XBIZ World is pleased to present “Execs of 2015: The Year in Review.”
Each of the executives we spoke to below has one thing in common — they are among the finalist nominees for the online industry edition of the 2016 XBIZ Exec Awards.
The live cam market has gained additional momentum this year, certainly linked to the proliferation of free content and tube sites. -Jean-Marie Kesch, LiveJasmin
XBIZ captures the thoughts of these influential and motivational leaders as we sought their take of the year 2015.
The following question about the year in review was asked to those running for the Business Development Executive of the Year:
XBIZ: How has your business evolved over the past year? How did you adapt to or take charge of this year’s trends?
Karen Campbell
Vice President, OrbitalPay
“As a direct merchant account and gateway provider, OrbitalPay provides service to an extremely wide spectrum of business types. There have been a lot of changes in the retail space due to EMV. The nutraceutical space has been booming this past year. But as always, my focus has been directed towards cams, PPV, dating and memberships, as they continue to dominate in the adult space — which is obviously my specialty. One trend I have seen is the broadening of the platforms that our merchants utilize to deliver their content, which is always a good thing. We are also seeing more and more of our clients generating their own traffic and not being so dependent affiliates to drive sales; this is great for merchants because it obviously gives them more profit and control.”
Shay Efron
Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, Imlive.com and PussyCash
“For us, this year was the year of the mobile, which meant offering our members and users the ability to have very good webcam product on whatever mobile device they were using. The percentage of mobile users will only increase as time goes by, and the webcam service must be highly approachable all over the globe. Many times, even if the user creates his account on desktop — where it still can be considered by some as easier to insert payment details and such — a lot of the actual consuming will be from his mobile devices. So the actual numbers of mobile consumers is even higher than we all thought. We’re about to launch the ability for our models to project their live shows from their own mobile devices, which will give our models a huge advantage and also, gives our members a whole new world of live cam scenarios.”
Jasmine James
Business Development Liaison, Flirt4Free
“Whenever people start discussing something as wide-ranging as a single consumer trend being responsible for their success, I just laugh. I mean, you can’t pinpoint it on any one thing — although I could say that one seemingly nascent area where we pushed was with gay consumers. Over the last few years, we’ve gotten a lift from what we assume is a gay demographic, who seem to have more money to spend. But really, how many unquantifiables do we have here? Sure, maybe gay men started spending more because we grabbed up gay affiliates to promote us, or maybe our strategy of segmenting the site between gay and straight was a linchpin. Or maybe there are all sorts of people who just want to experiment and see cams as a great way of doing that. I can say that getting a wider range of customers engaged for cheaper and through our funnel faster is always going to be a recipe for success. But one thing? No, just no.”
Jean-Marie Kesch
Director of Business Development, LiveJasmin
“Following a record-breaking year in the live cam business, we have seen considerable growth for LiveJasmin and Jasmin.com in 2015. The live cam market has gained additional momentum this year, certainly linked to the proliferation of free content and tube sites. Consumers are yearning for personal and interactive experiences and high-end service and quality. They are happy to pay for one-on-one private chats with classy, professional and good-looking performers. They have also become very selective and know what they want. Directly based on consumer feedback and demands, we have invested in strengthening our platforms and introducing new features. Exciting new additions and developments are on schedule for 2016 as well.”
Douglas Richter
Webcam Unit Director, CamsPower
“This year, we’ve seen some incredibly great ideas coming to live cam platforms, from message box — a feature where users pay to send e-mail and text messages to models — to interactive sex toys. The biggest money makers are still features that foster communication and bring the model and user closer together in the virtual world. Believe it or not, virtual gifts, paid messages and virtual consumables are still the most popular and successful features, as models can easily earn their weekly or even monthly wages in just a blink of an eye. Regarding the interactive sex toys’ integration to cams, there are several options out there now that can be combined into various features designed to increase interactivity. This is not something new; in fact, they have been around a long time. But the performance has been very slow and anticlimactic.”
James Robinson
Director of Business Development, Mr. Skin
“As the adult industry has changed over the past decade, there has been a growing need to constantly evolve in order to thrive. Over the past few years, we’ve adopted some of the strategies that have been successful for two of the fastest growing verticals in adult, cams and dating, and adapted those strategies to our model. One example is the use of white labels with one-click integrations. We now offer white labels of MrSkin.com, MrMan.com, and NakedNews.com, allowing our partners to bill for our unique and non-competing products as their own. These partnerships have been very lucrative for everyone involved. At the same time, keeping up with the evolution of online advertising has also been a key to our continued success in 2015. As traditional display advertising has become increasingly challenging, new forms such as native ads have replaced them with impressive eCPMs.”
