If there's one online industry in which it’s crucial that surfers not leave their websites, it's adult entertainment. Buying and selling so-called exit traffic has become a standard practice among businesses looking to squeeze every last penny from site visitors.
"You used to be able to triple your income if you used exit consoles back in 2000. Now exit traffic is maybe 10 percent of what it used to be -- it's not as effective anymore," says Lars Mapstead, vice president of marketing at FriendFinder, which recently acquired Mapstead's StreamRay and Cams.com.
"Consumers have wised up about them. Now the popup blockers are flitering them out, and the vendors quickly come out with a patch if someone figures out a way to circumvent them."
That doesn't mean that adult Web sites have stopped buying and selling exit traffic -- not by any stretch of the imagination.
"Any medium or larger-sized pay site is interested in buying or selling exit traffic through affiliate programs or paid referrals," says Garry Olen, president of Mansion Productions, a consultancy in Carson City, Nev. "Some give you code or banners to put on your Web pages, while others reroute visitors after they've closed your window."
Before either of these options is considered, webmasters with more than one site should first make sure they're promoting all of their own online properties, says Olen. Once visitors have checked out all of the sites, then the referral to third-party pay sites makes sense.
Olen also recommends choosing a third party that has similar content or content compatible with the referring site, on the assumption that the departing traffic wants to see more of the same genre.
What Stigma?
While exit-traffic advertising has gotten somewhat of a bad reputation for trapping people in a never-ending series of pop-up windows, people in the industry beg to differ.
"I don't think there was ever really a negative stigma [to exit traffic], because exit traffic is what it is: If someone leaves, they're not interested, so we want to monetize that surfer by turning him on to other offers," says Eric Matis, director of marketing at Adult.com.
He continues, "It's something that's become the norm. Pretty much everyone is buying and selling exit traffic these days, and most of the time it's a reciprocal arrangement with both parties joining each other's affiliate programs."
Most of these arrangements pay commissions on sales resulting from traffic referrals, and a few pay per click. Since the relationships are usually reciprocal, the payouts typically cancel each other out or come close to doing so.
That's fortuitous because like most businesses that exchange traffic, "my biggest competitor is also my biggest business partner," says Matis.
Matis says he sees more of the exit strategies involving rerouting traffic rather than pop-ups or pop-unders. Practices with even a hint of a bad reputation, such as disabling the back arrows on browsers, seem to be less prevalent.
"As the industry evolves, the surfer gets smarter, so we have to stay a step ahead of them," says Matis, whose site fetches roughly 40 million unique visitors a month.
That step ahead comes from creating more targeted exit consoles, says Matis. He strives for niche-specific departure windows based on whatever content visitors show interest in. But because some people leave in search of things they haven't seen yet, Matis suggests including other options besides the genre a customer has just looked at.
As for receiving traffic exchanged in this manner, Matis says that the quality of the visitors – that is, their likelihood of becoming paying customers – depends on where they're coming from. So it also behooves those buying traffic to partner with like-minded sites.
However, not everyone plays it this way. Adult search sites and ones consisting only of thumbnail galleries or lists of links tend to send exit traffic to pay sites in order to monetize the business.
"If someone comes from a search engine and you show them what they're looking for, you're likelier to get a conversion," says Matis. "This is why exclusive content is really starting to pay off now. If a surfer comes in and sees images he's already seen before, he might move on."
The same goes for exit consoles. Not only do they need to be designed well, but they need to be updated continually so that traffic can be routed to partners' newest sites and content.
"If you have an exit console that doesn't sell the destinations, visitors aren't going to go there," says Matis. "The pop-under console is also very effective," he says, referring to the type of window that opens as soon as a visitor arrives at a site but hides underneath other open windows and is only seen when the other pages are closed.
