Clueless Mainstrem Media

[gonzo]

As posted on MikeSouth.com

How many of you saw the story yesterday thats claming that those $200 economic booster checks are being spent specifically on adult website memberships?

I call bullshit!

Apparently its a slow week for the media and they all seem to be buying this “report” hook line and sinker.

So I did some checking on the “marketing group” thats responsibile for this press release. They have other reports back from 2006 but the domain aimrco.com wasnt registered until last month.

According to Kirk Mishkin, Head Research Consultant for AIMRCo, “Many of the sites we surveyed have reported 20 – 30 % growth in membership rates since mid-May when the checks were first sent out, and typically the summer is a slow period for this market.”


Hey Kirk. How about a list of those sites? A lot of people that I know are screaming that they have noticed as much as a 50% drop in revenue. Its pretty obvious to me that the list of sites that you interviewed are the ones that your working for.


Jillian Fox, spokeswoman for LSGmodels.com, one of the sites reporting figures to AIMRCo, added, “In a June 15, 2008 survey to our members, thirty two percent of respondents referenced the recent stimulus package as part of their decision to either become a new member, or renew an existing membership.”


About Kirk/AMRC from his website -
AMRC was founded in 2005 by Kirk Mishkin. Mr. Mishkin has been working in the online adult market as a marketing director, marketing analyst and business consultant since 2001. He has consulted with and helped implement numerous pay and affiliate sites, including industry leaders LSGmodels.com and MoreyStudio.com.


Industry leaders?

I’ve never heard of any of these sites. I bet Mike South hasnt either.


Why is it that this industry overexaggerates numbers when it comes to actual income?

You have to give it to Kirk though…thats some fierce press release spam to sell the other reports at a low fee.

Too bad the general media continues to run this ”bard’s tale” as valid information.

[gonzo]

Here's Kirk's press release in full.

AIMRCo - Adult Internet Market Research Company

Contact: Kirk Mishkin For Immediate Release
Tel: 646-552-4754
Email: aimrco@gmail.com
website: www.aimrco.com

PRESIDENT BUSH BOOSTS PORN INDUSTRY WITH ECONOMIC STIMULUS PLAN

An unforeseen and surprising beneficiary of the Economic Stimulus Plan, a plan that George Bush contends will “boost our economy and encourage job creation,” has surfaced this week. An independent
market-research firm, AIMRCo (The Adult Internet Market Research Company), has discovered that many websites focused on adult or erotic material have experienced an upswing in sales in the recent weeks since checks have appeared in millions of Americans’ mailboxes across the country.


According to Kirk Mishkin, Head Research Consultant for AIMRCo, “Many of the sites we surveyed have reported 20 – 30 % growth in membership rates since mid-May when the checks were first sent out, and typically the summer is a slow period for this market.”

Jillian Fox, spokeswoman for LSGmodels.com, one of the sites reporting figures to AIMRCo, added, “In a June 15, 2008 survey to our members, thirty two percent of respondents referenced the recent stimulus package as part of their decision to either become a new member, or renew an existing membership.”

The economic stimulus plan, which includes a check for up to $600 for individuals and $1200 for married couples (among other benefits) is the product of an agreement between House leaders and the Bush Administration, focused on reviving a struggling
economy in the wake of a flagging economy.

Fox also added, “Getting more people to buy porn was probably the last thing Bush had on his mind when he came up with his ‘stimulus package,’ but we’ll take it.”

About AIMRCo (Adult Internet Market Research Company)

AIMRCo is a non-profit organization that specializes in gathering, interpreting and distributing data on the online adult market. Through surveys, interviews, and information analysis, we attempt to assess trends and opportunities in the Internet market capitalized on by adult paysites, affiliate sites, and traffic trading sites. Using our connected network of over 400 paysites and 2000 affiliates/traffic trading sites, we gather the data necessary to make informed market trend assessments.

End of Release

[gonzo]

Here's an example of how the media is talking about it....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/0..._n_110457.html

[Sexyteaser]

Kirk whomever you are - YOUR FIRED!

