Playboy exemplifies adult content’s struggle for legitimacy

Taboo as it is on the surface, adult content is a major breadwinner and new media has propelled its reach to even greater heights. Like the Web explosion that coincided with the rise in adult content online, the adult entertainment industry is eyeing mobile as the next frontier.
Interestingly, adult-oriented content has relatively little marketing behind it, yet it accounts for a sizeable chunk of money made in cable TV. It’s likely the industry will follow a similar model in the mobile environment.
Chris Petrovic, VP of business development in digital media at Playboy Enterprises Inc., said the industry will have to re-direct those efforts to ally fears by better informing the general public of the protections put in place with the distribution of the content. Playboy and others in the field are currently working to get verification measures in place to ensure users are legally able to view their content, he said.
“I think as long as it’s done responsibly it can work really well,” Petrovic said.
Playboy is an international powerhouse and there is no picture-perfect business model that traverses national borders; indeed, Playboy and others face unique challenges in North America even as they’re seeing significant traction on carrier decks overseas.
The company is pursuing a two-pronged approach to its content by offering “premium adult content” for a fee or “non-adult content” (read: everything but the dozen or so pages of pictures in the magazine) for free. Articles, interviews and non-pictorial content is something the entertainment company might push to off-deck properties in North America, but Petrovic said adult content will be hard to deliver without carrier partnerships that put the content on deck and provide systematic safety protections.
“As we look at our possible business models available to us here in North America, we actually are exploring the development of an ad-supported model,” he said. Playboy is considering a partnership with a small pool of potential advertisers to help offset the costs of distributing non-adult content to the mobile screen. Premium, adult-oriented content will be a purely pay-for-use model, he added.
“Even though that reality doesn’t exist yet here in North America, we’re hoping it will soon,” Petrovic said. “The unfortunate thing is when you search for that there are no options being offered,” he said, noting that users have a difficult time finding Playboy content, whether it is adult oriented or not.
As Playboy continues to make its push into mobile, it’s also seeing demand rise for made-for-mobile content. “Our content has up until now been mostly repurposed from other divisions,” Petrovic said.
Nonetheless, the edgy image of the adult entertainment industry is simmered by trepidations just like any other media company is this era. “Many media companies don’t like to spend ahead of the curve because it’s a risk,” he explained.
But the continuing emergence of triple- and quadruple-play telecommunications providers will help drive demand for adult content, Petrovic said. As those offerings become more seamless to the end user, Playboy anticipates becoming more of a mainstay in mobile entertainment.