Pond5 is a New York–based

online marketplace An online marketplace (or online e-commerce marketplace) is a type of e-commerce website where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties. Online marketplaces are the primary type of multichannel ecommerce and can be a wa ...

for

royalty-free Royalty-free (RF) material subject to copyright or other intellectual property rights may be used without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use, per each copy or volume sold or some time period of use or sales. Computer standards ...

media. The company licenses

stock footage Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures, and file footage is film or video footage that can be used again in other films. Stock footage is beneficial to filmmakers as it saves shooting new material. A single piece of stock ...

stock music Production music (also known as stock music or library music) is recorded music that can be licensed to customers for use in film, television, radio and other media. Often, the music is produced and owned by production music libraries. Backgrou ...

stock photography Stock photography is the supply of photographs that are often licensed for specific uses. The stock photo industry, which began to gain hold in the 1920s, has established models including traditional macrostock photography, midstock photography, ...

sound effects A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. In m ...

Adobe After Effects Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Inc.; it is used for animation and in the post-production process of film making, video games and television production. Amo ...

templates, and

3D model In 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical coordinate-based representation of a surface of an object (inanimate or living) in three dimensions via specialized software by manipulating edges, vertices, and ...

s. Pond5 claims to have the world's largest collection of stock footage, and that they host more than 44 million clips as of January 2025. The company originally focused on selling

video clips A music video is a video that integrates a song or an album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device intended to promote the sale of mu ...

, but began to expand into other asset types following its 2013 acquisition of Pixmac, a stock photography site based in the Czech Republic. The acquisition added Pixmac’s 6,000+ photographers and support for 17 languages to the Pond5 marketplace.

History

Pond5 was founded in 2006 as a way for video producers to license content to third parties. It subsequently expanded into other media types, including photos, music, sound effects, 3D models, and

templates. Pond5 does not own the content on its site, but instead aggregates and sells content created and owned by its contributors. These contributors determine the selling price, and earn 50% of revenue. In July 2014, venture capital firms

Accel Partners Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is a global venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional ope ...

and

Stripes Group Stripes (Stripes, LLC) is a private equity and venture capital firm based in Manhattan, New York, founded in 2008.

invested $61 million in series A financing into Pond5./ In May 2022 Pond5 was acquired by

Shutterstock Shutterstock, Inc. is an American provider of stock photography, stock footage, stock music, and editing tools; it is headquartered in New York. Founded in 2002 by programmer and photographer Jon Oringer, Shutterstock maintains a library of ar ...

for $210 million USD.

Products and partnerships

In January 2014, Pond5 partnered with

Adobe Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is use ...

to create a plugin for

Adobe Premiere Pro Adobe Premiere Pro is a video editing application developed by Adobe Inc. and is distributed as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. It is primarily used for producing high-quality videos across various industries. History Original A ...

integrating the Pond5 video collection with the editing suite. In early 2015, the company launched the

Public Domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

Project, a free online repository of nearly 100,000 digitalized media assets. The original business model focused on licensing individual video clip sales. However, in February 2016, the company unveiled a subscription product. In late December 2016, the company rolled out extended licenses aimed at attracting large enterprise customers. In December 2018, the company announced a partnership with the

Tribeca Film Institute The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) is a non-profit arts organization based in New York City, founded in 2001 by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff following the September 11 attacks as a means to revitalize the arts community in lowe ...

, launching a program to provide grants of up to $7500 as well as mentorship, content and education to independent filmmakers. In June 2019, the company launched partnerships with

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

, Cover Video, and Newsflare to create the world's largest collection of royalty-free editorial video.

References

External links

* {{Shutterstock Stock footage Stock photography Photo archives in the United States Companies based in New York City 2006 establishments in New York (state) 2022 mergers and acquisitions Shutterstock

History

Products and partnerships

See also

References

External links