AltaVista in Pornalliance

[henki]

AltaVista announced a special partnership with Swedish porn house Private Media(NasdaqNM:PRVT).
According to the press release AV says that half of the searches made are adult related. 15,000 adult searches per minute. With the new alliance searches for porn will be taken to Privates sites that are going to be covering the top ten slots.

AV and Private will share the income, but they do not enclose how that is done.

[seth_wilde]

Wow, that's big news. I know the SE's are trying to find new ways to make profits, but I think selling all the top ten spots to the same company is a little extreme. I think this practice will have to be confined to the porn industry otherwise AV will loose all credibility.

[henki]

That would be the first thought right? I rang AV up and talked about it with my contact. He said that they rather deal with one big, serious player than many small webmasters. Private is also splitting revenue with AV, so they will get more out of the deal then just selling the spots.

They really hope to make money out of the adult searches. Who is going to complain if their relevancy for adult search words is some what biased? The newbe seeker? I doubt it.

[georged]

>He said that they rather deal with one big, serious player than many small webmasters
Or, rather, they would rather deal with one big, serious player than deliver a decent search.

>Who is going to complain if their relevancy for adult search words is some what biased? The newbe seeker? I doubt it.
I imagine thousands of adult sites might see it differently.

Their policy is 'Take the money and run', in other words.

[seth_wilde]

I can see were AV is coming from, their all about profits just like any other company. Although I'm sure this move will piss off alot of adult webmasters, I agree with henki that it probably won't affect AV as a whole.

[henki]

I would be upset to, if I was in to adult sites. Like I was when they started to charge for placements last summer.

It might be good though, if they start to show profits, without changing anything for the rest of the searches. Someone has to pay for the services you know...

[NFFC]

AltaVista pimps for pornmonger [theregister.co.uk]

Tim Richardson of The Register.

[henki]

Great find NFFC, I have not seen any press about in english.

Two new facts then:
-They are not targeting US traffic this time.
-The coupling arrangement is due to go live from November 15.

Little edit here. Private has published their press release www.prvt.com (Its in a java pop up can´t link directly)

[jilly]

It appears that this is a Euro thing and will not affect the US at this time... but if this works out for AV how long do you think it will be before they do the same thing here with a US based porn giant? Not long, I wouldn't think. There is HUGE money to be made in sending traffic to the larger sites and they're going to find this out with this program I think. Should be interesting if they decide to sell out the top spots world-wide. Ouch!

[chiyo]

Just how long will it be that respected internet companies have to act as pimps to turn a profit?

When that is no longer the case, the WWW will finally have grown up.

[henki]

Interesting point Chiyo. Who is searching AV for adult content? Is it newbies that make those 15,000 searches a minute?
If so we will see a drop in adult searches as users get more savvy.

It is not surprising that they start the program outside the US. Be sure that it will spill over to whole AV if it works. Maby also to other competetive catagories.

Still if SEO shall have a future, there has to be search engines. And they can´t provide the service without making money. As long as they do not comprimise on other searches, I think that this might work out fine.

But what about gambling? or pharmacepticals or real estate? or travel? If AV take that step I think that they will loose popularity.

[NFFC]

"the deal will essentially involve Private buying ownership of an "adult" section within AltaVista's Web directory...
Private's network of sites will also be given some preference in the results of keyword searches for adult content"

Article Here [totaltele.com]

[rencke]

This just in:

Pornmonger installs family filter at home.
Recommends others to do the same.

Björn Skärlen, Internet manager of new Altavista partner Private Media Group, has installed a family filter on his home computer, according to Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter [Fri Oct 10]. He recommends everybody else who is disturbed by porn to do the same.

- I am not allowed to say how much we will make from this deal [with Altavista], but we are talking of millions of dollars. We expect to triple our Internet sales volume, he told DN's reporter.

- We are no censors. This is a deal between an advertiser and us, just like newspapers that carry porn ads, says Vesley Chrichton, Altavista's marketing director for Europe according to Dagens Nyheter. "Altavista will make sure that nothing unlawful is shown", he added.

[rencke]

More developments:

Porn deal causes internal fight in Altavista

- We have not agreed to this deal and will not have any porn ads, says an angry Magnus Larsson. He is Altavista's manager for the Nordic area and was quoted in the 9 o'clock news on Swedish Television 1.

- We found out about this only the day before yesterday, he told a reporter from "Vision" a media magazine. (www.vision.se). "We will not make any agreement about this on the Nordic level."