Firstly, happy new year to you all! What a fabulous year we have just had. Since our launch in 2006 Adultmoda has served over 194 Billion adult mobile ads. We are now serving over 13 Billion ads per month and growing at a phenomenal rate – our monthly volume of ads has almost doubled since August.

As expected, the industry has seen some huge growth throughout the last 12 months. Most adult companies now have their mobile offering in place, or at least in production. Many adult companies, and their affiliates, have now begun driving mobile traffic to their services.

Here’s a quick look back at 2011:

HIGH ACTIVITY TERRITORIES

The territories that were hot in 2010 were still leading the way throughout 2011. US, Canada, Western Europe, South Africa, and Australia all still offering some great opportunities. Interestingly, we are now seeing rapid growth from other territories such as India, South America, and South East Asia and we feel that 2012 could see some of these new territories developing into major markets. We now run ads in 227 countries – more than anyone else in the market.

ADULTMODA NEW FEATURES

We launched a whole stack of cool features throughout last year. Far too many to mention them all, however some of the main ones were:

- Updated Android SDK.
- House ad solution for publishers.
- Updated redirect service, giving adult web sites a free branded mobile micro-site.
- Pay-Per-Spend solution launched for agencies.
- Niches were launched, allowing advertisers to target specific niches and publishers the ability to run different niche ads on different areas of their site(s).
- New ad units for smartphones & tablets.
- Automated credit card payment solution allowing advertisers the ability to top up their accounts outside UK business hours.
- Advertiser Campaign Planner with global traffic data and breakdowns.

BEST SELLING PRODUCTS/SERVICES

The types of adult campaigns that performed well in 2011 were adult dating, male enhancement products, live cams, video services, and subscription services.

Also, numerous savvy adult web brands launched mobile versions of their desktop sites giving users a multi-platform experience – with one login giving the user access to the desktop website and the same brand’s smartphone site/app. These solutions tend to use credit card billing. The ‘traditional’ mobile entertainment services, where no desktop website is involved, tend to use Carrier subscription billing.

We expect to see a continuation of the above in 2012, along with perhaps more hard goods (such as sex toys) being purchased via mobiles, using m-commerce.

HANDSETS – SMARTPHONES/TABLETS

The industry saw huge growth in the take up of smartphones and tablets throughout 2011. More and more advertisers chose to target those devices, particularly in key countries such as the US. Featurephones (older, small-screened, crappier phones to some people!) are still making money for our clients in some countries too – particularly where smartphones are not readily available. As soon as an affordable smartphone is launched in these emerging markets things may change quickly, but for now there are still great opportunities to make money from featurephones. Mobile entertainment companies seem to be the ones who are mopping up this revenue, rather than the web based adult brands. In 2011 we saw that the majority of web based adult brands opted to launch a smartphone version (mobile web site or app) of their existing brand, rather than trying to tackle entirely new markets that require a new business model, billing mechanism, content format, etc.

We found that adult companies promoted more mobile web sites than apps in 2011. The “app or mobile website” debate is a whole discussion in itself – needless to say, both have their place in adult mobile.

WIFI CHANGING USER HABITS

Wifi is changing the way people use their mobile devices to view adult services.

When we launched Adultmoda back in 2006 much of the adult content sold had to allow for the fact that users had a really poor data connection on their phone. Therefore images and short video clips were big sellers. Now, ubiquitous wifi has changed that, and allowed adult brands to introduce services that require a much faster and more reliable mobile internet connection, which wifi provides.

Wifi has also contributed to the availability of some free adult services on mobile. Not too long ago, most of the adult mobile content had to be paid for. Believe it or not, users were willing to pay £3 for a single saucy photo on their mobile! In many countries that is laughable nowadays. With wifi, users can now access free adult mobile content such as video services from mobile tube sites. Adult dating sites, and adult social networks are also seeing users remain connected for long periods of time on their mobiles as they wait for friends to respond to messages and posts – again wifi has helped make this possible.

The number of people accessing adult mobile services using wifi grew steadily throughout 2011.
In many countries this growth in wifi usage has gone hand in hand with the uptake of smartphone and tablets. It is much easier to access wifi on a smartphone or tablet, than a featurephone. Therefore many users simply connect their smartphone up to broadband using wifi and browse using that, at much higher speeds than if they used their carrier’s data connection.

All this has affected the market in a number of interesting ways. For example, as we have said, more and more people are using smartphone and tablets in some countries. Smartphones and tablets are great for adult services with their large, high quality screens, and fast wifi connections. However wifi traffic is proving harder for some advertisers to monetise (depending on the product/service being promoted), with credit card billing being the only real option. This is proving difficult, in some cases, and the lack of a simple ‘one-click’ payment option is making it harder for some advertisers to convert wifi traffic. In these countries, many advertisers are only targeting smartphone/tablets that are using their carrier’s data connection, and foregoing the wifi traffic altogether.

So, from a publisher’s point of view, having smartphone carrier traffic is proving to deliver the best return on running ads, and publishers are earning less from their smartphone wifi traffic. Featurephones, which are less suited to consuming adult mobile content, are also delivering lower returns for publishers.

Interestingly, things are starting to change. We are seeing a growing number of products, services, and business models being promoted on Adultmoda that are generating a return from users on a wifi connection.

It will be interesting to see how the adult sector tackles the Wifi conundrum in 2012.

DESKTOP WEBSITES BEING ACCESSED FROM MOBILES

Websites viewed their log files with surprise in 2011. Between 5-15% of their website visits are coming from mobile devices and we have seen a huge take-up of our free branded redirect tool to monetise this traffic.

THANK YOU

We will be launching some fantastic features throughout 2012 to keep us at the forefront of the adult mobile industry. All our developments are led by you, our clients, so please speak to us regularly. We want to give you all a massive Thank You for your support over the last few years, and here’s to a growth filled, fun filled, and profit filled 2012.

Adultmoda team.

Adultmoda