Catch&Release

Market position

Catch+Release positions itself against the commercial stock image and footage market long dominated by Getty Images and Shutterstock, arguing that staged stock imagery resonates less with consumers than authentic creator content; its investor cites 207 million content creators worldwide, 750 billion images on the internet, and a finding that 63% of consumers prefer creator-led content from brands. Third-party listings place it among content licensing and creator-marketing platforms including IZEA, Mavrck, Launchmetrics, Traackr, Upfluence, CreatorIQ and GRIN.

Differentiation rests on proprietary assessment of whether internet-found content can be licensed (the licensability score), automated rights clearance with real-time approval tracking, and breadth of access to creator-uploaded content across the open web rather than a curated stock library, with integrations to existing stock marketplaces.

Technology

The product includes a web browser extension that lets marketers save media found online and assigns a proprietary "licensability score" based on signals such as the poster, description and comments, indicating how likely a piece of content can be licensed. The platform analyzes content for elements requiring clearance or obscuring, such as company logos, secures the necessary rights, tracks clearance approvals in real time, and provides cloud-based discovery, curation and collaboration tools. Reported technologies in use include React, Java, Backbone.js, RequireJS, Chakra UI, Amazon Route 53, HubSpot Analytics and TikTok Pixel.

Go-to-market

The company sells to brands and advertising agencies and pursues content-supply and co-marketing arrangements, such as its exclusive commercial film licensing partnership with Magnum Photos, alongside an internal creative unit (creativelab) led by a hired creative director.

Brands, advertising agencies, marketers and creative/production teams that need commercially licensed imagery and video for campaigns, ranging from mid-market advertisers to large enterprises.

Geography

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, with employees reported across North America, Africa and Asia and a creator network described as worldwide.

History

After starting as an image research business and becoming a venture-backed product company in 2015, Catch&Release raised a $14 million Series A led by Accel in April 2021, bringing total capital raised to about $26 million at that time. In 2021 the company added a finance director hired from Facebook and announced an exclusive commercial film licensing partnership with the artist collective Magnum Photos. Tom Christmann joined as Creative Director of its creativelab unit in June 2022. In August 2023 the company announced an additional $8.8 million in Series A funding led by returning investor Accel, and in September 2023 it introduced new product features aimed at streamlining how companies access creator content.

Risks & controversies

The business operates in a competitive content licensing market alongside large incumbents such as Getty Images and Shutterstock, which have themselves added user-generated content libraries, and depends on securing rights and clearances for third-party material found online.