Shutterstock Acquires GIPHY, World’s Largest GIF Library, to Fuel Multilayer Business Strategy
Shutterstock has made an interesting move today, announcing they are acquiring the massive GIF and stickers platform GIPHY from Meta in a very advantageous deal of $53M cash.
This purchase puts Giphy’s huge content library and user base at Shutterstock’s fingertip, opening a new and previously unexplored market for the agency in consumers and helping them fuel their catalog and generative AI metadata needs.
Shutterstock Buys GIPHY for $53 Million – Gains Ownership to Massive Consumer Base
Per the press release, Shutterstock has acquired GIPHY from Meta Inc. for $53 million in net cash, and the transaction will be completed by June 2023. This is a really great deal for Shutterstock, as Meta had originally bought the GIF-collection brand for $400 million back in 2020.
The reason for this advantageous situation is rooted in the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ruling that forced Meta to sell this asset to comply with antitrust policies, in a dispute that extended over the years since its acquisition until now – Back in January this year, the British entity had issued the final order for the tech firm to break away from GIPHY.
According to the report, Meta entered a deal that means they still get full access to GIPHY content through their API service to continue integrating the GIFS and stickers into their social media and messaging platforms.
Why GIPHY? A Massive Social Interaction Media Library
GIPHY is an online and mobile media catalog and search engine that hosts billions of GIFS, stickers, and, lately, Clips that users can share as visual reactions, as part of their casual conversations: in messaging apps, social media interactions, etc.
Right now, GIPHY boasts 1.7 billion daily users, generating 1.3 billion search queries and sending over 15 billion daily media impressions.
Plus, they have close to 14,000 API/DSK partners currently aggregating content from Giphy onto their own products, including main social networks and messaging channels like Instagram, Facebook, and Whatsapp –property of Meta–, as well as other social media channels like Twitter and Snapchat. It is also compatible with most mobile platforms.
GIFS and Stickers Coming to Shutterstock Services with New Consumer Market Possibilities
As Shutterstock’s CEO Paul Hennessy said during the announcement, this purchase serves multiple purposes within the company’s current business strategy.
On one side, it means an influx of freshly new and culturally relevant content –sourced from both individual artists who contribute original content and top verified media partners such as NBC, Disney, or Netflix– into Shutterstock’s library in the form of GIFS and stickers with different social and creative uses.
Then, these GIFS and stickers also help expand the company’s generative AI and metadata strategy, particularly regarding mobile generative AI at a global scale.
Finally, yet not less relevant, this acquisition opens up a whole new market that Shutterstock had never tapped into, end consumers using media as part of their daily social interactions. In the words of Hennessy: “This is an exciting next step in Shutterstock's journey as an end-to-end creative platform.” – The agency plans to include GIPHY content into Shutterstock Studios, for example, to give brands and businesses new ways to participate in customers’ daily conversations beyond the traditional marketing and advertising channels.
Do you use GIPHY in your digital-bound social life? What do you think about them coming to Shutterstock?
