21 Jul 2015 GoPro Launches Video Licensing Platform

Action camera maker company GoPro has launched a new licensing platform of premium quality GoPro footage for brand marketers, advertising creatives and media companies.

Closed Marketplace

This platforms seems – at least for now – strictly controlled: both buyers and seller need to apply for access, this way the company can select not only who submits content but also who is allowed to license it, and even who can see it.  Contributors can watermark their videos’ previews for added safety.

At launch the marketplace is seeded with almost 600 action, sports and wildlife clips sourced by GoPro itself and by professional and amateur users – athletes among them – with whom the company closed private deals.

Upmarket Content

They say they aim for “top of the market” productions, so most likely user generated footage needs to be professional quality to be approved for licensing here.  They’re using Rights Managed licenses with a fixed duration of 6 months.  Prices start at $1000 a video and up, depending on distribution and commercial use.  Royalty deals are not disclosed yet.

Buyer side they offer a considerably advanced search engine, video previews, lightbox tool and pre-license download (watermarked). They also enable batch download functionality for licensed videos.

The Strategy

The company says this step into digital content licensing is the result of the many inquiries they received in the past from big brands and media companies wanting to use their content. Others say investors of the public company have been calling for them to monetize the footage created on their products.

It’s an extremely competitive market GoPro is entering, but they may just have an underexploited niche.  Searches for “gopro” and first-person sports action terms on Shutterstock footage return relatively few results.  But even with the power of the GoPro brand, it’ll be an uphill battle for the company to spread awareness of the product and overcome resistance to the relatively high price and restrictive license.  I expect prices and license conditions will be the first aspects GoPro will adjust.

It’s unusual that a hardware brand creates a stock media marketplace, and goes to show how easy it is these days compared to when the big microstock agencies started – not to take anything away from what GoPro have built.  Will building an online stock media marketplace become something a lot of non-media companies start doing?