In my opinion, the adult internet is no longer ahead of the game

[MetaformX]

It use to be that Adult sites were the inovators of the internet, effectivly using pop up ads, developing sophisticated tracking systems for hits and refferal programs, going away from the typical banner and using other means to advertise

But now, a strange thing is happening... the inovation it seems has stopped, and everyone is just following the path. In my opinion, mainstream internet is now ahead of the adult game. Im not talking about how much money they are making, im talking about inovative ways to get the surfers attention. When was the last time you went to a adult site, and saw a little flash window appear out of nowhere, show some catchy animation with sound, and grab your attention 100%? Well, that is just one method being used by alot of mainstream sites, But I have yet to see a single adult site use this method.

The reason I think is quite obvious. The typical advertising model of the mainstream world no longer worked. No one clicked, or for that matter even looked at banners anymore. So they had to change. On the other hand, the inovators of the adult industry are still making money(granted not as much as before, but they still are) and have not seen the need to continue advancing their methods, or at least not at the pace they were before. Call it a advertising comfort zone, if you will.

The rest of the internet had to adapt to the new, more sophisticated surfer, and adapt they have. The real question is, when are we gonna catch up again? There are ways out there to maximize our profits...Will it take a complete meltdown to force us to do so?

[manga]

The funny thing is mainstream copied our techniques and then made them better, now we have to catch up to them. In a lot of ways adult is standing still and in some ways it's even moving backwards, while mainstream is innovating and moving ahead.

[toker]

Yea tell it to hun that you want to host a talking ad on his site.. :D

[ultra160]

Are those ads effective?
As a personal thing, I find all popups annoying and I close them instantly and leave the site unless I really want to be there.
I am also aware of the dangers and abuses associated with allowing Flash into a computer.
I realise that I am not a typical surfer, but it seems there are a lot more like me, and as the dangers of unprotected surfing are publicised, I expect numbers will increase. There are a lot of sites that have been constructed by artistic talented designers that exploit the capabilities of Dreamweaver, and the owners of the sites display them proudly. The problem is that surfers may not want a complete visual experience so they run off somewhere else.

Have you noticed evidence of another trend. Hewlett Packard list the Java functions used on their pages. Maybe I'm not the only one that disables active-x and puts java on prompt when surfing.

[Brian911]

those flash thingies and layer ads (eg. a plane flying around and such) are very effective CTR-wise.

I'd do something new as well and there is a lot of great stuff you can do with css, layers, iframes and javascript today but the problem is that I can only use those on my oldschool CJs.
you cant use them on freesites, galleries, tgps etc. etc. because of the "standards" and the "keep it surfer-friendly" attitude most webmasters have these days. the main reason why no innovative methods succeed is traffic trading: rules, rules, rules.
and I'm 1000% sure that a layer ad would be seen as a "console" ('no consoles no consoles no consoles' to trade) and the trade would be history within a couple of hours :D

[ultra160]

What do you mean when you say they are effective?

Do surfers click on them and follow the link, or does the frame just clock up in the counter.

My difficulty is that I tend to deal with older surfers and they seem to be anti all these things that they perceive as gimmicks that slow them down. Younger surfers seem to like them and admire the technical skills used in producing them, but do they follow through and buy?

[mistuhhh]

yeah you are right, the problem is I think even the non-adult world has lost that as well...I am sure we are in for anouther re-invention period sooner or later :)

[bigdog]

no link list or tgp will ever accept those kind of ads

[Groovy]

Brian is right about this in my opinion. Rules rules rules...

exactly 2 years ago, i used to do around 100 dialer minutes daily with a 5k cj!!!

damn that really rocked, and guess what? i only promoted the dialer on the exit console! it converted like heck, and i bet it will still convert great if promoted the same way, although you have to make better consoles, like on the non-adult sites.

did you guys saw the casino banner on Kazaa? i bet that banner atracts nearly all people interested in online gambling, and they will click!

if the hun would add a banner like that for a paysite on his website, he would make maybe twice as much as all banners he has got at the moment, but he won't because he will loose freeloaders?!? we're just too nice too our surfers, and i'm not saying we should add tons of bullshit consoles, and other crappy java codes etc, but some things could be improved.

personally i hate those talking banners, but if i can't find the stuff anywhere else, it's no problem. if i would search for porn pics, i would search till i found a website like the hun so i can freeload till no end.

[ZXLiam]

The problem with alot of adult sites today is we are too worried about letting our hit count go down. We are scared by using aggressive advertising all the bookmarkers will run away. The fact is this isnt true. The bookmarkers worth keeping will stay. This is proved %100 at pk.com checkout the advertising on that page.

[manga]

A lot of these linklist and tgp guys are idiots. They are afraid to do any aggressive marketing because they think they will lose their bookmarkers. Bullshit. Surfers are so used to popups from all the mainstream sites that they wouldn't even notice it on a tgp. I don't see Yahoo losing any bookmarkers with their popups. All these guys and their super clean rules are a fucking cancer on this industry.

