Pond5 is a New York–based

online marketplace An online marketplace (or online e-commerce marketplace) is a type of e-commerce website where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties. Online marketplaces are the primary type of multichannel ecommerce and can be a way ...

for

royalty-free Royalty-free (RF) material subject to copyright or other intellectual property rights may be used without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use, per each copy or volume sold or some time period of use or sales. Computer standard ...

media. The company licenses

stock footage Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures, and file footage is film or video footage that can be used again in other films. Stock footage is beneficial to filmmakers as it saves shooting new material. A single piece of stock ...

stock music Production music (also known as stock music or library music) is recorded music that can be licensed to customers for use in film, television, radio and other media. Often, the music is produced and owned by production music libraries. Background ...

stock photography Stock photography is the supply of photographs which are often licensed for specific uses. The stock photo industry, which began to gain hold in the 1920s, has established models including traditional macrostock photography, midstock photography, ...

sound effects A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditi ...

, After Effects templates, and 3-D models. Pond5 is reported to have the world's largest collection of stock footage, hosting more than 32 million clips as of July 2022. The company originally focused on selling

video clips Video clips refer to mostly short videos, most of the time called memes, which are short videos of silly jokes and funny clips, most of the time coming from movies or any entertainment videos such as YouTube. The term is also used more loosely to ...

, but began to expand into other asset types following its 2013 acquisition of Pixmac, a stock photography site based in the Czech Republic. The acquisition added Pixmac’s 6,000+ photographers and support for 17 languages to the Pond5 marketplace.

History

Pond5 was founded in 2006 as a way for video producers to license content to third parties. It subsequently expanded into other media types, including photos, music, sound effects, 3D models, and

Adobe After Effects Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Inc., and used in the post-production process of film making, video games and television production. Among other things, After Eff ...

templates. Pond5 does not own the content on its site, but instead aggregates and sells content created and owned by its contributors. These contributors determine the selling price, and earn 50% of revenue. In July 2014, venture capital firms

Accel Partners Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional ...

and

Stripes Group Stripes (Stripes, LLC) is a private equity and venture capital firm based in Manhattan, New York, founded in 2008.

invested $61 million in series A financing into Pond5./ In May 2022 Pond5 was acquired by

Shutterstock Shutterstock is an American provider of stock photography, stock footage, stock music, and editing tools; it is headquartered in New York. Founded in 2003 by programmer and photographer Jon Oringer, Shutterstock maintains a library of around 2 ...

for $210 million USD.

Products and partnerships

In January 2014, Pond5 partnered with

Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

to create a plugin for

Adobe Premiere Pro Adobe Premiere Pro is a timeline-based and non-linear video editing software application (NLE) developed by Adobe Inc. and published as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud licensing program. First launched in 2003, Adobe Premiere Pro is a succes ...

integrating the Pond5 video collection with the editing suite. In early 2015, the company launched the

Public Domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

Project, a free online repository of nearly 100,000 digitalized media assets. The original business model focused on licensing individual video clip sales. However, in February 2016, the company unveiled a subscription product. In late December 2016, the company rolled out extended licenses aimed at attracting large enterprise customers. In December 2018, the company announced a partnership with the

Tribeca Film Institute The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) is a year-round non-profit arts organization founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff, based in New York. The Tribeca Film Institute was created in 2003 in the wake of September 11, 2001. TFI ta ...

, launching a program to provide grants of up to $7500 as well as mentorship, content and education to independent filmmakers. In June 2019, the company launched partnerships with

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...

, Cover Video, and Newsflare to create the world's largest collection of royalty-free editorial video.

References

External links

Official website
{{Shutterstock Stock footage Stock photography Photo archives in the United States Companies based in New York City 2006 establishments in New York (state)

History

Products and partnerships

See also

References

External links