Google’s Torrence Boone joins the board of stock footage marketplace Pond5

Pond5, a company allowing users to buy and sell stock videos, photos and other media content, is adding to its board of directors a big name from ad industry — Torrence Boone, Google’s vice president of global agency sales and services.

Boone comes from the ad agency world, having previously worked at WPP, Publicis and Avenue A. His appointment could help Pond5 make further inroads into striking partnerships with agencies, brands and creators.

Not that the company has done too badly on that front — it’s been used by organizations and artists including Vice, MTV, HBO and Macklemore/Ryan Lewis. It even got a fun shout out on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight.

Boone told me Pond5 is well-positioned thanks to many of the broader changes in the marketing industry: “You look at this hyper-fragmented world, with the need for quick turnaround and much more cost-efficient production capabilities. They’ve built this technology platform that addresses all of those secular shifts and it’s created this pipeline of independent creators.”

And while there are plenty of other stock footage and photo providers, including Shutterstock, co-CEO Ryan Scott said Pond5 stands out thanks to things like its early focus on video and its “artist-first” philosophy — for example, allowing the creators to set their own prices.

In addition to announcing Boone’s appointment, Pond5 is celebrating the upload of its five millionth video, which comes from user Gali17, who will get a B&H gift certificate.

Looking ahead, the company is planning to move into 360-degree video for use in virtual reality content — in fact, the team gave me a quick demo of some early VR content and it looked great, allowing me to explore a number of different locations across the country (maybe the world?) in just a few minutes.