As adult entertainment continues to make strides into the mainstream, several webmasters are taking advantage of the lucrative opportunity for increased exposure in a traditionally untested field.
Once relegated to the darkest corners of the entertainment world, the adult industry has typically been seen as the redheaded stepchild of the business—entertainment’s dirty little secret. In the last few years, however, something strange has been happening. Through a slow but steady progression of mainstream films and television projects dealing with the X-rated industry (the Oscar-nominated The People vs. Larry Flynt, the recent theatrical documentary Inside Deep Throat, as well as HBO’s Emmy-nominated Rated X and Showtime’s popular reality series Family Business,), and the emergence of “crossover” talents like Traci Lords, Jenna Jameson and (gasp!) Paris Hilton, adult entertainment has been undergoing a facelift of sorts. Though not yet invited to dine at the White House, the adult industry has become less and less taboo and more and more (dare we say it?) respectable. And it’s a phenomenon that many industry players have recently begun to take advantage of through increased marketing to the mainstream.
From the ubiquitous Jameson and her successful affiliate program (www.jennacash.com) to “reality porn” sites like GirlsGoneWild.com and BangBus.com, adult webmasters have slowly taken the initiative in increasing their marketability by stepping out of their own backyards. “If you’re watching TV or reading the paper, it seems that everything is beginning to mesh,” says JennaCash Affiliate Manager Chandie Foster. “I mean, there are a lot of TV shows that I’m watching that aren’t even on cable that sometimes make me blush. So it seems like a good time for adult webmasters to reach out to some of those venues and see what they can come up with.”
Foster points to Jameson’s many guest spots on The Howard Stern Show and a recent partnership with sex-personals site SexSearch.com as examples of JennaCash’s forays into the “outer spectrum,” while last year’s publication of Jameson’s tell-all autobiography How to Make Love Like a Porn Star (Regan Books) has brought the site a good deal of extra traffic from nontraditional venues. “We’ve found that we’re able to house [the book] on Web pages that are not necessarily directed to adult sites, but that all come back around into our portfolio,” Foster says. The lucrative deal with SexSearch, meanwhile, came about due to Jameson’s increased popularity in the mainstream. “SexSearch does not promote adult sites to their members,” Foster notes. “However, because of Jenna’s mainstream appeal, the relationship was formed and exceptions were made.”
Meanwhile, the folks over at the Adult Friend Finder Network (www.friendfinderinc.com) have also found entryways into areas outside adult networks by building a “spider web” of sites that are all linked together. “We have a lot of feelers out into many mainstream markets,” says FriendFinder’s General Manager Jack Mardack. “The inter-relation between our sites—what makes us a true network—is the fact that our upsell strategy from site to site is all oriented toward bringing global traffic sources from the mainstream directly to bear on our best converting sites.” And, because AdultFriendFinder.com and the many other sex personals sites included in that web are not adult-specific (such as Passion.com, a repurposed, “softcore” version of AdultFriendFinder that is easily marketed to mainstream end users), Mardack notes, they lay the groundwork for increased recognition and profit—without a lot of overhead. “We throw most of our money at affiliates and ad buys, purchasing CPM-based advertising on publishing sites that run the gamut from mainstream news sites to dating-oriented sites,” he says. “We don’t spend a lot of money on billboards. We don’t need to.”
According to Katie Smith, President of marketing/business development/digital media agency THROB (www.3ob.com), increased visibility in the mainstream is simply a result of successful branding. “The mainstreaming of porn has everything to do with names such as Vivid and Jenna,” she says. “The brand that offers an experience wins. [People go] out of their way to buy coffee at Starbucks. Why? Because they offer an experience, consistency, and status. When you think of Playboy, Vivid and Hustler, you know exactly what you will get. There is nothing more valuable than that.”