[Dragon]

I love these types of conversations...and can feel my wallet getting a little fatter after seeing how you guys want to further make things worse for the surfer. You want innovation? Here's some for you learn marketing techniques, that would be innovative....talk to neighbors and friends about what pisses them off when they surf porn......that would be innovative.....get it through your big heads that beating surfers up with advertising till they are too tired to resist only teaches them to avoid your sites the next time...that would certainly be innovative.

consumer confidence......down......who here understands how important those words are? The people with the money.....are losing their CONFIDENCE in this industry.......be innovative enough to understand what that means......


The Hun makes more money in one week than most people here will make in 6 months....and it would be the stupidest thing he ever did to change what is making him loads of money. Not because he is afraid of losing the freeloaders...but because he knows that he'll lose the paying surfers too.

[stanton]

yeah, we have to lose this ghetto concepts, and make something fresh and beautifull

new ways to advertise, new techniques...time to leave oldschool!

[manga]

Originally posted by Dragon
I love these types of conversations...and can feel my wallet getting a little fatter after seeing how you guys want to further make things worse for the surfer. You want innovation? Here's some for you learn marketing techniques, that would be innovative....talk to neighbors and friends about what pisses them off when they surf porn......that would be innovative.....get it through your big heads that beating surfers up with advertising till they are too tired to resist only teaches them to avoid your sites the next time...that would certainly be innovative.

consumer confidence......down......who here understands how important those words are? The people with the money.....are losing their CONFIDENCE in this industry.......be innovative enough to understand what that means......


The Hun makes more money in one week than most people here will make in 6 months....and it would be the stupidest thing he ever did to change what is making him loads of money. Not because he is afraid of losing the freeloaders...but because he knows that he'll lose the paying surfers too.

I don't really give a shit what the hun does. The truth is aggressive marketing works. You guys worry so much about not pissing off the surfer. I'll ask again, do you think Yahoo has lost a lot of surfers by adding popups to its site? No they haven't. They are still number 1 in terms of traffic and those popups have added a lot more money to their bottom line. That's why you're seeing mainstream sites marketing more aggressively, because it works. Don't believe me? Read this article about how online advertising is making a comeback through more creative and aggressive marketing http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,40430,FF.html

I have thousands of sites out there and I'll tell you that my exit consoles add an extra 25-30% to my bottom line easily. I will never get rid of those consoles, I may change the sponsors I promote on them, but the consoles stay. You can say whatever you want about keeping sites clean and making the surfer happy, but I know what's making my wallet fat ;)

[ultra160]

Maybe I'm just a stroppy old sod, but if someone loaded an interstatial ad that lasted 20 seconds between pages on a site I was looking at, I'd be on the x button before it finished. I already do a google search for some sites to get me straight to the page I want rather than working through the crap that the site loads first.

[Dragon]

Interesting article Manga....did you bother to read the companion piece to that article where it talks about the type of ad and both it's effectiveness and annoyance factors? TEXT ADS blow every other type away...5 stars for effectiveness and only 1 star for annoyance......not even floating ads or superstitial ads beat it in either category. Granted this may be because these types of advertising are new...but I doubt it....I think annoyance keeps those types of ads from being the most effective.

[Toxictoy]

The majority of surfers don't know how the computer even works - if you've worked support anywhere you know that the MAJORITY of your users are still in "mystery mode" when it comes to the computer. Why do you think SE traffic is so golden? I am in agreement that it is the rules that make it dam impossible to sell anything. We can't use any scripting on many TGP's and the innovation basically falls to the way side.

I think that the industry has to start using the tools available - you can't simply use HTML anymore and sell any kind of site. Use the technology to your advantage - the beauty of the internet is the interactivity between the surfer and the site. It's not like a one way conversation as with Television yet we are all brainwashed in a way to sell in this fashion.

Why do you think Amazon.com is so friggin popular? They are even using popups these days. They use the database to their advantage and have a learning mechanism that remembers each user's preferences and sells them more of that item. Simple. I've only seen a few sites incorporating that kind of technology in the Adult biz. I can't think of any MORE personal shopping experience than porn yet we make it all so non-personal.

[ultra160]

I feel that text ads are good because any surfer that clicks on them has been reading about the topic and is in the mood to find out more. He feels it's his choice and he's on your side. It's why I started a couple of support sites so that I can get surfers thinking about things rather than just collecting pictures that they probably won't look at anyway. I'm always amazed by the directories of pics that some guys collect and never get round to cataloguing.

Has any research been done on the number of surfers that are lost to a site by popups. Or the surfers that never managed to open a site because the first page was just java and cookies and didn't display.

[manga]

Originally posted by Dragon
Interesting article Manga....did you bother to read the companion piece to that article where it talks about the type of ad and both it's effectiveness and annoyance factors? TEXT ADS blow every other type away...5 stars for effectiveness and only 1 star for annoyance......not even floating ads or superstitial ads beat it in either category. Granted this may be because these types of advertising are new...but I doubt it....I think annoyance keeps those types of ads from being the most effective.

Yes I read the companion piece. I agree that text ads have the best ctr. No debate there. All I'm saying is those other ads work as well. We shouldn't just ignore them because they may annoy the surfer. If it works, use it.

