By Erika Icon

YNOT – Juicy Jay is no newbie to the adult internet scene. Thirteen years ago, he sneaked into affiliate marketing of adult products after trying his hand in the mainstream. In 2002, he began selling advertising on his websites, mostly to the same people he served as an affiliate. From that experience evolved the advertising network now known as JuicyAds.

JuicyAds debuted in 2008; Jay serves as its president. When he’s not looking for new spokes models (called Juicy Babes) or adopting tigers, he’s evaluating statistics, overseeing tweaks to the proprietary code that runs JuicyAds or otherwise working to increase the size and muscle of a network he said delivers more than one billion daily impressions to more than 61,000 websites owned by more than 33,000 clients.

Though his company is extremely visible, the man with the juice tends toward reclusiveness. YNOT tracked him down, tied him to a chair and forced him to engage with some pointed questions about his network, the Juicy Babes and his unflagging support for the YNOT Grand Prix.

YNOT.com: Explain how Juicy Ads works.

Juicy Jay: JuicyAds is an advertising marketplace for publishers and advertisers to increase their profits. We sell advertising directly on specific websites, by run-of-network campaigns and via mobile redirects and pop-unders. Clients simply sign up for an account and immediately can start buying and selling through our network.

How is Juicy different from other ad networks?

Most advertising networks are just about selling traffic and advertising at the highest price possible. We focus more on sustainable profits for our advertisers and the highest revenue possible for our publishers in ways other than simply charging higher prices to our clients. We focus on customer service and are proud to say that we are the only advertising network that has won three separate awards from YNOT, GFY and XBIZ. We have been voted and recognized repeatedly as the Best Advertising Network.

What do you think is the future of advertising in adult? Will there be big changes in the next few years?

Advertising on the internet as a whole is always changing. A few years is an absolute lifetime in this industry, and with the drastic increase in the amount of people using their mobile devices (versus a computer or laptop) to surf the internet, obviously there will be shifts to better monetize mobile websites and apps. At JuicyAds, we have been busy rebuilding our entire infrastructure to better serve our clients going into the future — whatever that future looks like. We have a leading-edge development team with a lot of experience in mobile. We are always working on something new or making something about our service better.

What do you like best about working at Juicy?

The team I have assembled over here is the best group of people I could imagine working with. A lot of our clients have been with us for a long time, and they’re like good friends; everyone here is family to me. My day is different every morning, and the thing I like most is making things run better at JuicyAds.

You have some hot babes on your site. How does a girl become a Juicy Babe? What criteria do you use to choose them?

The good thing about being the owner is that I get to choose the final Juicy Babes personally. We are always accepting new girls to shoot for us, but normally I see a girl I like and ask her to shoot for us. They’re always happy to align with the JuicyAds brand, and obviously there’s a lot of good exposure involved.

JuicyAds is the title sponsor for the YNOT Grand Prix at Internext in January. In fact, you’ve sponsored the YNOT Grand Prix since the adult industry’s championship kart-racing series started three years ago. Why are you such a consistent sponsor of the events?

LAJ at YNOT contacted me about the Grand Prix the first year, and immediately, I said yes. The YNOT Grand Prix, to me, breathed a huge breath of life into the industry’s conventions. The first year people didn’t really get it, but now the competition is fierce and people take it seriously.

But at the same time, it’s just a lot of fun. There can be only one winner, and the rest of us are just along for the ride. The best I ever placed was a fifth-place finish in Phoenix.
The YNOT Grand Prix gives new meaning to speed networking, and it’s the type of event that our Juicy lifestyle is all about.

Rumor is you’re hosting an exclusive YNOT Grand Prix after-party. You’re not getting out of that chair until you spill the details.

JuicyAds put together a little something with [mobile affiliate program] Affil4You. The after-party is invite-only and meant to be a relaxing experience after the event. Everyone attending the YNOT Grand Prix will be invited to join us in the Bowling Suite at the Hard Rock Hotel for bowling and drinks. But shhh! Don’t tell anyone!

JuicyAds has a big heart. The company contributes to various organizations working to make the world a better place. What charities do you contribute to and why?

We believe in giving back to the world because we can. JuicyAds is the only carbon-neutral adult advertising network that I know of. In fact, we offset more carbon than we actually are responsible for, so we are pulling more than our own weight. We also donate routinely to The Red Cross and the World Wildlife Fund. Last year, for example, we symbolically adopted more than 20 tigers on behalf of our clients.

What do you have planned for 2013 and beyond?

With the addition of pop-unders and mobile, 2012 was a really busy year. In 2013, we’re planning to take our existing services and make them more fantastic than ever. There will be new optimization options, new features, and we will simply do everything better than we did the year before.