Matis says design makes a huge difference in the efficacy of exit consoles, banners and pop-unders. "There are a ton of people out there who just put up crap for a page and hope it works, but when you create exit consoles you still have to make it an image that's eye catching so people will click on the link," Matis says. "You can't just throw up anything hoping surfers will go that direction. You have to be creative and cater to the surfer."
Not Everyone's Popping
In some cases, catering to surfers means keeping them on one's own properties rather than sending traffic to third-party destinations.
"Some businesses are very successful with popping windows from third parties, and that requires due diligence. We only link to our own sites in the exit consoles—we have 250 different online properties," says Matthew Sclier, marketing manager of SexMoney North America.
Sclier points out that SexMoney's exit consoles have a polyglot strategy, which attracts a more globalized customer base. Code on the sites "read" visitors' browsers to detect their countries of origin, in order to serve content written in viewers' native tongues.
Not all affiliate programs get involved with traffic exchanges. For instance, Sextoy.com steers clear of them.
"Just about every browser blocks pop-up ads, and exit traffic is basically pop-ups. You can't even see pop-ups anymore because operating systems aren't allowing it—that's part of the latest Microsoft security pack," says Dave Levine, owner of Sextoy.com. "There's probably people coming out with new technology to get around the pop-up blockers. But for now, the business is getting cut into and it's too late in the game."
Levine concedes that he one dabbled in exit traffic but had trouble with the technology and abandoned it long ago in favor of more customer-friendly strategies. He prefers to incorporate third parties' products into his site rather than sending people away.
"People do get good sales from [exit traffic] but the people don't include in their statistics how many people they piss off who otherwise might have become their customers," says Levine. "Product sites don't seem to do that much traffic. The membership sites are all sending off to their competitors whereas on an online store if there's a pop-up it's not for a real competitor."
Levine certainly saves himself from legal hassles by not popping windows from third parties—doing so requires plenty of due diligence lest a prospective business partner's problems become yours by association.
"Your liability comes not from the content of a third-party ad but from your relationship with the website you are exchanging traffic with," explains John W. Dozier, head of an eponymous law firm in Glen Allen, Va. "But this is an unsettled area of law. No court has ever decided that an advertised website running an ad for an illegal product is liable as a conspirator to the site selling the illegal product."
He continues, "The content of exit ads creates liability as well as the illegal products being sold by the advertisers. You also have liability for the conduct of the sites you're exchanging links with if they're spamming, infringing copyright" or breaking other laws. "You don't even have to know that they're spamming [or breaking another law] but if they're doing it for your website's benefit, then you become liable."
Even with due diligence beforehand, it can be difficult to keep tabs on business partners' moves, so to gird against liabilities that might fall through the cracks or arise in the future, Dozier recommends the tried-and-true user agreement—webmasters should make sure that partner sites post legal disclosures that are just as ironclad as their own. Said legal disclosure should include disclaimers about exit advertising on the site and be binding to every single visitor to the site.
"Before you make an exit-traffic deal, conduct appropriate due diligence with the exchange program company that is responsible for selecting and qualifying the people you do business with, make sure you're satisfied with the level of detail in their policies/agreements [and] make sure they're binding—often they'll have waivers saying that if they don't hold up their end of the bargain, there's no implications for them so they're not singly motivated to provide you with the assurances you need. So make sure you have confidence in their ability to follow through when you need it since you are effectively outsourcing some liability to them," says Dozier.
Another attorney likens it to safe-sex measures:
"Think of safe sex: Traffic is like bodily fluids, and you could transfer the legal equivalent of a virus," says Greg Piccionelli, a partner at Brull, Piccionelli, Sarno, Braun & Vradenburgh in Los Angeles. "If you are doing business with someone and they're violating the law, and if you're benefiting from that, then you could get their legal problem through doctrines of vicarious liability. If you have direct knowledge and purposeful intent to benefit from what the site is doing, then it could become a criminal conspiracy."
The bottom line? Make sure you know who you're exchanging traffic with.
Jackie Cohen is a freelance writer in San Francisco.