[Toby]

LSG is just plain bad news. They were outted a couple of months ago, sending new joins to a page that offered a special deal for a longer term membership. The gotcha is that it required them to cancel the existing and rejoin, thus cutting the affiliate out of any rebills.

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by Toby

LSG is just plain bad news. They were outted a couple of months ago, sending new joins to a page that offered a special deal for a longer term membership. The gotcha is that it required them to cancel the existing and rejoin, thus cutting the affiliate out of any rebills.

Ah thats the industry leader hes talking about. SCAMMING!

[bluemoney]

Originally Posted by Toby

LSG is just plain bad news. They were outted a couple of months ago, sending new joins to a page that offered a special deal for a longer term membership. The gotcha is that it required them to cancel the existing and rejoin, thus cutting the affiliate out of any rebills.

That sucks ass!

[DragonKing]

spin doctors

fact retail has raised since the checks were issued

[RawAlex]

Here is the sad truth about the media today: They want to be spoon fed a sensational story, they won't check any facts, but they will report it in a way that implies fact.

If anyone in the media had bothered to check, they would see that most of the porn companies (including publicly traded companies and well known entities) are suffering along with everyone else. The only (very slight) potential for a boost for the porn industry is that some of these people may have used their checks to get their credit card balances out of the red, which in theory means they can join a porn site (or a health club, or buy dinner... or pretty much anything else you can do with a credit card).

I am more confident that local bars, dealers, and hookers did really well around check time. But since none of them have a spin doctor to send out vapid press releases, well...

[tony404]

Now I have to say this, May was our best month of the year to date. Now I dont if it was the checks or that Mandy was in hustler that month.June went right back down to avg and July has started very shitty.

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by tony404

Now I have to say this, May was our best month of the year to date. Now I dont if it was the checks or that Mandy was in hustler that month.June went right back down to avg and July has started very shitty.

My money is on her being in Hustler.
IRS is being slammed with calls from people wanting their checks.

[Toby]

May was a very good month for me as well, and June was also poor. I don't think these "stimulus" checks are making any noticable bump in sales.

And just in case the IRS is reading. Send me my check dammit!

[tony404]

Originally Posted by Toby

May was a very good month for me as well, and June was also poor. I don't think these "stimulus" checks are making any noticable bump in sales.

And just in case the IRS is reading. Send me my check dammit!

for alot of people it was and everybody wasnt in hustler. So it makes me think.

[softball]

News organizations are lazier than ever. I used to do video news releases and found that if you dress it up like its real...ie: factual....overworked assignment editors and tape editors will eat it up. They have shrinking budgets to research and the competition from even the likes of Perez Hilton forces instant publishing just to keep from getting left behind. Consider also that radio, tv, newspapers and magazines are now all providing the same multi media coverage because of the internet and you have a recipe for knee jerk, under researched journalism.
However, from a marketers point of view this is brilliant. This company is doing just that.....marketing in traditional straight press.
Meanwhile, I read all the ersatz "news releases" coming from the players in the porn business and they look like they were written by pr juniors in the nineties. Just begging for respectability and trying to sound solid. But what escapes them, is that as soon as you toss in the names of the business. (Horny Cunts is pleased to announce the appointment of a new affiliate manager, Mr. Fredrick Fellatio. Horny Cunts feels the addition of such a talent with his long history in blow job marketing will......blah blah blah), you lose huge exposure outside of this microcosm we live in.

As soon as Horny Cunts wants to publicly refute the results of a rather specious survey like this, they are stuffed. "Hello, ABC news? This is Mr. Smith from HornyCunts. I would like to make our position clear on....." They become the joke of the newsroom.

[tony404]

Has anyone ever heard of AIMRCo?

[Toby]

AIMRCo.com

Registrant:
London Studio Group
212 Malking Drive
Church Langley, Essex RM177HD
United Kingdom

Domain Name: AIMRCO.COM
Created on: 17-Jun-08
Expires on: 17-Jun-09
Last Updated on: 20-Jun-08


LSGCash.com:

London Studio Group
212 Malking Drive
Church Langley, Essex RM177HD
United Kingdom

Domain Name: LSGCASH.COM
Created on: 12-Feb-07
Expires on: 12-Feb-10
Last Updated on: 05-Jan-08

[RawAlex]

Any effects from the stimulus checks would be wide spread, not narrowly focused in a single area. When handed a bulk of money, most people will go out and buy a single item priced in that range, rather than metering it out. It's human natural. You have $500 burning a hole in your pocket, and whatever it is that you wanted that came near $500 is what you will end up buying.

