Noel Biderman, CEO Of AshleyMadison.com - Changing The Face Of Matrimony - Zing Talk

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Ashley Madison, a controversial dating website that was launched in 2001, has received heavy criticism over its premise. The site serves as a platform for married persons to engage in marital infidelity. Its slogan: Life Is Short, Have An Affair.

Joining me today is founder and spokesman for Ashley Madison, Noel Biderman.

Noel, welcome to Zing Talk.

Noel Biderman: Thanks for having me, Matthew.

Noel, marital infidelity has been around as long as marriage. What drove your decision to foray into this world?

Noel Biderman: I think what's change is [that] you have to take a look at the Internet's growth around social networking and dating. Stigmas that once existed with online personal ads were quickly shed, and more and more people started going online to find their beloved. As they did that, more and more people who were already in relationships took advantage and they too started joining those services. My paradigm was, why not build a social network of their own where these married people could connect with one another, as opposed to having to pose as something they weren't.

You say that your site serves as a useful tool for keeping people from starting affairs in the workplace or in singles dating websites where it's not exactly appropriate.

Noel Biderman: I think our community functions in two positive ways. When you look at it from society's benefit, yes. Workplace affairs lead to unfair promotions and people losing their jobs. Then you have people joining dating sites, visiting escorts, doing all those kinds of behaviors, when they're already in relationships, which is either criminal or dangerous at best.

If you can cannibalize that behavior [with] a community of likeminded individuals, you're creating a benefit for that society. I think also for people pursuing those affairs, you're helping them mitigate that risk.

One of the statements you've made in response to the criticism of Ashley Madison, and especially the commercials you air, is that your commercial in a 30-second spot is not going to convince anyone to cheat. But what about those that would shy away from starting an affair in the workplace, and see your commercial and realize that there is a simple way to engage in marital infidelity, where they didn't necessarily see that opportunity before.

Noel Biderman: I know this, and I think affairs have always been linked to opportunity. It's really hard to roll back time, and whether that opportunity is on a business trip or whether that's through the presence of strip clubs and massage parlors on the street corner. Whether it's easier to engage in an affair now because you have a personal device now, as opposed to having to walk to a pay phone, or having a hotel not ask for ID to confirm you're a married couple.

All those things that we wouldn't really welcome in our society… You have to let adults be adults. We can't legislate certain behavior. We can't create prohibition. It fails every time that we do so. The bottom line is, that's never more prevalent than when it comes to people's personal sex lives. So, yes, I'm part of the landscape that says, “Let people be who they want to be and pursue what they want to pursue.”

So is it a question of cannibalizing this behavior, like you say, and putting it in a place where it's not affecting other people? Or is your stance closer to your previous comments, in which you said this can actually help a marriage?

Noel Biderman: That's really two separate questions. On the latter one, which is: do affairs help a marriage? Yes, that's why people pursue them. Ashley Madison is not some kind of home-wrecking service. These are people who are saying, “Hey, I love my partner, I cherish my children, my extended family and my economic situation,” but for whatever reason their sex life isn't working for them. They didn't sign up to be celibate, for example.

So they're looking to pursue something outside of their relationship to preserve their primary relationship. And while that's hard for people to digest or understand, the role that I play in this whole thing is to sit there and say, “Would you rather Facebook be inundated with people looking to have affairs?” That's not what the site was created for. Or would you rather people who want to behave in that matter go to a site where that's highlighted. I think the latter is the logical one.

You've made several TV appearances, going on The View, Hannity, Tyra Banks, Huckabee and Larry King, among others, in defense of Ashley Madison. You've really met strong opposition in every appearance. Is this revealing of a marketing philosophy that says, “All publicity is good publicity”?

Noel Biderman: That's part of it. I think you've gotta look at a couple things. I'm starting to start a conversation, not necessarily have the last word. I think the topic of infidelity is greatly misunderstood. The research today is thin at best. It's been hard to get people to sign up to participate in a study that helps them understand why have an affair. Maybe that's not even relevant – having people discuss why they have affairs after the fact is not the same as the genesis of infidelity.

So our site has become, if you will, the sociology experiment. We're able to sign up 10,000 people every hour to the server. That's really powerful data, about who's coming or why they're coming here, how long they're staying – it tells people a lot more.

