We Tested Unsplash as a Marketing Tool. (Results included)

In recent months, Unsplash has gotten a bad wrap. Photographers looking to make royalties have always had a problem with the platform. And copyright agencies have treated its usage as nearly sacrilegious. While these may be valid concerns for people out to protect their work from the world, I see a different side. As a photographer, I’ve always viewed the platform as a means to share and make the internet more beautiful. As a marketer, I look at the Unsplash as another way to gain reach. Today, I would like to make the case that Unsplash should be a notable platform in your advertising tool belt. To illustrate, Variant Media put together a year long test using 56 photos we had sitting around. The purpose of the test was to define metrics attributable to Unsplash and see if the platform was a viable solution to improve meaningful reach for a brand.

Note: this test occurred with one cohort of 56 photos, uploaded all at the same time, at the beginning of a year long period. We did not upload any additional photos or pay much attention to the platform following the upload outside of monitoring metrics.

Results

During the year period, we saw 1.3 Million impressions and just under 9,000 downloads.

Overall I would say it’s a win for little to no effort (given these photos were old and would not have been used much in the future). Unsplash has proved that simply posting your photos can provide meaningful reach to any company who has photos to spare.

We’re not impressed by the likes or clicks to our site, but the impression count scaled to a avg of 10% week over week with about 1200 extra views a day until about 3 months in. The following 3 months, impressions leveled out however remained at or near peak levels for an additional 4 months. This is when we began to see a sharp decline in impressions before it leveled out for the remainder of our test.

Insights

Downloads and potential crediting are interesting data point to consider as well. Possible benefits to this strategy such as back links from other websites, brand exposure and a sharable photo with your name attached, might make the platform worth the effort. However it’s important to note that all of these benefits are top of funnel and will not result in immediate conversion.

In short, Unsplash is a fantastic Top of Funnel tool for a long term strategy. It can create digital value for your brand and dramatically increase exposure.