In all honesty I think what it boils down to is the uniqueness of your site. If your content gives the surfer a reason to come back, then they will put up with the odd interstitial etc. The problem with the tgp scene is there are too many of them and they're all more or less the same. So if a surfer finds a tgp annoying he can easily go and find the same content on thousands of other sites. I think the fact that there are thousands of these tgp sites that all offer the same thing shows a lack of creativity and innovation in this industry in itself.

[stanton]

Originally posted by manga


I don't really give a shit what the hun does. The truth is aggressive marketing works. You guys worry so much about not pissing off the surfer. I'll ask again, do you think Yahoo has lost a lot of surfers by adding popups to its site? No they haven't. They are still number 1 in terms of traffic and those popups have added a lot more money to their bottom line. That's why you're seeing mainstream sites marketing more aggressively, because it works. Don't believe me? Read this article about how online advertising is making a comeback through more creative and aggressive marketing http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,40430,FF.html

I have thousands of sites out there and I'll tell you that my exit consoles add an extra 25-30% to my bottom line easily. I will never get rid of those consoles, I may change the sponsors I promote on them, but the consoles stay. You can say whatever you want about keeping sites clean and making the surfer happy, but I know what's making my wallet fat ;)


amen to that

[Nima]

Such advertising will never take effect on adult sites. Maybe if the adutl scene is about to die but I doubt that will ever happen. So anyways the reaosn it will never happen like others have said already is because of rules and many tgp's wouldnt liek such type of advertising. But this is where they are wrong! They seem to like traffic more than money! If you have a quality tgp, then you will have quality bookmarkers and quality traffic. THEN you can pace such advertising on your page and you will make money. The traffic you will loose will only be a bunhc of iditos you wont buy anythign on your site and just want FREEE porn, but then again tgp's are made for free porn so it might not work so well after all on tgp's hahaha

All I know is somethign has to change especially with TGP's and the way I see it there won't be a change with TGP's any time soon as I see more and more new tgp's and those people who start them are forced to do so because they can't grow CJs anymore due to the small amount of CJ sites and the BIG amount of tgp sites so they head into the TGP scene.

[toker]

The problem is that when your trading traffic with TGPs and such then you have consoles and other bullshit it starts to become to much. This was the problems with the CJ eveyone said well 1 more console wont hurt and the next thnig you had endless chains of shit crashing the visitors PC not even giving them a chance to pay for anything.

I would not for the life of me find any logic in that or ever turn back to that. Yes if it could be done in a responsable way then it could work for the best but the way this biz is infested with idiots and cheaters im afraid it will never happen. You can try to push out the cheaters but they just make new domains or use their friends to get back in the door.

[pornodoggy]

One thing I've noticed in a discussion of webmasters and popups - I hear a lot of people talk about "I hate" this or that. The first rule of sales and marketing that was taught to me is don't sell yourself - sell the other guy. I'm not advocating pop-up hell, but I've had good luck with them. Another thing I've noticed is some good conversions with the "swim" console offered by Big Players. It's fairly non-obtrusive - if you close my page it closes too - and seems to get a higher ctr than other popups do.

[manga]

Originally posted by toker
The problem is that when your trading traffic with TGPs and such then you have consoles and other bullshit it starts to become to much. This was the problems with the CJ eveyone said well 1 more console wont hurt and the next thnig you had endless chains of shit crashing the visitors PC not even giving them a chance to pay for anything.

I would not for the life of me find any logic in that or ever turn back to that. Yes if it could be done in a responsable way then it could work for the best but the way this biz is infested with idiots and cheaters im afraid it will never happen. You can try to push out the cheaters but they just make new domains or use their friends to get back in the door.

Yes, the cheaters really ruin it for everybody. And this is why we have all these crazy rules for everything now. It really sucks that all these punks force us to change our business practices.

I guess the only way to really do it is to have private circles where you know and trust all the webmasters. I know this has been discussed before with cj sites, but you can also do it with tgps where certain types of advertising are allowed, like one interstitial, or one exit, or whatever. If it was done in a way that was reasonable and not overkill, the surfer wouldn't get too annoyed and the webmaster could put a few extra bucks in his pocket. Just a thought.

[toker]

yep it could work but was also tried and failed because some guys just bring in their other sites over time that dont follow the rules. Then slowly it breaks down as everyone wants a bigger piece of the pie.

Really the cheaters hurt themselves more then anyone its them who have to keep tring to work twice as hard to find more dirty tricks. If everyone would just cut the crap we could all be doing better including them but i guess they dont see it that way.

I stopped trading with my site just so i could do what i wanted how i wanted and not deal with the bullshit anymore. Now i can have one console and know that they will see not 20 not 50 but 1 console and have a choice to close it without a java prompt telling them buy or die till they reboot.

Ive noticed some guys using that shit with dialer installer page that if you click no it will keep saying not allowed untill you hit ctrl-w that shit really pisses me off.

[luckyteen]

Seeing the dhtml/flash ads for the first time I thought it was awesome... but now I am getting annoyed and half the time get off the site or leave as fast as possible. I think most others feel the same as me.

Luckyteen