use technologies like generative AI to do that. But give them the tools.
Yep.
Give them the tools to compete in what is a fragmented, you know, world where attention is hard to, you know, gather.
Yeah. No, it's great. Well, Craig, we're at time. Thank you very much for the time today.
Thank you.
Always helpful to learn more about Getty and hear everything going on-
Appreciate it
... 'cause there's a lot going on.
It is a lot going on.
Appreciate it. Thank you.