How to earn money on adult offers, tips from Reporo
At the Moscow Affiliate Conference in Moscow, I talked with Domingo Mendez from the adult network Reporo about adult traffic, how to earn money in adult, what creatives to use, and what trends are on the market now.
You can watch the video, or you can read the interview below.
We are going to speak about the adult industry today and I will start with the eternal question: is adult “dead” or not?
You want to know if it is good or not? Of course, it’s really good. As I said to a lot of people earlier, it’s a big industry — we’re talking about a 13-billion-dollar industry. We don’t do adult content itself. We just basically trade in it. At the moment, the market, or the advertisers, are looking for different opportunities to promote brands. So we cannot stay on only one channel, let’s say the “mainstream channel”. There are a lot of opportunities for running campaigns through adult traffic. So it’s an industry that never goes down, especially when the economy does. It never goes down because people like looking at it. Everybody knows that! So it’s still on the go, and it’s a really good opportunity to keep investing in it.
There are a lot of different players, a lot of ad networks — what makes Reporo different from other networks?
We’ve been on the market for about nine years now, and of course, our main strategy is to work with the best publishers around the world. We do have the opportunity for every single person — the webmaster, or whoever owns the website — to monetize the traffic.
What is the difference between the rest of the competitors and us? I would say, just the way we help you to optimize campaigns. We have the option now to optimize your campaigns based on a specific publisher through Self-Service. So now, you can run network campaigns, set a target, select a country and after 48 hours you can see the performance, and you can see which publishers convert better for you. So you can start either bidding higher for the publisher that converts for you, or maybe lower your bid for one that doesn’t convert for you, or even block them if your CPA is just too high. So I think that’s a little bit of a difference we have against competitors.
Also, we have a really good relationship with publishers and the top publishers generating high-quality traffic for us. We also have a big team —50 people around the world, different languages as well, people who know the local market itself, because they’re based in that region. So we know what you need to promote your brand.
Do people in other offices work with publishers?
We have a big team. We are divided into advertising (the commercial side), sales, and then the publisher acquisition team. So the publisher acquisition team has the head office in London. But we have also one in Spain, another one in America, and in Canada.
You talked about self-service. But previously you were a blind network and clients ran the campaigns through managers. So why did you change the strategy and why did it take such a long time?
Yes, we were a blind network (a network where you buy traffic without the transparent analytics). This was because some publishers were quite reluctant to say who they are. And at the same time, they wanted us to protect them.
But the markets have changed, and the ways to optimize campaigns have changed, so there was no point to be blind anymore. And at the end of the day people know what adult sites are out there on the market, so we decided to change that. It took us a little bit longer that I expected to offer the self-service. But we have built our own platform from scratch.
I always wonder regarding the adult market — it’s a well-established market now, it’s quite competitive, and usually there is some process of consolidation. Will there be big players who will merge other small players?
Everything depends on the quality of traffic you are delivering and the quality of service you are actually giving to your advertisers.
However, I don’t think it’s going to be a monopoly. It’s a big industry, and this market is for everyone. We’re going to have top players in the industry and top traffic owners, or ad network affiliates.
We were one of the first, or we were one of the top in marketing terms in adult content or the adult advertising network. Of course, competition comes because they realize that you can make money. This will push us away from being a monopoly, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. What’s going to happen is that we are going to have different top players.
Last September, MobAds that includes Reporo bought BuzzCity. Will it give Reporo some advantages and new opportunities?
Even though we are leaders in the adult market industry, we have decided to jump a little bit more and to give an extra mile on a mainstream site. That’s the reason we have acquired BuzzCity. They also have a really good presence in South Asia in the region, based in Singapore.
I think that was the key factor for us to start jumping into the mainstream industry. It’s not because we want to cover the whole market, — but just to give more flexibility to the offers we have, or the clients who want to buy or promote their own products with us. Just a combination to offer something more like a 360-degree business, to show opportunities everywhere.
We are going to have a bigger sales force, more knowledge about the region because we will have people down there. The clients will have the option to switch the platform from adult to mainstream to try a different kind of traffic for one specific offer.
So that’s a lot of benefits, you see. It’s a good opportunity for us, and we are actually quite excited.