Echoing the sentiments of her peers, Smith also says that, with increased media exposure to similar brands, adult content is more ensconced in the collective mainstream consciousness than ever. “In my opinion, what has really happened is a sexual revolution that was started with Playboy,” she says. “Over the years, little girls and boys were raised in a more sexually aware environment. Look at Deep Throat—that movie launched in local theaters all around the nation. More conservative parts of society have always fought it, but it will always be here. There is no stopping it at this point.” Smith knows that of which she speaks; as the producer of the now-annual Digital Hollywood Adult conference (a seminar that strives to bring adult and mainstream webmasters together) she has maintained that the mainstream has much to learn from adult—especially given the many accomplishments in technology and business that have helped to make adult a $10 billion industry.
“What I love about this industry is the fact that they [adult webmasters] have found what works and inevitably pushed it to mainstream, such as VHS, DVD, streaming movies, online affiliate programs, IP VoD, et cetera,” she gushes. “No other industry, besides pharmaceuticals or gambling, does it better.” Sadly, she notes, “It’s not something that is easily exportable.”
Others agree. Says Scott Rabinowitz, president of online advertising and monetization services provider Traffic Dude (www.trafficdude.com), “It can either be very expensive or fairly time consuming to make deals and actually put them into place and get good quality customers coming out of mainstream environments. Generally, if it’s advertising, it’s going to cost more because the mainstream is going to sell adult traffic the same way they sell mainstream traffic. Whereas the average adult company is typically selling on a click-through basis, a mainstream site might have you pay for 1,000 exposures.”
Rabinowitz fingers sites like Sex.com, NakedSword.com, ConsumptionJunction.com, Sssh.com and popular adult search engine Booble.com as examples of adult webmasters getting it right, adding that “gateway” sites (such as women’s erotica and mainstream gay content like that found at Gay.com) have an even greater advantage because they can be easily marketed to both adult and mainstream end users. “[These are] areas where partnerships with mainstream are easier to obtain. If you have a women’s erotica pay site—even though it’s selling access to adult content just like every other—the packaging and mindset are such that it’s more reasonable to think that a mainstream lifestyle site for women would be interested in providing access to adult content to its users.” Meanwhile, he adds, “Gay sites like NakedSword have been able to create plugs in marketing relationships where they can work with mainstream sources of gay erotica, like Gay.com, which is not specifically an adult site, yet at the same time has users that may be just as interested in finding adult entertainment after they’re done looking at their stock portfolio.”
Many industry players echo Rabinowitz’s sentiments. Mardack, who acknowledges that a good deal of FriendFinder’s traffic comes from hybrid sites such as Bullz-Eye.com, says, “Gateway sites are the key to mainstream access. This is where we get a good capture without having to limit ourselves to only be on porn sites.”
Perhaps the best example of a successful hybrid site is MrSkin (www.mrskin.com), the popular Web space devoted to photos and video content of Hollywood movie starlets who have appeared naked in mainstream films. With Mr. Skin (aka Tony McBride) making frequent radio appearances throughout the year (a regular on Howard Stern himself, McBride usually charts at least 500 radio appearances a year), as well as the publication of the recent Mr. Skin’s Encyclopedia (St. Martin’s Press) and a partnership with Philadelphia-based TLA Video, the site has broadened its visibility ten-fold. (Add to this traditional adult marketing strategies, such as partnerships with affiliate programs like FlashCash and StiffyCash, and you’ve got a successful model for straddling the fence between worlds.) Citing GirlsGoneWild as another example of a successful hybrid crossover, MrSkin Marketing Director Derek Meklir says, “The audience is limited to a certain number of people, but once you get to the mainstream, it opens up a whole lot of doors to a whole bunch of success.”
Not to mention an untapped source of preferable new customers. According to Rabinowitz, “The reasoning for [sites like Booble] going after visibility in the mainstream space is that the quality of the end users that they get from their efforts is infinitely better than the quality of end users that are coming from within adult properties alone.” Specifically, he says, those end users are preferable because they have not yet figured out the “ins and outs” of adult Websites. “The people that are going through mainstream search engines [to find adult content] are obviously not as cognizant of the fact that they can find ‘freebies,’” he says. “If an end user finds what he’s looking for via an ad from, say, a Yahoo search, they’re not only more likely to convert to a paying customer, but the [adult webmaster] gets the join with the least amount of traffic possible—and it’s going to be a better-quality, actual active customer.”
