B2B Opps: Shutterstock increases spend under new CMO (Score 75)

Sales Lead: Shutterstock's leadership mentioned in a recent earnings call that they have underinvested in marketing.

• The company will ramp up paid spend to improve its conversion funnel and return to business growth with an eye on ROI.
  • Shutterstock will specifically bolster performance marketing spend in its e-Commerce sales channel during H2 2023.
• In Q2, Shutterstock ran more experiments - all focused on conversion effectiveness - than it did in the past three years.
• The company has also relied on acquisitions and its new CMO for recent growth.
• The company will likely:
  • Bolster ad spend
  • Continue shifting strategy
  • Conduct agency reviews under a new CMO (more below)
• Target demographic: 
  • ​​​​​​​Business DMs

Additional spending insights:

• Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: So far this year, Shutterstock has allocated roughly $10.1k toward national TV commercials; by this point in 2022, it had not yet utilized this channel.
  • Last year: The company did not utilize this channel last year but allocated around $3.2m in 2021.
  • 2023 ad programming: Shutterstock's 2023 commercials have targeted male sports enthusiasts watching 2023 Australian Open Tennis, Tenis Australian Open 2023, and SportsCenter.
• Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: The company has spent approximately $445.1k on digital ads YTD, less than a quarter of the approximately $2.2m spent by this point of 2022.
  • YTD data: Since the beginning of 2023, Shutterstock has earned ~62.6m digital impressions via desktop display (54%), YouTube (24%), Facebook (11%), desktop video (6%), Instagram (3%), and mobile display (2%) ads.
    • The company has placed most of this year's desktop display ads site direct (83%) onto destinations such as YouTube (16%), yahoo.com, oprah.com, shermanstravel.com, and marketwatch.com.
  • Last year: Last year's estimated full-year spend of $3.2m reached less than half of that of $6.6m in 2021.
• Additional channel insights  
  • The company invests in Google Ads along with digital, Facebook, Instagram, and online video (primarily via Youtube Android and Youtube.com) ads.
  • Shutterstock sponsors podcasts such as This Week in Startups, The Crazy Ones, Niche Pursuits Podcasts, Daily Easy Spanish, and Founder's Journal.

Additional agency insights:

• Opportunity: If you haven't yet done so, reach out soon to get on the radar of Rachel Mahoney, Shutterstock's CMO since May 2023.
• Current agency roster:
  • Horizon Media​​​​​​​: Media AOR

Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix; podcast insights by Podchaser.