Let’s speak about some trends in the industry. The adult business is the biggest storage of video content in the world. But from the other side, the main ad formats are popunders, redirects, and banners — there is no video. Should we expect some trends in adult video advertising?
That’s the plan. Video mainstream is a boom in the market and as you said, the adult is coming to videos, it’s all related to that. We’re working on it. I can’t really give you the exact date when we are going to launch it, but it’s a part of our strategy.
It’s very logical.
Of course, if it happens in mainstream, and it converts really well for any offer, why wouldn’t we do the same? I think it’s going to be an extra option for us, still the market’s going to be pushing on the banners and popunder as well.
I will give you more information in the future when we get there, when we are ready for that.
Regarding other trends, for example, Nutra (Health&Beauty) — it has been booming for the last two years on Facebook and native ads. Do you see the same trend in adult traffic as well?
Definitely. I mean, among the top trends in offers are, of course, VOD (Video on Demand), which is the top one, then you have dating sites, chats as well.
That’s what people are looking for. If you want a video, you can download a video, if you’re looking for a date, you have a dating site. If you wanna go further, you have a chat. So it always leads there. I think the user wants to see something and download it quickly. That is why they are at the top.
We have a 15–20% increase in different new offers. We do have another case story with Uber, the taxi. They decided to expand the market more with advertising and decided to run adult, on a popunder as well. So they tried it on a popunder and it’s still working, especially for dating sites — you have a date, so you need a ride.
It’s quite interesting because Uber is a very good example of a mainstream offer. What about other innovations in the adult market now, probably some technology innovations or creative approaches, new banners?
As I said not everything has been created yet. But what the market is now is the matter of optimizing and then being a pioneer.
So every time you run a campaign, whatever product it is, you need to make sure that you have the right banners, the right sizes of banners. So that’s something you need to be aware of.
Try to push your current products towards the user, thinking more about what the user wants, rather than how you make money (if you’re looking at it that way). That’s the key for you to know if your product’s going to be successful. So it’s about optimization.
Trying to get the best deal from publishers, or traffic, understand the market, understand the publisher itself if you want to promote a site or an offer in a specific site. Look at the site, the layout, and how your ad is going to look on there.
It’s all about optimization, so that’s going to give you the key.
I have one more question about policy and moderation. Usually it’s a pain for affiliates. For adult and specifically popunder traffic it’s traditional, and it’s fair because there are a lot of misleading ads and a lot of negative user experience. Is it a pain for you as a network, and how strictly do you fight against it?
Look, we do have a compliance team which is strict. We try to control and see if there is misleading information, or if maybe an illegal site, and so on. Our team of about 10 people checks what’s wrong on a daily basis.
Of course, it’s difficult to control it, and that’s what happens in marketing, it happens everywhere. But we do have a team who are quite knowledgeable about the market and they know the regulations. So we work on it. I would say we can control 90% but there’s always 10% that you lose or you miss. We try to change that for the better.
I have just a few questions in conclusion. It was always interesting for me to find out about people who work in the adult sphere. Are they just normal people, or there is a footprint of adult on the business? What about your office, for example? Is it just an office of a traditional advertising network, or do you have some hot girls in bikini who are walking around the office?
Well, yeah, as soon as you open the door to our office, you see a lot of naked girls around. I’m joking.
It’s quite interesting you’re asking that, because I’ve been working in the industry for about 6 years. But before that I used to work for Proctor & Gamble. It’s a complete different industry. But it’s the same.
If you see our office, it’s quite friendly. We have a pool table, and the atmosphere is relaxed. What you’ll see is just people with three or four screens looking at data, analyzing, optimizing campaigns. It’s nothing really weird at all.
We don’t produce adult content, and we don’t produce movies. There is no fun apart from making money at our company, to be honest.
But then you can have a show, because you have time to talk to people who do produce videos. Sometimes they invite you, and it’s quite fun. But it’s nothing more than that. It’s just another industry like any other.
How much porn do you watch because of your work?
The only porn I watch is actually when I look at banners. I check if it’s good quality or not. That’s it.
Do you have something like “banner blindness”? in adult there is something like “adult blindness” probably.
We don’t really have that. When we look at the banner, we try to put ourselves in the user position. Just to give you an example, if you’re looking for blond ladies, but the banner’s showing black ladies, of course it’s not going to convert. Just that.
Thank you for this conversation.
Thank you.
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