Facebook and Shutterstock partner to make ads beautiful

Steven Loeb · August 22, 2013 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/3188

Facebook advertisers will have access to millions of Shutterstock photos at no additional cost

With its reliance on ad revenue to stay afloat, the last thing that Facebook wants is ugly ads. No one is going to click on an advertisement that looks, well, cheap. It makes the company that created it look amateurish, and it reflects badly on Facebook. And, ultimately, that is bad for the company's bottom line.

Facebook needed a way to make sure all of its ads looked professional and beautiful. So why not join ip with a company whose entire job is to create these types of images?

Facebook has entered into a partnership with online stock photo website Shutterstock to give its advertisers access to millions of professional images, Facebook announced in a blog post on Thursday.

"High-quality, engaging photos often increase the performance of ads, particularly in News Feed. And now, through our collaboration with Shutterstock, it will be easier for businesses to integrate beautiful photography into their Facebook ads," the company wrote.

The collaboration will works with Shutterstock being integrated directly into the Facebook ad creation tool. Advertisers will be able to test multiple images across Facebook’s mobile and desktop advertising products.

Access to these images will not cost advertisers anything extra, and each time a Facebook advertiser licenses a Shutterstock image the Shutterstock artist will earn a royalty.

"As the digital world becomes increasingly visual, businesses need images to stand out and reach new audiences. Not every business has a team of designers to help communicate their message, and so the Shutterstock integration allows Facebook advertisers of all sizes to search and choose from millions of high-quality images at the point of ad creation," " David Fraga, VP of Corporate Development at Shutterstock, told VatorNews.

"This collaboration illustrates the importance of having a simple and powerful API, in this case resulting in a seamless user experience that makes it easier than ever for businesses to reach customers online."

The New York-based Shutterstock, which was founded in 2003, allows its users, who are professional photographers, illustrators and videographers, to upload photos to the site, which are then sold as stock photos in pre-paid plans to businesses and marketing agencies.

The company says it has over 28 million royalty-free stock images, with over 158,000 new stock images added this week alone.

In 2011, the company had a net income $21.8 million out of over $120 million in revenue. Revenue had gone up every year since at least 2007, before the company went public in 2012. It is now trading at $54 a share.

Additional Facebook news

In addition to the Shutterstock partnership, Facebook also announced two other pieces of news.

First, it is making it easier for businesses to create multiple ads with a new image uploader that will allow them to select a range of Page photos, images from previous ads and Shutterstock images.

"The ability to simultaneously upload multiple images means advertisers can now create multiple ads at one time (with multiple images) for a single campaign, and test images to increase performance of their campaigns," said Facebook.

The company also made updates to its Android and iOS Pages Manager apps that will allow administrators to upload multiple photos for a single post, edit existing Page administrators and add new admins to Pages they manage, all from their mobile phones.

On Android, page administrators can now tag people in comments and stay up to date on other relevant Pages in Page Feed. On iOS, admins can now create new Pages and events.

These were some of the most requested features, Facebook noted.

(Image source: https://www.shutterstock.com)