If you work online inside the adult industry and you are just beginning to carve out your web presence, you may wonder what mainstream media and outside businesses do to successfully operate ad and traffic networks. Here are four tried and true basics that are must-dos.

1. Other media consider the devices their customers use to visit their site 

Before other businesses and mainstream media expand their ad and traffic networks, they research the devices their customers, or visitors, use. 

People use various devices—think mobile phones, tablets, and laptop and desktop computers—to access websites. This may sound like an obvious question, but do you know what devices your site visitors are using, and when? 

People use different devices at different times for different reasons, Single Grain reported. For example, “desktop computers are still used during the workday (at work), but mobile devices are used more during the evening for that audience and, of course, they are used day and night for many people.” 

Because porn, you could most likely guess that your visitors aren’t accessing your content on a work computer. But finding out if your customers are visiting your sites during the day on their personal mobile devices during their lunch break could help you better understand those visitors’ wants.  

2. Other media are constantly evaluating their target audience and user data

Newer ad networks give companies the option to target specific audiences. 

New ad networks are able to dig deeper than their predecessors. According to Single Grain, modern ad networks can target a site visitor’s geographic location, demographic data, device in use, income and more.

“Some [ad networks] also include retargeting features [for example, you visit a site, leave the site, and then, later in the day, you see the site advertised elsewhere], which enable you to put your ads in front of customers who have already visited your website,” Single Grain reported.

“This is an incredibly valuable option, as conversion rates on retargeted traffic can be double that of standard advertising,” they added. 

According to TechCrunch, large media companies such as Netflix, Amazon and Facebook, have leveraged their “covetable” amount of user data. These companies also have been able to “leverage that data to their seemingly untouchable advantage,” TechCrunch reported. 

“The quest for data—and the services that provide, analyze and inform—take on new urgency amongst the traditional media and entertainment ranks.” 

3. Other media know to ask their ad networks about their “niche publishers”

According to Single Grain, large ad networks work with many (often time thousands) different publishers. Knowing the niche publishers these ad networks work with can help you figure out if that particular ad network will benefit your company. Because if your target audience isn’t visiting these publishers’ sites, than they aren’t viewing your ads. 

“There are many different factors that you need to take into consideration when determining where to run your ads,” Single Grain reported. “Since testing a new network requires an investment of both time and money, it’s important that you figure out which ad networks are best suited for your business first.”

4. Other media are learning about AI ad targeting 

According to a Medium article written by Chris Speirs, VP of operations at 1plusX, AI-based audience expansion is “the next generation of ‘look-alike modeling.’” (According to Adage, “look-alike models are used to build larger audiences from smaller audience segments to create reach for advertisers.”)

Currently this AI “expansion” can “create audiences based on any initial ‘seed set,’” Speirs said. “With this, publishers can extend the value of their own first-party CRM data, or through second-party partner data (e.g. data from a real estate or e-commerce site), and achieve the segment size required for a given advertiser.”

The previously mentioned TechCrunch article added that AI technologies, such as Siri and Alexa, are becoming more mainstream. These technologies mainstream breakthrough means that “they” are impacting media, entertainment, and advertising. 

“‘Virtual assistants,’ ‘smart speakers’ (or whatever you want to call them) will increasingly populate our homes, improve significantly over time and serve up our favorite content (as well as increasingly targeted and hoped-to-be ‘welcomed’ incentives, promotions and ads),” TechCrunch reported (emphasis ours).

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YNOT’s special reports on advertising and online ad networks will continue through the end of the month. Read more about this month’s theme here.

Image via Alfonso Romero.