LAS VEGAS—As managing director of both Jasmin and Adult Webmaster Empire and CEO of parent company Docler Holding, Laszlo Czero brings youthful exuberance and fierce determination not only to his job, but also the industry as a whole. That was evident during his keynote speech, “2015: The Year of the Changes,” delivered Monday during Internext at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas.
Czero started out the speech with a bit of his personal background: His web development skills emerged at the age of 8, and he became the stereotypical computer geek, “secluded for years,” he said. But when he was 22, he heard a quote from Bill Gates, who said that Microsoft’s success was not attributable to his computer skills but rather to choosing the right people. After that he decided to change and make his way into the management side of the business.
In his time with the Luxembourg-based Docler Holding, Czero has been the brains behind several of the company’s side projects, including Oranum.com, which features fortune tellers, psychics and the like. He was also named one of the Top 100 influential leaders in Luxembourg and has seen a great amount of support for the company from the government. Docler Holding currently has 65 companies and more than 1,000 employees worldwide, and their interests range from adult websites to Hollywood productions to manufacturing of sporting equipment. With more than $300 million USD in revenues for Jasmin.com alone, the company also spends more than $20 million USD annually on charities, Czero said.
But it’s not the accomplishments of the past that Jasmin and other web-based adult companies need to focus on, he said. It’s the future.
“I talk to people all the time and they tell me their revenues are stabile or down a little,” he told the crowd. It’s a trend that needs to be examined and responded to, he noted.
Czero explained several reasons could be contributing to the decline in revenues: changing user behavior, being among the primary ones.
“More people are using their mobile devices more often, even when they are watching TV,” he said. “But mobile is not the solution for the adult industry.”
Knowing he was ruffling some feathers with his statement, Czero explained that adult content does not transfer well to mobile devices, and that conversion rates can be 20 times worse than conversion rates from someone using a desktop or laptop computer.
“That is our data,” he said. “That is what we are seeing at Jasmin.com.”
Additionally, he noted, more explicit content is more readily available than in the past. TV shows, movies, and music videos are more risqué, and the content can be viewed almost anywhere on a number of devices. Society is more open, he said, for better or for worse.
Czero also explained that he has not seen any innovation from the industry for some time now.
“If someone asked me about the last big innovation in adult, I couldn’t list anything that wasn’t at least 10 years old,” he said. “There have been small innovations, yes, nothing big.”
But rather than just list the problems, Czero came prepared with suggestions for companies to survive and thrive.
“These are just suggestions,” he said. “Take them or leave them.”
One thing that could be huge for the industry, he said, is the ability to shift content from a mobile device to a television. Innovative hardware and software developments are coming, he said, and the ability to project directly from a phone to a bigger TV screen will help the adult industry, he said.
There also needs to be a shift in thinking about the talent, he said. Jasmin.com has noticed more traffic and better conversion if the talent is referred to as a model as opposed to a porn star.
“Think of them as TV hosts instead of porn stars,” he said.
That also helps with Jasmin.com’s efforts to create more mainstream affiliations, he said.
“We can step out of the shadow of being considered a porn company,” he said.
And public relations can help adult companies branch out and increase revenues. By being associated with celebrities or bigger companies, he said, Jasmin.com has benefited with more exposure. He cited the song “Hey Jasmin” by Flo-Rida and commercials the company made for last year’s Super Bowl.
In conclusion, Czero offered succinct, sound advice.
“If you and you company are not making a major change in the next two or three years, then you will miss out on new developments,” he said. “Change the way you look at your users, because they have changed. Let’s realize the world is changing, and that we have to change also.”
