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Has mainstream left us behind again?
For a long time now we here in adult have lived with the fiction that we do everything better than those in mainstream do it. We fool ourselves into believing that we are the innovators, the leaders, the ones who push the envelope on the Internet and there was a time when that was the reality but not today.

Sure, in some small areas we still lead mainstream but the glory days when we were the leaders and mainstream was rushing to keep up with us have long gone. In fact these days the position is almost completely reversed and it's mainstream who is out there pushing the limits.

Instead of trying new and innovative methods of advertising some of our leaders are simply marking time while others are shafting their affiliates and going back to the worn out scumware methods of Zango and 180Solutions.

While mainstream is out there working on the basis that display ads can do anything we're stuck with what worked years ago. Or we pin our hopes on geo-targeting that really doesn't work very well at all. I have yet to see a geo-targeted ad that puts me anywhere within a couple of hundred miles of where I really do reside.

Right now mainstream is definitely pushing the limits with display advertising and providing surfers with the chance to interact with the advertiser through the banners and advertising they are displaying. As technology and Internet connection speeds have advanced so has mainstreams ideas of how to communicate with their marketplace.

These guys aren't dicking around with 468x60 banners that might or might not include animated gifs. These guys are filling their advertising units with video, forms that can be filled out, the ability to send email from within the banner and even video chat.

Now before you tell me that I'm off with the fairies because none of our surfers would respond to that sort of marketing let me tell you that I think you are right. Including those features in our banners and ad units may not be appropriate for surfers – but I wouldn't write them off entirely. However, there are two types of marketing here in adult just as there is in mainstream.

We always tend to think of marketing in terms of selling to surfers but there is a second form of marketing here and that is the business to business marketing that sponsors are always involved in. Every time they try to sell their affiliate program to a new affiliate they're into business to business marketing mode and that is where some of these new innovative marketing methods that mainstream is using could fit very well.

At the moment all the sponsors do when they want to sell their affiliate program is throw up some banners, churn out some press releases, skin a few boards and throw money away to those who are attracted by competitions and give-aways.

But perhaps they could be trying something different and for those who do there might be a lesson from what IBM is trying at the moment. IBM is currently pushing one of their product lines via two different ads that are appearing on targeted websites around the place.

This advertisement allows businesses to have direct contact with a real person at IBM via a two-way chat session that runs directly from inside the banner. The person who starts the chat doesn't have to navigate away from the page he or she is on and that means that the person sees the ad and can make inquiries immediately without losing interest because they have to click through to some other site.

The ad uses technology produced by Avivocom and could even include VoIP if that was deemed appropriate by the advertiser. Now would that work within the framework of business to business marketing here in adult?

No one has tried it so we don't really know but IBM seems to like the idea mainstream and they feel that the ads have performed well. They have found that the response has been positive because the faceless monster that is IBM suddenly has a face and a 'voice' that people who are interested in their product can relate to.

Could it work here in adult? Might it be a new use for all those affiliate managers who don't answer emails? Maybe I'm hoping for too much when it comes to some affiliate managers out there but this type of business to business advertising certainly could have a positive impact for any sponsor who wanted to try it.

It will be interesting to see if there are any sponsors who are prepared to play catch up with mainstream and who do make better use of the Internet to get their message across to affiliates.