Though Playboy launched as a print magazine in 1953, today the majority of its profits come from the trademark and licensing agreements that have made Playboy Vodka and Playboy Bunny .Playboy doesn't share its financial information, but in 2015, the company made $38 million from its magazine and digital publishing efforts, and $55 million from licensing, according to The Wall Street Journal. In January, The Journal reported that Playboy is considering folding its print magazine, which reportedly looses as much as $7 million annually, to focus on Playboy as a brand.
One of the issues for larger companies in the adult film industry is that so-called "tube sites," like RedTube and PornHub, often host pirated content — at least until the copyright infringing videos get flagged and removed, but it's often a game of whack-a-mole as others are uploaded. This means advertising dollars are spread thin, and not always making it into the pockets of the companies creating the content. It is 2018, after all. Porn is free, and print is dead. But maybe, just maybe, crypto could help monetize the struggling industry.
One idea: gamify the porn watching experience with crypto
Playboy's decision to accept payments in bitcoin and ethereum doesn't do much beside put its brand in the cryptocurrency conversation, and make life a little bit easier for users that prefer to pay with digital currencies. Bitcoin itself can be remarkably expensive and inefficient for small payments, and usually a credit card will do just as well.
Alt coins, though, could provide new ways to think about monetization in an industry that relies heavily on clicks and advertisements.
One of the coins Playboy plans to accept is the Vice Industry Token, or VIT, a cryptocurrency designed specifically to monetize adult content by incentivizing high user engagement.
VIT was started in 2017 by Stuart Duncan, a Canadian entrepreneur and CEO of an adult cable network called Ten Broadcasting. The project has raised nearly $15 million in an initial coin offering fundraiser, which ends next week. Duncan said the blockchain network should be fully operational by summer.
The idea behind VIT is that users get coins for being highly engaged content consumers across the porn industry. Users will earn these coins across various adult film producers and brands as long as those brands have the blockchain running on its website. Users can then use those coins to buy premium content from companies like Playboy.
Duncan said adult film companies were already exploring cryptocurrency for anonymous payments. But he thought he could build a better model.
If VIT keeps users engaged, Playboy could get more ad revenue
The result, if all goes as planned, is a blockchain network that anonymously gathers data about pornography viewing habits from users around the ecosystem and encourages porn viewers to spend more time on websites.
Producers like Playboy get higher engagement, which could mean more money from advertisers.
Let join Vice Token sale now: https://vicetoken.com/
