AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands—Stella Agapiou wanted new challenges after working for years at a mainstream company doing display advertising for renowned brands such as Coca-Cola and Volkswagen.
A native of Cyprus who was living in London, Agapiou landed a position as Media Buyer Coordinator for LiveJasmin, one of the largest live webcam sites in the world. Now she’s based in Luxembourg—and she’s happier.
“I think it’s better and it’s more fun,” Agapiou told AVN Friday on the first full day of Webmaster Access 2018. “I feel like the people are more open and nicer compared to the mainstream. It’s an industry that makes everyone feel welcome. It feels like it was the right choice.”
Stationed at the AWE booth at the Doubletree by Hilton Central Station, Agapiou chatted with attendees as the minutes counted down to the annual Meet Market, one of the centerpieces of the four-day conference, presented by AgeID. AWE, also known as AdultWebmasterEmpire, is the official partner and exclusive affiliate program of LiveJasmin.
“AWEmpire is mainly for every affiliate who is willing to run CPA, CPL and white-label,” Agapiou noted.
Agapiou said her team also journeyed to the 14th annual conference to reconnect with their existing partners and introduce DoublePimp as their Agency of Record. In May, DoublePimp signed on to orchestrate all of LiveJasmin’s media buying in an effort to increase companies’ advertising ROI.
“So that’s the main target,” Agapiou continued. “To bring more people on board and make our existing partners feel safe that this relationship is going to last and it’s just going to get stronger.”
Several seasoned professionals traveled from abroad to attend the adult industry’s longest running webmaster show that attracts influencers from every sector of the multi-billion-dollar business of sex.
The leader of the notorious VNA Army, Vicky Vette, made the trip to Webmaster Access for the first time in her AVN Hall of Fame career.
“I’m just here to meet new people,” said Vette, who oversees a network of more than two dozen highly trafficked solo girl sites. “We’ve never done any of the European shows before. It’s sort of weird. Everybody knows us, but we don’t know everybody…”
Vette revealed VNA will soon be launching sites for Kendra James, Maxine X and Samantha Grace. “I still believe in solo girl sites,” Vette said.
Speaking of first-timers, Texas Patti, the excitable star from Münster, Germany, turned up at the event wearing one of her signature colors—red—along with her business partner Patrick Mirror Man. Patti, who is also a producer that splits time between the U.S. and Deutschland, said she was excited about the October 9th DVD release of Texas Patti's Fucked in Hollywood from Sascha Koch’s label AltErotic.
“We will have the DVD just in time for Venus [in Berlin],” Patti told AVN, noting they also were in talks to have broadcast distribution through Germany’s Beate Uhse—she has long been the face of the TV division.
The parade of rookie WMA attendees spanned the spectrum of adult tech entrepreneurs. One U.S.-based executive from TEXEL made the trip to explore the possibilities of his “teleporting” service platform.
Leveraging unique technological capabilities, TEXEL enables content providers delivery of VR-based immersive experiences with 360-degree video sharpness the company claims has never been seen before. The result is end viewers are “teleported” into the center of action with a “virtual seat.” Among the proven applications are live sporting events and concerts.
William De Felice, the Rome, Italy-based sales director for Ericsson UDN network, said his first laps around WMA were fruitful.
“We do the streaming part of the business of anyone who has content and wants to reach end users,” De Felice told AVN.
His London-based sales colleague, Mark Kemp, said Ericsson is “the new global video and streaming media platform for the next generation of content delivery.”
“We’re just rolling it out now,” Kemp said. “We have offices also in Spain and Germany and the head office is in the United States—based in Boston.”
As the Meet Market entered its second hour in the Eastwood Restaurant on the ground level of the 11-story hotel, Paxum’s Ruth Blair told AVN her company has added more than 20,000 customers in 2018 alone.
Blair leads the one-year-old Paxum Bank marketing team from her home in Vancouver.
“Paxum Bank is not new but it’s still fresh,” said Blair, noting Paxum also has offices in Montreal and Romania, along with a team in the camming hotbed of Colombia. “We’ve got quite a few clients and they’re using the bank because it allows them to receive and send third-party wires. … They can just go on their Paxum Bank account and send everything from there. So it makes it a lot more streamlined, like a one-stop shop. And, we’re adult friendly. That’s a really big thing.”
David Beinicke, the sales manager for VXCash, the affiliate program for German live-cam juggernaut Visit-X, said his program is closing in on the 20-year milestone.
“It’s really huge in the German-speaking market—Germany, Austria and Switzerland,” said Beinicke, who is based near Frankfurt, Germany, and has worked for VXCash for the past six months. “We also launched a new product this year, FlirtLife, for mainstream dating. We want to get deeper into the dating market also, and market it to cams.”
Dave, affiliate manager from XLoveCam—whose North American sister site is SexLoveCam— traveled to The Netherlands’ capital from his residence in Curacao for his third WMA experience.
“We’re just looking for affiliates here,” Dave told AVN as he scouted the show floor. “We have momentum behind us. We’ve won three awards and that’s bringing in a surge of affiliates. We’re working extremely hard to generate new business opportunities for affiliates and models. We’ve also started testing CPL with some affiliates.”
No matter where someone turned Friday, the diversity of the 2018 show was evident.
Lukas Taylor, a native of Sydney, Australia, who recently moved to L.A., came straight from the airport to the Meet Market, where he was discussing the benefits of DMCA Force and DigiRegs, evangelizing for the regulation and protection of adult content.
“We offer video finger-printing service which is a lot more advanced than name search,” Taylor told AVN. “Video finger printing is an audio-visual recognition. So even if a watermark is removed we can detect the content.”
Taylor, whose career covers investment banking, corporate software and adult, will join Sunday’s anticipated Germany-Eastern Europe panel at 12 noon.
He will be accompanied on the stage by German executive Christian Kreul, an independent consultant with 15 years experience in various industry verticals who helps companies that are interested in entering the European market.
Kreul’s Rolodex includes everything from billers to age verification providers to live cam insiders.
“I am analyzing cam sites, giving them ideas and suggestions how to improve it,” said Kreul, who lives five minutes from both Switzerland and France by car in the southern-most part of Germany.
Kreul is also well versed in the logistics of cryptocurrency ICO’s and will be speaking on Saturday’s blockchain technology seminar at 11 a.m.
Meanwhile, Mindgeek Affiliate Sales Manager Adam Levy will make a special presentation at 4 p.m. Saturday on “The Rise of Adult Gaming.”
Levy plans to share the success story of his company’s groundbreaking gaming vertical—Nutaku, a Canadian hentai game portal that receives more than 25 million North American customers a month and close to 100 million visits per day. That makes it the most visited English-language adult gaming website in existence.
Norman Hauwert, a popular Amsterdam local who is global business development manager for Reflected Networks, will lead the all-star live-cams panel at 1 p.m. Sunday.
Hauwert said Reflected’s slogan—emblazoned on his stylish "Beefcake" and "Geek" t-shirt giveaways this weekend—is “whatever it takes.”
“We basically take care of the whole infrastructure problem for customers,” Hauwert told AVN. “Of course we have different products. We have the servers. We have the CDN network. We have storage, but it’s more the support that you get that gives the extra value.”
Despite almost two decades of business for the Boston-based firm, Reflected Networks did not used to attend industry conferences, according to Hauwert.
“They got their customers by word of mouth,” he said.
Webmaster Access attendees went in mass to the "Social Friday XXL" kickoff party at the Butcher Social Club as the weekend started, teaming with the Affiliate Business Club for what was beginning to look like an all-nighter for some at the iconic A’DAM Tower.
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