Dirty Little Secret

While it may appear web business models continue to evolve, and success is still a ways away, there is a dirty little success secret on the Internet that most traditional web sites and advertisers won't discuss. It's an industry that has been a pioneer of capitalism before the Internet, and was able to transfer that success to the burgeoning web. That industry is the pornography industry. While quick to be dismissed because of the content of such sites, pornography web sites are flourishing, and the content is not the only reason why. The pornography industry does an excellent job of understanding the needs of their audience, and delivering a suitable product. Larry Kasanoff, chairman and CEO of Los Angeles-based Threshold Entertainment is one traditional entertainment executive who is taking note.

"(The Pornography industry) is the leading innovator in entertainment," says Kasanoff who, as executive producer of Arnold Schwartzenegger's True Lies and producer of the successful Mortal Kombat franchise, knows a thing or two about reaching those yearning for mass-market entertainment. "[Porn was first] in cable TV, it was first in home video and [it's first] on the Internet. So while we're all wondering what types of entertainment people will like on the Net, some guy named Rocco down the street is making $24 million a year [selling porn]. And not because he reinvented entertainment, but because he gave it to the public in a better way. So you know what? Porn is great for all of us. We should all study it." (10/30/2000 Copyright 2000 Gale Group Inc. All rights reserved).

What exactly does the pornography industry know that the traditional content marketers do not? Experts like David Marshlack, president and co-founder of the 122-employee Entertainment Network have learned a lot. His five-year-oldTampa, Fla.-based company is the creator of Voyeurdorm.com, Dudedorm.com and Voyeurcasa.com. Marshlack acknowledges that porn content is "the number one" reason for his sites' widespread appeal, but he also notes that the porn sites have a wealth of pure business experience that is often ignored.

"Mainstream [ online ] content providers don't understand and comprehend the [interactive] world we've been in for five years fighting and learning to master," says Marshiack. He recalls the time he was hired as a consultant --along with experts from Disney, Hard Rock Cafe and Yahoo Internet Life--by an upstart entertainment dot-com that wanted to spend $1 million just to develop its homepage.

"I told them they were wrong," says Marshlack, who believes networking, back-end support and proper search words are some of the keys to selling content online. "It would have taken someone with an average dial-up modem four days to load this page. Well, they didn't listen to me and since then have almost shut their doors."

The point here, then, is not to discount porn's inherent "advantage," but to examine, instead, the numerous other strategies that have served the selling of pornography well. They range from an emphasis on state-of-the-art technologies and demographics to the near-heretical assumption that brand building and consumer loyalty are not the Holy Grail (10/30/2000 Copyright 2000 Gale Group Inc. All rights reserved).