Ad Brite Looses porn-ad network

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When you talk about "the Valley" in tech, it's taken for granted that you mean Silicon Valley. But in the world of porn, "the Valley" is the San Fernando Valley, where the adult-film industry has established itself. Now, as porn goes online, there's a long, drawn-out war for dominance fought by the two valleys. And a tremendous battle has just been lost -- by AdBrite, the online-advertising network based in San Francisco. AdBrite, Valleywag has learned, has lost the partner that gave it an entrée into the business of selling porn ads.

AdBrite is not keen to let people know it's in the admittedly lucrative business of selling ads for pornographic websites. But for some time, AdBrite has had a partnership with AVN, a powerful trade publication covering the porn industry, to sell ads for AVN's websites and many others, through a site called AVNAds.com. Philip Kaplan characterized the AVNAds relationship as a "technology-licensing agreement," though it's clearly more than that; until this morning, AVNAds listed AdBrite's fax number on its contact information, and ads were served on the adbrite.com domain.

This morning, however, AVN has broken off the relationship and redirected the AVNAds.com domain to a new, hastily built, barely functional website. The ads on the host of porn sites contracting with AVNAds, however, continue to be displayed from AdBrite's servers. From what I've heard, there's a legal tug of war over the relationship. And last month's meltdown at 365 Main, the datacenter hosting AdBrite's servers, doesn't seem to have helped matters. The press release announcing the new AVNAds website stresses that the new venture will serve ads from multiple datacenters. AVN's new online-ad network promises to be up and running by September 30.