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Originally Posted by jayeff
There we part company entirely. Not only are you grossly exaggerating the impact of review sites, but doing a King Canute is never a very productive exercise.
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You lost me here jayeff, what is a King Canute?
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It's really very simple. When I first started writing about cars...
The specific details are obviously different in our business, but the basic principle still applies.
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I believe the point that we disagree is that "the basic principle still applies".
Adult sites are a disposable product, almost any other consumer product that gets reviewed is not. Those that are (trash bags etc) tend to be purchased on a somewhat regular basis despite being disposable; adult sites usually do not fit that criteria either. At best well under 50% of those customers purchasing from ANY major traffic source can be expected to rebill a second month, most come no where close to that level. A very small percentage may purchase year long memberships or longer and these are the true "educated consumers" and connoisseurs however that segment of the market is so small it's almost not worth discussing.
Sponsors in this industry are in a very rare position to have very tight control over where and how their products are marketed. This can be used very effectively, especially given that word-of-mouth consumer reviews are and will always have almost no impact on a site's success; people will tell their friends that their new car is a lemon if it falls into that status, nobody shows up at the office to tell their co-workers that they feel unsatisfied with a membership to chickswithdicks.com (or any other site no matter how mild and softcore).
Given that unbiased non-commercial reviews are likely to always be negligible in this industry that leaves only affiliate retailers posting advertising text in the form of "reviews" to be dealt with and it would benefit most sponsors to have some control over how the sites are promoted by these affiliates. I would never consider saying something negative about a site in comparison to a competing site. A simple change in sponsor's TOS is all that is required to remedy this situation.
The day that Consumer Reports and other mainstream publications begin reviewing porn sites I'll agree with you that the basic principle carries over, until then I say that this is a self-contained market and sponsors would benefit from controlling how their products are advertised.