Inspiring

Question

Sudden Drop in Adobe Stock Downloads — Anyone Else Experiencing This?

Forum|Forum|3 months ago
May 5, 2026
34 replies
949 views

Hi everyone,

I wanted to check if anyone else has recently experienced a noticeable drop in downloads and earnings on Adobe Stock.

Over the past period, I’ve seen a significant decline in performance. What makes it more unusual is that my content on other platforms continues to perform at a similar level, without the same drop.

In addition, my weekly ranking has changed quite a bit — it has gone from around the 700–800 range to approaching 2000 within a few months, which seems like a substantial shift.

I also want to note that I’ve been consistently uploading and updating my portfolio on a daily basis, so there hasn’t been any slowdown in activity on my side.

As far as I can tell, everything on my account appears normal, so I’m wondering if this could be related to general platform fluctuations, search ranking adjustments, or visibility changes rather than anything account-specific.

I understand that ups and downs are part of the process, but the sudden nature of this decline made me curious if others are seeing a similar trend.

If you’ve experienced something like this before, did things return to normal after a while? Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

ZALEZPHOTO

Legend

What kind of work are you uploading, photos, videos, illustrations, AI, what percentage is AI?

It would help understand your specific case.

ZALEZPHOTO

S

SANALRENKAuthor

Inspiring

I don’t have a single AI-generated piece of content, and I don’t create AI content. I’ve been regularly uploading content to Adobe Stock for 6–7 years, almost every day. I upload vector illustrations. As I mentioned, my sales suddenly dropped. Everything was normal before that, but I’ve experienced a drop of around 50%, and it happened all of a sudden.

I also contacted the support team. They told me that, as far as they could see, my account was normal and that there hadn’t been any changes to the search algorithm. However, if everything is normal, I’m having a hard time understanding such a dramatic drop in sales.

S

SANALRENKAuthor

Inspiring

Despite uploading new work consistently every day, my sales are declining day by day.
This downward trend started suddenly.
How can you explain this?

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

Perform keyword searches to see how well your content competes with other content in Stock inventory.

If buyers can’t find you in searches, they can’t buy what you’re selling.

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/content-policies-guidelines/metadata/tips-effective-titles-keywords.html

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

S

SANALRENKAuthor

Inspiring

The sudden drop in sales and performance on my 6–7-year-old account, where I have been consistently uploading content every day, as I mentioned above, is not related to keywords. I’m talking about a sudden decline in overall performance, and I’m not even referring to the sales of the new content I’ve uploaded.

S

Steve886

Participating Frequently

Weekly rank is a symptom, not a diagnosis.

Before blaming search changes or Firefly, split the decline three ways. Compare rolling 28-day downloads per 1,000 live assets, then break that number down by upload cohort and subject. If old and new cohorts fall together while the same work stays stable elsewhere, a platform-wide visibility or demand shift becomes more plausible. If older cohorts fade while recent work holds, portfolio aging or topic saturation is the likelier cause.

Daily uploads can hide this because the portfolio keeps growing while productivity per asset falls. I would compare those cohort curves before reading much into rank alone.

H

hombrelogo

Participating Frequently

I've been experiencing the same thing for the past 4-5 months. It seems they're prioritizing Firefly.

It's crazy that not only are we selling less, but we're also feeding the very tool that's causing us to sell less.😡

D

David32575362ue8q

Participant

Yes very much so for several months now there has been a significant downturn.

P

Peludis

Participant

Hola, yo también, creo que de alguna forma nos están perjudicando

D

David32575362ue8q

Participant

Yes, I have noticed the same. I am based in the UK, and my downloads have gone very quiet to say the least.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

In which country do you reside?

Contributors in some regions have been impacted by geolocation filters, the war and other economic factors.

To what extent this may impact individual Stock sales, we have no way of knowing.

All things being equal, if you’re providing high quality, in-demand content with good keywords & titles, customers will eventually find your work in web searches. But with so much competing content, yours may not appear on page1-2 results.

It seems, that the more sales an asset makes, the more visibility it gets.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

Kissumemore

Participant

Hi, I've also just experienced this for the past two weeks, and it's a really noticeable drop in earnings. I'm also trying to figure out if this is some kind of search index bug from Adobestock, or maybe even the visibility of the account content. This really feels abnormal. How are your earnings now? Have they returned to normal?

ZALEZPHOTO

Legend

My assets are photos and videos only, and
I’m experiencing sustained growth in downloads and sales for the last year, with every single month breaking a new high in both. Yes there are fluctuations during weeks with holidays.

I am sure contributing consistently is a big driver of my algorithm, 100 photos videos per month is doing it for me.

Big drops with AI assets appear to be happening for all contributors. There’s simply too much of it and beginning to look all the same.
I’m not interested in creating AI for various reasons, but if was, I’d be looking in creating AI videos (not animations)

What are your assets?

ZALEZPHOTO

Kissumemore

Participant

i create a high quality motion graphics without any ai works, I am also regularly active in producing assets every month, although not much because I prioritize quality over quantity. I also experienced rapid growth in downloads within a few months after starting, and June is exactly 1 year after I started. However, in the past 2 weeks it feels very strange because of a drastic decrease of up to 80% of the normal download decline.

angelaa93195398

Known Participant

Yes I’m experiencing very slow sales this past couple of weeks. I realise summer months are slower but this is unusually slow. Been doing stock for 7 years with quite a large portfolio. So far dips have usually worked out ok with a rush of sales after the dry period to balance things out, hope that’s the case this time too.

S

SANALRENKAuthor

Inspiring

In addition, the icon sets I have been carefully preparing with days of effort have recently started to show a different pattern. After uploading them, I notice that many of them are being rejected a few days later. Because of this, I now find myself uploading with some hesitation and concern about possible rejection. In fact, I’ve even started deleting some files while they are still in the review process.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

Possibly related:

“Mislabeled GenAI and Vector Graphics that aren’t what they claim to be” are frequent complaints reported in the Stock forum. This is just a small example.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

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