Meta Sells GIPHY To Shutterstock Following Pressures To Let Go Of Deal
Photo 258450116 © Wirestock | Dreamstime.com
Laughing cats and goofy bananas are dancing their way into the Shutterstock library, as the royalty image bank has acquired GIPHY, the “world’s largest collection of GIFs and stickers,” from Meta.
Shutterstock announced on Tuesday that it has finalized a US$53 million deal to buy out GIPHY from Mark Zuckerberg’s company, after the latter was slapped with an order by Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority to sell off the GIF bank. The regulator expressed concerns that Meta might block rivals like Twitter and Snapchat from accessing GIPHY’s content, Reuters reports.
Meta had acquired the New York-based GIPHY for US$400 million in 2020, which means it sold the company at a significant loss. Following the order, a Meta representative told CNBC that the company was “grateful to the GIPHY team” for its business “during this uncertain time.”
Through the new GIPHY deal, Shutterstock intends to expand beyond the general touch points of professional marketing and advertising and immerse itself into “casual conversations,” the stock image company explained during a presentation for investors.
The buyout will amplify Shutterstock’s reach to 1.7 billion more daily users, as well as boost its mobile presence. For the time being, however, Shutterstock will be more conservative in the handling of the transition. It projects that the GIPHY deal will bring in “minimal” revenue in 2023, and it plans to only ramp up efforts to increase earnings in 2024.
As the world’s leading library of GIFs and stickers, GIPHY captures more than 1.3 billion search queries each day across its many APIs, which are distributed on platforms like Meta, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, Shutterstock details in a press release.
Besides housing original animated artwork by independent creatives, GIPHY incorporates shareable content by verified media partners such as Netflix, Disney, NBA, and NBC, “ensuring a steady supply of fresh culturally relevant content which can be inserted into everyday conversations and shared via social media,” it adds.
The incorporation also means Shutterstock can tap into GIPHY Create, the platform’s DIY GIF creator. Further, GIPHY Studios—a creative agency dedicated to developing original GIFs—“combined with Shutterstock Studios… [can empower] brands and media companies to tell their stories,” Shutterstock elaborates.
It also hopes to explore more techniques for generative artificial intelligence through the new deal.
The optics are great too, as GIFs “have over 75% positive sentiment among consumers.”
“This is an exciting next step in Shutterstock’s journey as an end-to-end creative platform,” proclaims Shutterstock CEO Paul Hennessy.
“We plan to leverage Shutterstock’s unique capabilities in content and metadata monetization, generative AI, studio production and creative automation to enable the commercialization of our GIF library as we roll this offering out to customers.”
[via Reuters, CNBC, Shutterstock, images via various sources]
