Video sales dropped significantly

Hey Guys,
Checking how your stock video sales are doing? Mine has dropped significantly this year and it is probably at its lowest in terms of $ sales and volume. Has this to do with Pond5 is now a part of Shutterstoc? My sales for photos with SS has been miserable for years and I never sold videos there as they paid pennys for it.Same with stock photos. Would like to hear your experience? And if it is worth spending time and uploading here anymore?

My thoughts is that it is due to the new pricing system that was forced on us. I had a ton of clips that would sell regularly that were my "C" tier clips because they were priced as such. Now they are the same price as my A tier clips and nothing sells. I contacted them a long while back about it with my feedback and of course nothing has changed. Idk man. Also AI slop has picked up a lot. Frustrating.

Footage sales here on P5 by many accounts seemed to have begun dropping off after the early 2025 announcement of the now-failed merger attempt of Getty and Shutterstock (P5's parent org). 2026 seems even worse.

Speculation is P5 shed itself of staff in anticipation of the merger. So its likely there are no or few P5 sales/marketing staff etc to keep things running and pumped-up, customer/contributor-services also seem to have left. There may be some Shutterstock staff performing some P5 duties as well - like new media submission approvals reviewing but not much else.

So P5 is likely just running on auto-pilot with little or no resources being used to market and run the Pond5 platform.

@PCDMedia, That's pretty much it I think, even without the merger, P5 was absorbed into SSTK but they left the P5 website up but it's all SSTK now.

It appears there's been a massive change in customer demand for stock, very few are buying when you can get pretty much everything you want for free on those free sites and generative Ai is taking a MASSIVE bit out of the market.....it all adds up.

One another forum someone mentioned they haven't seen sales this slow in 8-10 years.

And both sites seemed to have stopped all promotion on social media, Twitter/X etc about a year ago but they still come up favorably on Google Ai overview when you're search for stock which is good.

I think right now their only business is selling contributors content to the Ai companies for model and robotics training and I guess contributors get a few dollars in commission for that but there stock prices are trading at dangerously low levels right now, not at penny stock levels but not far off so it doesn't look good.

It may be over as a way to make a living and most people are in this to make a living and not for likes and clout.

I am ditching for filmsupply. Its over here.

I hope sales improve soon and the marketplace becomes more active again.

My sales have dipped more than 44% from 2021 to 2025

Can't make a living at this anymore, it's personal bankruptcy, it's over and soon might be over for some of these stock video websites themselves.

From Ai: here's the answers (ironically)

Stock footage and photography sales have plummeted due to a devastating combination of generative AI disruption, market oversaturation, and a shift toward low-cost subscription models across major platforms like Shutterstock and Pond5.

AI Generation and Replacement
• Text-to-video tools: Creators now generate custom clips instantly via AI instead of licensing expensive stock footage.
• Reduced commercial need: Standard background plates, corporate clips, and lifestyle B-roll are easily replicated by AI models.
• Data scraping/training: Many agencies pivoted to licensing existing contributor libraries for AI training rather than paying high individual royalties

Subscription Shift and Falling Pay
• Race to the bottom: Agencies shifted to Spotify/Netflix-style subscription models, dropping clip prices significantly.
• Lower royalties: Payouts per downloaded clip have dropped to fractions of a dollar on high-volume sites.
• Free alternatives: Explosion of free high-quality video platforms (like Pexels) heavily undercuts paid marketplaces