Now that 2008 is officially behind us, the outlook for 2009 is definitely on everyone's mind. As part of looking forward and planning for potential trends, we are looking very closely at traffic patterns and how they are evolving.
What's happening with the economy and financial markets speaks to a growing shift that will emerge where direct response media (aka traffic that converts) becomes the dominant priority, even beyond asserting brand identity. The new world is that much more about economic transparency and accountability than it's ever been. For adult Internet companies, happily, most of us have been ready for this mindset for years.
Whether through affiliate marketing or the purchase of advertising, adult site managers have always operated with a clear sense that the traffic you take in has to work financially or it's not beneficial. The outer business world is starting to take heed.
Changing patterns in adult traffic - what's actually different now or will be different soon? The two areas of change with adult Web traffic that all adult webmasters, affiliates and merchants alike, should be watching closely are distribution channels and site (product) depth.
Let's tackle the site depth area first as this relates both to what consumers want in a user experience and what higher-end traffic providers need to distribute risk when marketing your sites. Site depth relates to stepping away from a predefined mass-market paysite tour approach for delivery of your content library. Everyone has seen the rising visibility of live cam, VOD, DVD, and video-clip download sites. This is not simply due to these types of sites having the ability to monetize users better or differently than paysites. More specifically, an adult consumer site that functions as a content access catalog (straight, gay, or niche), where users search for or navigate directly to content they like, greatly distributes the risks associated with advertising and promotion.
Rather than merchants promoting the top-level page(s) of their sites, as most have done for years, merchants can allow the actual commodities they sell be the sales drivers, rather than the sites themselves. The consumer in many cases no longer has to care what site provides access to the content he or she wants for pleasure. As long as when they poke around for something to buy, they are directed to a page on your site that offers immediate access to view specific content they seek, this will allow you to drive many more streams of traffic than presently, to drive sales that will originate from category and product-level pages of your website.
On the distribution channels or traffic providers' side, the shift is already moving away from extreme reliance on affiliates to drive sales for merchants. With so many paid ad options already, and more soon to be available, merchants are reducing their legal exposure through dealings with ad agencies, ad networks, and major search engines, while increasing traffic and sales. On its own, this issue is not newsworthy. The update ties into how adult webmasters can more easily source better converting traffic, even from ad sources they already work with -- deep link friendly marketing.
Complementing the growing consumer interest of paying in slices of content access, live or recorded, website operators who run sites with catalog-style access to content downloads or live material are well served by architecting their sites so that their traffic partners may promote site elements, rather than entire sites. Major search engines and adult traffic hub sites can more effectively deliver traffic that converts to pages of websites offering content that users want, even if that content is only a small element of overall site offerings.
On a financial level, being able to advertise dozens to thousands of pages of a content-access site allows campaigns to cut financial risk greatly. Pushing more traffic to several smaller niche or keyword areas is one of the best ways to distribute advertising risks, versus the traditional approach of sending all traffic to specific single-genre site tours.
Aggregate and distribute widely!
Scott Rabinowitz is co-founder of Traffic Dude, a full-service online advertising agency focused on the adult entertainment industry. The company sells straight, gay, and niche specific direct response consumer targeted ad space for major search engines, premium destination sites, and established print publications. In addition, the company provides advertising sales services to websites seeking management of their ad-supported revenue streams. For more information on the company and its offerings, please visit www.TrafficDude.com.
This article originally appeared in the February issue of AVN Online. To subscribe, visit AVNMediaNetwork.com/subscribe.
