Page 18 - AVN July 2018

EDITOR’S DESK | By Sharan Street
EDITOR’S DESK
WHO’S ON TOP
Our favorite fifty, plus who’s trending on AEBN
Every year, the AVN Awards nominating
committee is tasked with selecting a mere fifteen
male performers who will vie for the title of Male
Performer of the Year. Many of the same names appear
on the list year after year, in large part due to their
undeniably impressive bodies of work and reputations
in the industry.
But there are so many more male performers who
have enjoyed long and productive careers in the adult
industry. The field is so rich, in fact, that it’s no chore
at all to come up with the names of fifty men who have
attained significant name recognition and professional
respect in adult entertainment.
Inside this issue, readers will find the names and
faces of our chosen fifty performers, as well as some
thoughts shared by adult directors on the men they
work with regularly.
We also reached out to some of the adult talent
agents, asking them about which of the performers on
their roster were most active, and also which ones are
most popular with female talent.
One of the agents we spoke to was Mark Spiegler,
who has no male talent on his roster but books scenes
for his female talent with many of the top performers.
“Male talent needs an agent to get them started,”
Spiegler says. “And if they’re good they can go on 20
years without any help.”
No matter who we talked to, the same names came
up again and again, validating many of the choices
we had already made, but also highlighting newer
performers who might not yet have made the cut this
year but will undoubtedly be contenders in years to
come.
And the years to come still look bright for male
performers. One of the agents we spoke to—Sandra
McCarthy of OC Modeling, who represents several
prominent adult stars—speaks highly of the men
in adult. “I love taking care of the guys. They’re so
awesome,” she enthused. McCarthy also sees promise
for male performers in the rise of self-generated
content. “More people are now empowering themselves,
shooting their own content and doing their own thing,”
she adds.
But for some real-time, non-subjective data on the
popularity of male performers, there was one obvious
data source to mine: VOD giant AEBN. When asked
what kinds of data AEBN would be able to compile
on performers, AEBN revealed how it captures data
in various ways on both straight female and gay
performers.
“Each week we compile a list of the top female stars
and the top male gay stars for a sales tool that affiliates
can use on their sites,” explained Bishop of AEBN. “We
don’t generally compile a list of the top male straight
stars as the movies tend to be a vehicle for the female
cast more than the male cast. If anyone would like to
have a Top Star list automatically updating on their
website they can get one through the AEBN affiliate
program.”
But even though AEBN doesn’t supply its affiliates
with lists of straight performers, it still has access to a
wealth of data about the popularity of male performers
with its consumers, and the company provided AVN
with lots of data that helped in selecting the performers
highlighted in this issue.
“In the process of compiling ‘Top Star’ lists,”
Bishop continued, “we’ve refined a method that looks
at several different datasets and combines weighted
results along with some human factoring to come up
with what we feel is the most accurate representation
of who is truly ‘trending’ on our platform each
week.”
AEBN supplied several lists of top male performers,
based on recent searches, number of movies the
performers appear in, and volume of sales for those
movies. But for an overall ranking, AEBN takes into
account both movie sales and consumer interest.
This list is what AEBN considers the “best metric”
for gauging popularity.
“These men appeared in movies that had strong sales
and consumers were actively seeking them out. Maybe
they had leading roles or maybe they only appeared
from the navel to the knees, but their titles sold. Many
of them are active directors, and that does influence
their popularity and name recognition,” Bishop further
noted.
The same sets of data—recent searches, number of
movies, and movie sales—are also captured for both gay
and bisexual performers, and AEBN supplied lists for
performers in those categories as well.
AEBN’S CURRENT TOP TEN STRAIGHT MALE PERFORMERS
BASED ON MOVIE SALES AND CONSUMER INTEREST:
James Deen
Manuel Ferrara
Mandingo
Rocco Siffredi
Chad White
Tommy Gunn
Sean Michaels
Danny D.
Mike Adriano
Steve Holmes
AEBN’S CURRENT TOP TEN GAY MALE PERFORMERS BASED
ON MOVIE SALES AND CONSUMER INTEREST:
Rocco Steele
Jack Hunter
Sean Maygers
Dylan James
Sergeant Miles
Adam Russo
Brian Bonds
Pierce Paris
Nate Grimes
Ace Era
AEBN’S CURRENT TOP TEN BISEXUAL MALE PERFORMERS
BASED ON MOVIE SALES AND CONSUMER INTEREST:
Colby Jansen
Pierce Paris
Lance Hart
Dante Colle
Sebastian Keys
Chad Diamond
Ruckus XXX
Gabriel D’Alessandro
Will Havoc
Mike Panic
18 | AVN.com | 7.18
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