Still, not everybody is ready to jump on the adult-to-mainstream bandwagon just yet, as even mainstream-friendly sites like MrSkin get their share of brush-offs from having one foot in the adult world. “It’s not like everyone wants to push us,” Meklir stresses. “There are definitely a lot of companies that turn us away.” He refers to allegedly “lenient” sponsors like beer companies as examples. “They can put out an ad with two twin girls in small bikini tops, yet they don’t want to be associated with anything ‘adult.’ We ride that fine line where we consider ourselves to be a mainstream site, but we’re pulled into the adult realm. It really depends who you talk to. Sometimes they’re like, ‘Yeah, I love you!’ and sometimes it’s, ‘Yeah, I love you, but I can’t do anything with you. You’re adult.’”
“I think trying to sell adult to mainstream sites is very limited,” says Harry Kenney, co-founder of Mainstream Webmasters (www.mainstreamwebmasters.com), a site that helps to introduce adult webmasters into the mainstream fold (see sidebar). “I don’t think it works well. If you’re looking for porn, you expect to find porn, and the same applies to people looking for mainstream products. I think it can be done if it’s done more reservedly, more cleverly. There are some hybrid products—Viagra comes to mind—that might [convert traffic] to adult content, but I think you might see more mainstream products like herbal supplements and Evidence Eraser software on adult sites instead of adult content on mainstream sites.”
One reason for this, Kenney says, is that with market saturation comes less payback, and the diminishing returns are forcing webmasters to graze in greener pastures. “The way things are just getting tighter and tighter and tighter in this business, you are seeing people needing to diversify because their income from adult is decreasing,” he offers. “Or you’re seeing people completely leaving the field and going mainstream using the adult tactics—bringing what they learned in adult and saying, ‘How can I apply that to mainstream?’”
Adult business savvy may not be enough, however. Many are quick to point out that the mainstream is indeed a whole new ballgame from the X-rated industry. “Mainstream is not as quick as adult, which can be very frustrating,” Smith notes. “You must be patient. Handholding is always necessary; you must educate mainstream clients that there is a smarter way to manage traffic. They are hiring you for your brain—your experience.”
Meklir also stresses the importance of treading lightly. “Just remember that mainstream companies are much more business-oriented. They’re not thinking, ‘Oh, this’ll make us money.’ They’re thinking, ‘This’ll hurt our image.’ So you have to really make the money sound big and let them know that it’s not going to hurt them to be related to you.”
Mardak, however, maintains that it’s important for webmasters to think outside the sex box. “The first thing we have to do is begin to experiment with the different kinds of sites and content and draw people in in ways other than with explicit hardcore sex,” he begins. “Right now, we’re still quasi-dependent on the publishers of certain [hybrid] sites because they’re in control of that threshold. We need to take control of the boundary between adult and mainstream. We need to start making those sites so that we won’t be in a position of vulnerability and beholden to creators of such sites.”
Of course, having a product that people need, being organized, and building a solid reputation are always good places to start, says Smith. “Create demand,” she instructs, adding that it’s imperative for adult webmasters looking to branch out to “be, look and act professional. Don’t fake it—be it. Have a smart business structure with efficient and effective processes, know the right people, and always do what you say you will. There are no second chances for proving yourself.”
For his part, Rabinowitz says that it’s all about having a little patience. “I think it’s more difficult for adult webmasters to tap into the mainstream if you’re looking for a quick return on your investment,” he says. “There’s not quite the same accountability in measurement. I think the webmasters that are most stable are looking ahead a year, two years, five and ten years out. There may not be as many of those, but they are the ones that are going to benefit by entering into relationships with the mainstream.”
In fact, building relationships is what it’s all about, Rabinowitz adds, stressing that no adult webmaster can afford to not court the mainstream. “It is believed that a minimum one-third of all the actual searches being performed by consumers, on every search engine in the world, is based in some form of adult entertainment,” he notes. “If you strike a relationship with a mainstream company, you can probably wind up securing a contract with them for mutual benefit that assures that their provision of traffic and visibility to your product is actually a guarantee. So I think the quality of the business end of the relationship with the mainstream can outweigh any concerns over benefit.”
