Wasteland.com's Colin Rowntree moderated the web to DVD seminar, which featured panelists Richard Arnold of Pure Play Media, Sid Grief of AAA News, Peter Reynolds of Adam & Eve Pictures and Kim Kysar of Pink Visual.
With more and more Internet-based content producers looking to break into the DVD market, the seminar offered real world advice from a cross-section of business leaders, including speakers from the retail, web production, distribution and production studio sectors.
The seminar was especially topical considering the recent trend of adult web producers repackaging and repurposing content for the DVD market. Former web-only producers like Naughty America, Silvercash, Bang Bros, Hundies and Platinum Bucks now find themselves with physical product lines through DVD distribution deals.
The seminar's common theme: adult content distribution methods are changing, and headed to the Internet.
"There's no question that the Internet is eating into DVD sales," said Peter Reynolds, Adam & Eve's vice president of sales and marketing. "Content delivery is gravitating towards Internet distribution, so we as content producers have to rethink traditional distribution methods."
For Pink Visual, the DVD production arm of Topbucks, distribution manager Kim Kysar said that DVD sales for her company are up 35 percent. She believes there always will be room for a physical product. Different distribution platforms target different consumer demographics.
"For us, making a DVD is about creating something consumers want to keep," Kysar said. "I think for DVD customers, there is so much choice, so you really need to have a special package and special content."
Kysar also described the difficulty Pink Visual experienced with various distributors when the company first started.
"We struggled for some distributors to buy our lines," she said. "Having the Topbucks name helped. We wound up underpricing our product just to get distributors to carry it. Once we set the price, we can't raise it now and distributors still think it's too high."
The panel also addressed box covers and what retailers are looking for in picking up lines from web producers. Sid Greif, who owns a chain of adult retail stores, said that for his customers, their source of information is the new-release section. He stressed the importance of a distinctive box cover, honest advertising on the box and, of course, a striking high-resolution photo on the cover.
Richard Arnold, president of Pure Play Media, told attendees that the beauty of Internet content finding its way onto DVD is that many of the paysites already are branded so distributors are picking up a niche product line that already has a built-in fan base.
"Companies like Naughty America have proved that you can be very successful taking content from sites that are already well-known and expanding your market through DVD sales," Arnold said. "With DVDs, it takes a long time to know just how successful a particular title or line is. With the Internet, it's immediate."
The second part of the distribution panel focused on production studios getting into Internet distribution.
Also moderated by Rowntree, panelists included Atlas Multimedia's Don Osterholt, TightFit's Oren Cohen, Encoding.tv's Wil Huang, WorldWideContent's Raffi Vartanian, Silvercash's Albert Lazarito and Homegrown Media's Farrell Timlake.
Discussion topics ran the gamut from technical requirements to marketing, and from legal issues to traffic generation.
"For content producers, our library is our gold," Cohen said. "If you make compelling, interesting content the potential is limitless. There are so many types of delivery methods online, but you really have to understand where your content fits in and how you can monetize it effectively."
A hot topic was the iniquities that exist in the video-on-demand market. VOD companies take a huge chunk of the commission, and the panel agreed that production studios are feeling shortchanged. Though, Homegrown's Timlake said that VOD represents only 3 percent of his company's income.
Another poignant topic was the use of digital rights management software to protect web-based content from piracy. Atlas Multimedia's Osterholt said that in his experience DRM "pisses members off" because it impedes subscribers' access to content. Rowntree that said for his company, implementing DRM lowered his conversion rates, and Vartanian suggested that watermarking content was a smart move because if the content does get ripped of, chances are you will at least get hits to your site.
All panelists agreed that encoding content in Flash is a wise choice. The only drawback of Flash, Encoding.tv's Huang said, is that it takes a long time to render.
Cohen was blunt in his criticism of the DVD market.
"The DVD market has shit the bed," he said. "DVDs represent an antiquated distribution structure. However, DVDs can convert new members to websites if the content is quality. And that's really what is comes down to — putting out high-quality content and utilizing new distribution methods to find your audience."
The panel's message was clear — the web has turned the traditional distribution model upside down. The rules of the game have changed so adult businesses must identify new trends and exploit them.
After all, a content producer's goal is to get as many eyeballs on their content as possible. New distribution methods, especially via the Internet, are opening up avenues to the consumer in ways that didn't exist before.