Now, if they first paid down their credit cards and then used their card to buy, I dunno, $400, maybe they felt they had a bit left and bought a porn membership or joined AFF or whatever. I would suspect that services like Itunes and Amazon got nice boosts through the time frame.

For me, january to june have been all in a very similar range, however the actual sales are shifting rapid from program to program, as some just seem to have stopped converting altogether.

[xenigo]

I've always thought of adult to be the "recession proof industry". Do you think that's no longer the case?

[softball]

Originally Posted by xenigo

I've always thought of adult to be the "recession proof industry". Do you think that's no longer the case?

Only welfare is recession proof.

[RawAlex]

Originally Posted by rhetorical

Only welfare is recession proof.

...and funeral homes.

[softball]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

...and funeral homes.

Lot of those going out of business around here. I think even they are too expensive. Cheapy no frills taking over...

OK, here is another flourishing business at least in Vancouver.....dumpster diving.

[RawAlex]

Originally Posted by rhetorical

Lot of those going out of business around here. I think even they are too expensive. Cheapy no frills taking over...

OK, here is another flourishing business at least in Vancouver.....dumpster diving.

Vancouver has always been good for that. The city and the police have chosen to turn a very blind eye to the blight of drugs and homelessness, which in turn leads to olympic quality dumpster diving.

[softball]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

Vancouver has always been good for that. The city and the police have chosen to turn a very blind eye to the blight of drugs and homelessness, which in turn leads to olympic quality dumpster diving.

You should see my back alley. It can be a traffic jam of dumpster divers. Sometimes they have dumpster wars. Its kinda like gfy but more profitable.

[gonzo]

Little follow up from the slowpokes at AVNonline. Dont be too hard on them they are on the westcoast....

NEW YORK - A report from the Adult Internet Market Research Company, an independent firm, has made big news in recent weeks. The firm issued a press release on July 2 stating that "an unforeseen and surprising beneficiary of the Economic Stimulus Plan" was the adult online industry.
It made for some interesting headlines, especially since the days leading up to a holiday are notoriously slow news times for mainstream publications. Major newspapers and magazine immediately picked up on the press release, publishing story after story about it. The topic has been covered in the Los Angeles Times and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, as well as by overseas media outlets in India, England and Australia.

But it seems there are some problems with some of the statements and claims made in the press release, not the least of which is that many in the adult online industry say it's a bunch of hooey.

When asked if he had heard about people spending their stimulus checks on Internet porn, Yo Adrian of Radical Cash was succinct in his response.
"They are? Ha ha," he said.

Adrian said Radical Cash, which operates the sites Night Invasion, I Love Black Girls and San Diego Latinas among others, have seen no increase in joins since the checks, sent out as part of President Bush's plan to "boost the economy and encourage job creation," started going out earlier this year.

"We've actually been stuck at a certain point for a few months now; can't seem to break through it," Adrian said.

Steve Lightspeed, owner of Lightspeed Media which owns and operates sites such as Lightspeed University and Jordan Capri, said his company hasn't seen an increase either.

"June was worse than May," Lightspeed said. "We always see a drop in June, but it was more pronounced this year - even with Jordan back - so I don't see any truth to that report."

Biggy from Melissa Midwest's site was little more emphatic with his observations.

"This is just another irresponsible sensationalist journalism story aimed at creating views to their publication, with no factual evidence, because they know sex sells," he said. "In times of high oil, high unemployment, I'm sure everyone is rushing to spend their money on adult content. We have seen nothing of the like, and given our years of experience, we know more about the business than they do."

SexToy.com owner Dave Levine was even interviewed on Fox Business, where he said the whole idea was pretty much bunk.

