Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010    Text size: 

"While the perennial debate over which is more important, content or traffic, has adherents on both sides, it is evident that today's consumers will only purchase quality content," says the show's hosts, "But regardless of how good that content is, without exposure to your customer base, sales will not be forthcoming."

Addressing the traffic side of that equation, the session entitled "Traffic is King: Sourcing, Securing & Converting Today's Consumer," set out to "explore a multitude of traffic acquisition strategies for today's online adult entertainment companies."

Moderated by J-SiN of SiN 2.0; the panelists included AdXpansion's Karl Bernard; Mark from GTS; "XXX Jay" Quinlan from OCCash; and Wildline's Charles Hentrich; who provided the audience with the benefit of years of practical traffic-building experience.

According to the panelists, the online adult traffic scene has changed dramatically over the past few years, with fewer and fewer sites controlling an increasing percentage of traffic.

"We've seen a very big shift in where the traffic is from," Bernard said, discussing the drop in traffic sources from 100,000 TGPs controlling the bulk of traffic, down to a couple of hundred tube sites today.

Bernard also emphasized the growing importance of targeted contextual advertising, although he agreed that nothing will ever be as productive as search engine traffic.

"I think there's room for very specific niche advertisers," Mark said, outlining the need for a targeted approach to prospect acquisition.

"What worked for you last week may not work for you next week," Quinlan said, offering that the surest way to develop organic traffic is to build the best site that you possibly can and to then monitor and optimize its bounce rate and the visitor's time-on-page.

Organic search engine traffic is still the most sought after amongst many operators, but as Hentrich pointed out, not having to buy those listings from the search engine does not make them "free."

"You're paying for your ‘free' organic SEO," Hentrich said, enumerating the costs of do-it-yourself SEO, including time, effort and education, adding, "It's definitely worthwhile to augment organic traffic with paid search traffic."

Traffic sources were not the only topic of discussion, with Hentrich saying, "It's essential to have proper tracking," as the key to understanding and validating traffic flow and buys.

"It takes a certain skill to buy traffic profitably," Hentrich said. "It's not just a matter of quantity versus quality — you need a nice mix of the two."

Quinlan agreed: "Target as much as possible — it qualifies the customer more."

The discussion turned back to creative types, with Mark citing the effectiveness of "IM" style ads and the relatively short-lived "peel" ad phenomenon, and telling the audience that today, pop-under ads are extremely popular and productive for cam and dating sites.

The pros and cons of ad buying methodologies were also discussed by the panelists, including both click and impression-based methods.

"When you buy CPM you cannot measure engagement," Bernard said, adding that with CPC, "about 15 percent of clicks are fraudulent."

J-SiN agreed, stating, "The fraudulent traffic on some networks is just a cost of doing business."

Bernard summed up perhaps the best advice for traffic builders: "We should be testing, testing, testing, all the time," he said. "Taking the data we have and using it to improve our sites."

With a discussion ranging from the basics of old-school traffic generation, such as using search engines and link building; to the newest techniques for ensuring a steady flow of visitors to your website, including targeted ad buys, paid placement and organic optimization; this session illustrated the value of attending the seminar series' presented by XBIZ. Some attendees reported leveraging their participation by striking traffic deals with other attendees after this lively and well-received session.