As January draws near and we prepare to drink eggnog and roast yule logs in celebration of the annual tradition of Internext, AEE, and the AVN Awards, my thoughts turn to…dare I say it?
Industry convergence.
At this time last year, I was touting the inevitable joining of the online and video industries into one massive adult juggernaut for various reasons, not the least of which was the fact that AEE and Internext were happening at the same time.
Did I believe it? Of course (and I still do), but, I didn’t have a lot of empirical evidence to back up my arguments. Oh, how things can change in a year’s time.
This year has produced a litany of the very examples I, and many of us here at the AVN offices, have suspected would materialize for some time.
In a signal of what was to come, Playboy Enterprises acquired Adult.com in September 2005. It was the company’s June 2006 acquisition of ClubJenna, however, that made Playboy a three-headed monster ready to stomp everyone and anyone in the online, video, television, and licensing worlds.
At January’s AVN Awards, Bang Productions took home statues for Best Amateur Release and Best Amateur Series for BangBus 6 and the corresponding series. You may remember Bang Productions as the creators of Nasty Dollars and Bang Bros. Online.
In March 2006, Vivid, in conjunction with mainstream video-on-demand provider Cinema Now, launched its VOD site (AllAdultChannel) and later rolled out the first download-to-own program. While Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network executives were not seen shaking in their boots, Vivid’s steamroller of a press machine generated massive buzz and almost immediately turned the site into a success.
In September, SmashBucks secured a deal with VCX to launch the first membership site including the studio’s entire catalog of classic movies.
In October, Pink Visual (TopBucks) and Naughty America each had two releases in the top 15 of AVN’s Top 75 Pro-Am & Amateur Rentals chart.
You see where I’m going with this, I’m sure, but let me drop an anecdote in here to illustrate the point further.
A few months ago, I was having a drink with someone who is privy to some interesting numbers. To put it simply, this person knows which companies are making money on the Web and which companies are making a lot of money on the Web. Out of all the affiliate programs out there, he kept going on about one particular program that was, as he put it, “just killing it.” Finally, I bit.
“Who the hell is it?”
“Guess,” he told me.
After several unfruitful stabs, I pleaded with him to tell me.
His answer was a company that never even crossed my mind: NS Cash.
Every day in this industry, product is crossing the aisle. You may not see it, you may not hear about it, and you may not care—but you should.
It’s not going to happen tomorrow, next week, or in a month, but this convergence and crossover likely will render some of you irrelevant. At the same time, it’s going to provide others with more opportunity than they thought possible several years ago.
“Who will these haves and have-nots be?” you may wonder.
There are two important points that should be gleaned from the information above. First, it’s that this idea of opportunity versus irrelevance applies to both sides of this industry. How many old-school video producers do you think grow slightly perturbed when you mention the name Bang Productions? The answer is: a lot.
Second, and more importantly, the antiquated notion that content is king is about to come back into style big time.
As the lifeblood of the online industry, traffic has, in recent years, relegated the old “content is king” phrase to the backseat and made it a secondary tenet of success.
But the traffic market has shifted. Today, most successful businesses are buying the bulk of their traffic, and throwing money at a need is a quick and easy way to fulfill said need.
Pretty simply, this is turning into a tough and competitive market from the top down, and it’s going to become more so in the near future.
Those who prosper are going to prove themselves to have three qualities: forward thinking, good business sense, and the ability to put ego aside and reach out—maybe even across the aisle—to create mutually beneficial relationships.
The sooner you realize that we’re all in this together, the further ahead of the crowd you’ll be.
The next time someone pitches this wild idea of industry convergence to you, maybe you’ll want to think twice about cocking your eyebrow and telling him or her they’re full of shit.
Just a thought.