That's a far cry from the statement made by Jillian Fox, a spokeswoman for LSGModels.com, one of the sites that reported figures to AIMRCo.
"In a June 15, 2008, survey to our members, 32 percent of respondents referenced the recent stimulus package as part of their decision to either become a new member, or renew an existing membership," she is quoted in the release.

Kirk Mishkin, head research consultant for AIMRCo, said many of the sites surveyed for the report state 20 percent to 30 percent growth in membership rates since mid-May.

Mishkin, who could not be reached for comment, leads AIMRCo, a nonprofit organization "that specializes in gathering, interpreting and distributing data on the online adult market," the company's press release states.

AIMRCo states it conducted its research through "surveys, interviews, and information analysis" and attempts "to assess trends and opportunities in the Internet market capitalized on by adult paysites, affiliate sites, and traffic trading sites. Using our connected network of over 400 paysites and 2,000 affiliates/traffic trading sites, we gather the data necessary to make informed market trend assessments."

It all sounds pretty impressive. But Mishkin doesn't give any concrete stats or information on the methodology used in the study about economic stimulus checks. And AVN Online columnist Tom Johansmeyer has blogged about the problems. Johansmeyer also has not been able to contact Mishkin for comment on the release and the study. And he noticed that while AIMRCo claims to have been around for a few years, the domain name for the AIMRCo.com site was registere with GoDaddy on June 17, 2008.

"I took a look at LSGModels.com and MoreyStudio.com, and they look like low-rent adult sites at best," he added. "Don't get me wrong; they may be above-board businesses (they probably are). But, they are not major adult Internet powerhouses. Of course, neither has listed contact information.
"So, we are left with the question, is AIMRCo's research real? Not likely."

http://avn.com/internet/articles/31181.html

[RawAlex]

The mistake made originally by the mainstream media was to take a press release from an unknown group and run with it like it was truth. Yahoo has a certain responsiblity in this, because they don't do a very good job of seperating press releases from news in a manner that can easily be determined without careful reading.

"I saw it on yahoo!".

"according to a report on yahoo!"

A press release could have been issued that said that the government checks were being used to purchase monkey fetuses and blueberries, so that people could make blue monkeys fly out of their butts.

[gonzo]

I see Gene Ross now has picked up this story. No soup for me!

--on the wen

Over the past week, publications like the LA Times, New York Post and even Valleywag have parroted a report from the Adult Internet Market Research Company about how the recent federal taxpayer stimulus checks led to a spike in porn site membership.

Predictable: it was an interesting piece of news dangled in front of the media in the lull leading up to the holiday weekend, when filler is traditionally needed. Unfortunately, it looks like the report was "total bullshit," at least judging by the reporting of Adult Video News columnist and porn-market scholar Tom Johansmeyer (pictured).

First off, AIMRCo's website has existed for less than a month, according to registration records. The phone number for "head research consultant" Kirk Mishkin appears to go to a personal cell phone. And the only two companies named as being affiliated with the company, LSGModels.com and MoreyStudio.com, "look like low-rent adult sites at best... they are not major adult internet powerhouses," Johansmeyer writes.

Then there's the lack of any disclosed methodology:

What is missing from the story is detail. AIMRCo says that “[u]sing a connected network of over 400 paysites and 2000 affiliates/traffic trading sites, we gather the data necessary to make informed market trend assessments.” Yet, it does not indicate the size of the sample for this particular survey. It offers no description of the responding companies. For Fox’s survey, there is no comment as to whether members would have joined anyway.

Johansmeyere also notes that industry publication Adult Video News used to compile an overall report on industry sales but has been able to get reliable statistics. How did AVN not know about AIMRCo, if it is a reputable, lonstanding organization? And if AIMRCo is an upstart, where did it get the stats that AVN couldn't?

It's shocking — shocking! — that anyone connected with the porn industry would artificially inflate the size of something just for some cheap attention. It's obscene, really.

http://www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=29031

[gonzo]

I guess Alec Helmy and his crew were too busy trying to create some fake drama and feel better about how only 500 people attended the freeloaders show in Vegas.

Following on the heels of AVN and Gene Ross they play catch up.

http://www.xbiz.com/news/96672

Oprano readers know they dont need Xbiz for market research.
Its all right here.