One of the big mysteries in mobile content (at least for me) is exactly how much of it is adult-orientated…the figure varies dramatically depending on who you talk to. For example, your average analyst will say that it’s a significant figure, but nowhere near the level of that of mobile music or video or games. Then other people in the industry will come along and say that it’s 70% of downloads, and I’m pretty sure that on average adult content is more expensive that other content.
One of the issues is that few companies are comfortable admitting that they sell adult content, with the result that some of the bigger names are developing subsidiaries to offer the naughty stuff so they don’t tarnish their good names.
Adult content company Cherrysauce claims to be developing adult content portals for companies who have started businesses under other names.
As an example, Cherrysauce has signed a contract with Burst Mobile to “design, create and operate wap.moistmob.tv a new mobile erotica portal”. Burst Mobile is a subsidiary of “a major UK mobile portal”, Cherrysauce isn’t saying who but I’ve heard it linked with MonsterMob, and considering all the sites have “mob” in the name (Mobshack, Moistmob and Knobmob) I give it some credence. The interesting thing is that Burst Mobile was created to run a mobile adult content portal, and has outsourced all of that to Cherrysauce. I put forth the question to Cherrysauce (the contact for Burst came back as an unknown e-mail) and Julia Dimambro, founder and managing director of Cherrysauce, clarified exactly what Burst Mobile was bringing to the table:
“Burst mobile has been set up as a separate company within a larger organisation to focus on an adult offering and also to monetise existing adult orientated data that they have collected via promotions, gambling services, softer babe services etc. However, they have outsourced the design, management and production of these portals to Cherrysauce, so that they can continue to focus on what they do best, which in this case, is marketing, traffic and consumers.” So it seems burst has a database of people who have shown an interest in adult content, and are already age verified.
I can see the value in that, although I can’t imagine how Burst Mobile plans to use this database if it doesn’t want to be connected back to the parent company — if they don’t indicate where they got the people’s number it’s going to be viewed as spam. It could work if the plan is to use targeted advertising on the parent company’s portal. Still, it’s a fairly tricky line to walk, but one than an increasing number of companies are likely to start treading. (press release PDF)
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