What’s Next For Online Adult Entertainment?
By Anna Johnson on December 13th, 2008As previously discussed in Kikabink News, many Internet marketers regard the online adult entertainment industry as being at the cutting edge of online marketing. But how many of us really know what developments online adult entertainment websites have pioneered, and why and how they came to do so?
Well, a recent presentation by Fiona Patten of the Australian-based Eros Association provides some clues. If it’s true that adult entertainment sites have led – and will continue to lead – innovations in Internet marketing, then Ms Patten offers some interesting insights for all Internet marketers.
Firstly, a bit of background to this article…
The Churchill Club – a non-profit organization for technology entrepreneurs started in Silicon Valley – has a chapter here in Melbourne, Australia. Like its Silicon Valley counterpart, The Churchill Club regularly organizes events where visionaries and technology entrepreneurs come together to listen to a presentation from a thought-leader, and then engage in a question and answer session.
The Churchill Club’s most recent event involved the presentation by Fiona Patten, executive and founding officer of Australia’s national adult retail group, the Eros Association. My husband / business partner was going to attend the event but couldn’t make it. Instead, he received a recording and some notes about Ms Patten’s presentation.
We’re not allowed to link to, or distribute, this recording, but I think Kikabink News readers will find some of the key points from Ms Patten’s presentation quite interesting.
While Ms Patten talked about adult entertainment sites in Australia, given the global nature of online adult entertainment I suspect similar forces are at work in the industry throughout the world.
The first key point is that many of the past innovations in online adult entertainment were driven out of necessity due to extreme market and regulatory forces.
For example, the industry was so quick to embrace the Internet largely to solve distribution problems. While laws restricted the sale of adult entertainment products in various places in the ‘real’ world, the Internet was (originally, at least) a huge distribution network unfettered by such restrictions.
Similarly, the reason online adult entertainment purveyors brought third party payment gateways to the fore was due to the refusal of banks to deal with them!
Many current innovations were also led by adult entertainment sites. They were among the first, for example, to deliver content via Flash players on their websites.
Right now, adult entertainment sites are also adopting more user generated content, where they share revenue with users on a revenue share basis. They are using revenue models ranging from monthly memberships to pay-per-clip, pay-per-minute and free, advertising supported models.
In terms of where the online adult entertainment industry is headed, shorter clips are becoming more popular than full-length movies, with 7 minute clips becoming the norm. Adult entertainment sites are also giving viewers more power of how and what they watch, even giving viewers the ability to select the camera angle for the content they watch.
More generally, the online adult entertainment industry is dividing into tighter niches, with the development of community sites based on user generated content. There is also a move towards offering a mix of online and off-line products.
Not only is this targeted at fighting piracy, but presumably it’s also aimed at addressing consumer demand and marketers’ desire to build more comprehensive relationships with their customers, and not be so reliant on the online channel.
Any of this giving you ideas for where your niche may be headed?
Source: Fiona Patten, “Lessons From The Edge,” The Churchill Club, December 4, 2008, The Churchill Club
