News
Subs still score over one-off downloads
Tim Green Oct 27 2006, 3:00pm
European consumers overwhelmingly favour subscriptions over individual downloads when they trust the source, says a survey by adult content provider Princess Productions.
The Italian company analysed sales of its Sexy Football Girls products across June and July and found that eight times as many were sold via subscription as one-off download. Princess sold individual downloads of wallpapers, screensavers and video clips via operator portals and sold subscriptions via partners using reverse billed SMS and WAP push.
However, the company doesn’t believe the success of subs is due to any kind of mis-selling. Instead, it points to technical faults on the operator portals - dropped connections, slowness and poor navigation. Because of this, “the end user is naturally reluctant to return to the portal,” said Princess’s Andreas Adami.
He also believes operators’ don’t push adult content and refuse to give content providers minimum guarantees.
In fact, Princess has declined to work with three carriers because of their ‘slovenly’ approach. Adami now urges operators to embrace the subscription model and smarten up the user experience. “They'd better understand that content providers want to see results comparable to those made from selling via TV or web, because the idea of big money coming from adult stuff on mobile is a myth.”
