July 31, 2012 by

Why Adult Mobile Remains a Great Business Model


Cherrysauce

By Julia Dimambro

YNOT EUROPE – I was born in the 1970s, and like most young girls of that time, I assumed I would grow up and become a princess by marrying Britain’s Prince Andrew (that was a near miss, hey?) or failing that, become a veterinarian, saving puppies and kittens for a living. Absolutely nowhere on my list of dream careers did I notice “become the founder and owner of an adult mobile company (and yes, my parents are proud!).

What I’m trying to say is that I am the most un[i]likely person to be heading up an adult mobile business for the past nine years. As such, I probably have a slightly slanted view of the adult industry, what it represents and how to make money from it.

As a result, I have been speaking and writing about the subject for many years now and I am quite often proved right on my predictions about this politically charged and fast-paced industry, although I have to admit I have no idea whether this actually is due to my slanted view or just a complete fluke.

So I thought I would jot down a few personal insights into why, in my opinion, adult entertainment on mobile is still a great business model in which to invest.

Mobile has been used to distribute adult content and services for more than a decade, with premium-rate SMS being the dominant billing mechanism for the delivery of adult text and images. I remember building Private Media’s first mobile WAP site with Bango.net as far back as 2003.

When I started Cherry Media later that same year, one of the things I realized very quickly with my own distributor-to-consumer WAP site was that adult entertainment and mobile clearly represented a match.

Arousal, by its very nature, is impulsive. You can’t predict what is going to turn you on or where or when it will happen. The uptake of mobile devices created different customer behavior patterns compared to its media predecessors such as the internet and DVD. As you would expect, some of the very first WAP sites to launch on mobile were adult sites (Cherrysauce was amongst them). After all, the adult industry has an impressive record for defining new media channels. Remember the infamous VHS vs. Betamax battle?

Combining new behavior patterns with the early adoption of mobile by the adult industry allowed the undisputed customer demand for adult entertainment (estimated to be worth around $13 billion a year) to act instantly on those impulses, for the first time, wherever they were, as opposed to hoping the impulse or desire could/would survive long enough for the consumer to get in front of a computer or TV.

Mobile allows impulse buying because mobile phones are the first digital devices to be with consumers [I]all the time. Arousal is an instinctive impulsive, so combining the two is clearly a match made in heaven.

The latest Juniper Research report, “Mobilising Adult Revenues,” still echoes these original concepts, highlighting human nature and other characteristics such as privacy, ubiquity and convenience as reasons people turn to mobile for their adult entertainment. Also, quite rightly, the report includes the uptake of smartphones and tablets as one of the leading drivers for this entertainment sector for the next few years.

This, of course, is obvious when you think about it. Adult entertainment is based on visual stimuli, but the fantasy part of the experience calls for a deeper level of immersion, something which smartphones and tablets are the first to supply via the increased level of interaction they offer.

Another thing this vast and rapid uptake of smartphone and tablets is providing to the to the adult industry is the video experience. Video is a key product for adult entertainment, as much for revenues as for context and audience. Most (successful) adult entertainment services are built around video in some way.

This ties in seamlessly with the sharp spike in customer uptake of video streaming via mobile devices. Morgan Stanley for example, predicts video content will account for a whopping 69 percent of all mobile data traffic by 2014.

I could go on with examples that demonstrate why adult mobile has huge commercial potential in the coming years, but I’m sure I’m already taking up too much space with my ramblings. However, if you are interested to see what industry experts recommend you should focus on for your adult mobile strategy, check out Experts’ Top Predictions for Mobile Adult in 2012.

I’ll leave you with my one of my absolute favorite “porn quotes” of all time — something Russell Buckley from Admob shared with me years ago: “Erotica is using a feather; pornography is using the whole chicken.” He attributed the quote to Isabel Allende.

For some reason, I can only see that chicken plucked when I relate it to porn.

Julia Dimambro, voted one of the Top 50 Most Influential Executives in Mobile and one of the Top 50 Women in Mobile, has spent the past 17 years in digital communications, with 10 years specifically in mobile entertainment. Dimambro founded Cherry Media in 2003 in order to create and deliver innovative, consumer-focused mobile entertainment. The company, entirely self-funded and owned by Dimambro, owns and operates the multiple-award-winning mobile erotic entertainment brand Cherrysauce

Prior to founding her own company, Dimambro set up some of the world’s first mobile content deals and SMS print campaigns as wireless commercial director for NASDAQ-listed Private Media Group and launched the first interactive division of the London ad agency J. Walter Thompson.

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