Internext Las Vegas in January marked my 10th year in the adult industry. As I sit back and reflect on the past 10 years, I think content has almost gone back to its beginnings.
Granted, when I started thinking about this, VHS and DVD were the only means of distribution for video. The content was somewhat straightforward in the beginning: Gay, straight, softcore, hardcore or just "blue content" was the adult genre, pure and simple. We were just a genre. Some studios were more hardcore than others, and some had their own hooks or concepts, but for the most part, it was pretty basic. If you knew who Linda Lovelace was, you knew what blue content was.
When some of the first Web-based reality genres started gaining traction, one of my first Web clients, Ox Ideas, pressed its first DVD. This was after some great success online. Mind you, in 2001 and 2002, I really started seeing a lot of different niches hitting the scene. By 2003 and 2004, companies were shooting many niches. Some carved out huge profits and realized that the online following was amazing and it was very possible to create great revenue, as the Web and video companies were not creating enough niches fast enough.
By 2005, keeping up with all the niches was impossible, and keeping up with the production was even more impossible for some. At this point, the number of affiliate programs, affiliate sites, production companies (Web- and video-based) and aggregators was at an all-time high. There was a flood of DVD product into the game, in a stunning variety of content offerings and distribution models.
The past two years have brought even more content production. The number of video titles released each week is incredible, and it's mind-boggling to consider the amount of straight-to-the-Web production, amateur content and user-generated content. And the number of ways to monetize and distribute the content is just insane.
It may be impossible to count the niches there are today, especially when you get down to the micro-niches and super-micro-niches (e.g., interracial blowjob cum-swapping). When people ask what niche is the hot one today or this year, it's kind of hard to answer.
As I see more and more companies looking for those hooks again, those hook words are not niches as often as they are terms like "exclusive," "semi-exclusive" and "HD." In 2007, I had lots of requests for some pretty interesting niches like the hardcore micro-niches. The closer to pushing the envelope, the better.
This did not surprise me. Niche content isn't going away; it will continue to get crazier and crazier every year. But with the market being oversaturated with DVD content, companies are looking for what to do next. They're realizing that producing good content has become mandatory, but it's not cheap or easy. They're also finding key words like "exclusive," "semi-exclusive" and "HD" are critical when it comes to conversion and retention for both programs and websites. People finally are realizing that cutting up DVD content that has a model's foot in it does not constitute producing foot-fetish content.
I have always believed quality, integrity and the means through which content is distributed determine whether a company will succeed. In 2008, I think we will really see companies produce a lot of exclusive and semi-exclusive HD content. I think there will be a return to the old days of genres instead of niches and lots of gonzo and hardcore content. Some companies will continue to thrive in their prospective niches and micro-niches, and I'd love to see that. But lots of companies will go with mega-type sites with tons of content - not just the same old DVD content or sites, either - with more exclusive and semi-exclusive content that appeals to a broader audience.
Going back to the question about what will be the hot niche for 2008, I think we will see lots of genre-style content that appeals to the masses, as opposed to going after smaller groups of people with niches. Also, companies will still try to push the envelope and create even more niches, because as production gets boring for companies and producers, they will always want to come up with something new. As we all know, in this day and age, that's a tough thing to do.
--Stephen Bugbee is the president of Matrix Content.
This article originally appeared in the March 2008 edition of AVN Online magazine. To subscribe to AVN Online, visit AVNMediaNetwork.com/subscriptions/.
