As a marketer, I concern myself with more than simply compelling the consumer to make a purchase. I also try to consider the ways in which HOW I compel that sale might influence perceptions, foster ideas and -- ultimately -- affect people's lives.

As an online marketer and student of the Web Medium, I'm in a position to evaluate how the choices I make and how the choices made by other online marketers affect the way people think and feel about certain products.

As an online pornographer, I'm looking at the effect what we're doing has on SEX ITSELF.

The pursuit of ever-larger traffic acquisition ROI has led us down the path of ever-finer targeting. This means: trying to discover the customer's Flavor of Demand as specifically as possible, then making as specific an offer to that apparent Flavor of Demand as we can, or as our range of offerings will allow.

You might say that Human Beings are at their most individualistic in matters of sex. Who we fuck and how we fuck them are determined by impulses from the deepest psyche.

Each of us has a special thing we enjoy, and we pornographers (especially, online pornographers) have made a science of catering as precisely as we can to the individual's Flavor of Demand.

But, as our keyword lists (especially for highly-focused content types) begin to resemble the inscrutable jargon of a secret society, and as more and more of our traffic acquisition spending follows the small-but-high-converting traffic "trickles", I'm becoming concerned that we're neglecting a more important responsibility, in favor of short-term "smash and grab" monetization. I’m all in favor of giving the customer what he/she wants – certainly, as we all know, he’ll pay you more for that than for anything else.

I’m worried it may not be.

Now, I DO understand that what I’m saying goes against a number of accepted online marketing truisms.

But, there is, perhaps, a consequence of entering into ONLY highly-specialized dialogues with our customers, that we may not be considering…

We are communicating absolutely NOTHING about the soundness, beauty and general “okayness” of sex (ALL SEX) to the undifferentiated (un-targeted) masses.

And if we aren’t doing it, you have to wonder who is.

Who IS speaking to the “Smalltown Boy”?

From whom, and with what agenda, does he receive his first message of self-reflection?

Certainly, there are information resources (both on and offline) to steer a young initiate towards his or her special herd – but that is mainly rhetoric. Essential rhetoric, to be sure (insofar as we would immediately want to dispel the notion in any young person that they might be ALONE in their impulses), but, still, just rhetoric.

It is only when we finally see the Acts (the naked bodies, arranged in their needful ways) that we can say to ourselves: “Yes, yes… THAT is for me.”

And then we make our sale.

But what does it do for that person’s sense of who they are against the backdrop of Collective Human Sexuality? Do they feel included? Do they FEEL their (rightful) place in the spectrum of Human Sexuality?

I dunno.

I don’t want to advocate for anything (especially anything contrary) in particular yet, because I want to hear what you all think.

But, what if we make sites for people who are NOT so sure what they like yet sexually?

What if these sites were part information value (First Amendment defensible!), and part titillation?

Wouldn’t we, then have an opportunity to BOTH inform (orient, reassure, offer acceptance) to our customers AND monetize them?

Consider these graphical representations of Human Sexuality.

The first chart shows the 4 sexual orientation “camps” as we know them -- Gay Male, Gay Female, Straight Male, Straight Female. These four categories, these four possibilities, we're told by conventional wisdom are supposed to provide for all of Us.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Depending on where in the world you live, the Box you're in may determine whether you are afoul of the law or in its good graces, whether you will be able to participate in society as yourself or have to wear a mask.

If you're lucky, your sexual impulses place you in a majority. But, if your definition of sexually attractive differs from the norm or from that which is prescribed for your "gender" where you live, you're going to suffer.

I realize the first step in gathering support for an idea is to recruit as many like (or similarly-minded) people as we can under the banner of that idea. That's why Gays and Lesbians band together -- to achieve a greater sum of individuals -- to have a louder, more powerful voice.

The paradox is: How can you be yourself AND be a part of a Broad Sexual Category?

At some point, it seems we still have to go along to get along. Four Sexual Orientation Camps is better than two... but, are we really all that satisfied with the range of choices, and with the rights afforded to the members of certain camps?

Where do you see things going, if we proceed with the current 4-camp arrangement?

And, I’m talking LOOONG-term – as in the effects to the Species.

Are we drawing closer in empathy, or farther apart?

Here's a different way to slice things...

CLICK TO ENLARGE

As I said, I’m going to stop short of advocating anything in particular – because (as I said) my mind is not yet made up.

But, let me leave you with a thought or two...

A lot of smart people whose job it is to sell things online seem to have turned their backs on MASS MARKETING -- and by that I mean: delivering a high-level message to EVERYONE. They've given their attention, instead, to speaking as narrowly and as privately to the INDIVIDUAL as the powerful new technologies at their disposal will allow.

This might do great things for sales, but it relinquishes the long-held role of consumer product marketers as shapers of culture. Radio and Television are necessarily Audience Mediums -- they operate on the one-to-many "broadcast" communications model. The Web, by contrast, provides for a one-to-one "dialogue" model between buyers and sellers -- whether by way of the information online customers may give them voluntarily or the use of Surveillance Marketing Technologies, the online merchant can now speak uniquely to one person.

Again, great for sales, but... weaker, somehow. On the Web, it seems, marketers have given up the Awesome Power of the Media they once held. Once upon a time, you could stick your head out the window at 8PM on a Saturday night and hear an entire neighborhood all laughing at the same joke they'd just heard on TV. And on Monday, all the kids in your class would be whistling the same commercial jingles. The advent of the Web, and the accompanying proliferation of cable TV channels, have destroyed that feeling of closeness and connection. How ironic.

Now, the questions with which I have been struggling, and with which I hope you will offer assistance are these:

In the United States today, who is filling the void in Mass Communications created by Madison Avenue's online migration? And with what?

At the same time that the traditional, pre-Internet "airwaves" have been vacated by Commerce, there is an increase in the amount of censorship -- coincidence?

The use of sexual imagery by advertisers made sex both pervasive and mainstream. Now that the methods of selling have changed so dramatically, and now that the relationship between Sex and Marketing has become... abstracted... whose job is it in our society to provide the Living Examples of Human Sex -- since neither schools nor parents are willing or able?

2HP

Jack "2HousePlague" Mardack is President of profitLABINC.com.