Our conversations have often started as, “Oh my goodness, there's a site that caters to people in relationships looking to have affairs!” But it starts to evolve as more of a reflection in the mirror about what this society is really about and how we behave in relationships. We all know that a marriage today is more likely to fail than succeed, if you want to define success as staying together.

So we have a changing face of matrimony. Matrimony hasn't always looked this way, meaning it hasn't always been monogamous and heterosexual. We're evolving to include same-sex couples. It used to be much more focused on the absence of pre-marital sex. People got married much, much younger. So many things change – it's not a static institution. Until we start looking at monogamy and its impact, we're constantly going to be kind of blown away by the topic of an affair, when truthfully it's something we need to understand better.

There have been commercials aired during prime time on cable news networks in recent weeks by a marriage advocacy group singling out Ashley Madison as their target. Some have speculated that this is part of your strategy – to penetrate an otherwise inaccessible ad market. What is your response to this?

Noel Biderman: I had a couple interviews about that. I've seen the ads. My guess is the individual behind them, the individual who I think it is, is trying to do something for his own political gain. Whether they're trying to run for Attorney General or whatever it ends up being, this is one of those stories that makes them look good by saying, “Oh, I tried to take this on. I tried to defend marriage.” I don't know that there's much of an organization behind it.

But again, if someone wants to spend their money and time trying to knock us off our pedestal, all the power to them. We're not breaking any laws. Ashley Madison has the right to exist like anything else. And I do think what's unfair is that an organization like that has the opportunity to advertise. Why shouldn't I have the opportunity to put my ad up on the same CBS, Fox or ABC station that they're able to do? But that's what goes on right now, in America and in Canada. My ads are okayed by everyone in the regulatory regime. But often, one executive, sitting alone in his office, says, “I don't like the nature of that business, I'm not going to let that ad see any daylight.”

But really, you've seen the ads, and they do put you in the spotlight quite a bit. They're definitely targeting Ashley Madison specifically. It's almost like free publicity.

Noel Biderman: It's no different than when I was on Sean Hannity, [who] bemoaned the existence of my service, and yet ran three of my ads as sample commercials that he would never accept on his show. When 20,000 people tried to sign up that very minute, my servers almost crashed. It's no different than the women on The View saying this is abhorrent and then airing my commercial and then talking to me about it for half an hour.

I think [it's important] to remember that I'm not the only human being on the planet making money off the topic of infidelity. Make no mistake about it: it's journalists, therapists, it's all kinds of people. And as more and more famous people, whether those are Presidents and princes, whether those are entertainers or athletes, as more of those people have very well-known public affairs – they have huge news cycles to them, right? The Sandra Bullock story played out how many different ways on how many different stations for how long a period of time.

But since we have a greater and greater license to both; the regular person pursuing an affair, and me being called upon as an expert to discuss the topic, which gives more length to my brand.

Right. As long as you can spark the conversation about Ashley Madison, that's really all you need to do.

Noel Biderman: That's my role in this whole thing. I don't need to sit there and try to persuade anyone in a happy relationship that affairs are a good thing. What I need to do is tell people, “Listen! People have affairs. It doesn't make them bad people. It doesn't make them ill-equipped to be Presidents or CEOs or whatever they end up being. And here's what you should know about being able to have affairs.”

And so, if my role in that is just to be the voice of reason, whether you believe the percentage to be 50% of people or 70% of people in relationships, whatever that number is, to be there voice, well great. That's a great role for me, my business benefits from that.

Describe the growth trajectory of Ashley Madison over the past few years?

Noel Biderman: It can only be described as meteoric. It's like nothing that's ever been seen before. Once we can figure out how to build a discreet product and make sure that you remain anonymous and aren't going to be discovered, and have all the nuances that would lead to a successful affair, our site has gone from 800,000 to 900,000 users to 7.8 million users in the span of the last two and a half to three years. I think by any stretch of measurement that's pretty remarkable.

The unique thing about Ashley Madison is it doesn't matter if our next marketplace is Brazil or China or France or wherever it ends up being, people the world over have affairs, and if we can speak to them with the right voice and the right nuances, this will be a global business that could be in a hundred countries and in 20+ languages and have 100 million users in the next couple of years.

And you say that one of the most popular times to sign up for the site is after holidays.

Noel Biderman: I think you have to understand why people have affairs. It's not because Ashley Madison puts a TV commercial out there or because I do an interview. People have affairs because, at the end of the day, their relationship isn't living up to what they expected it to do. Something finally pushes them into the realm of having an affair.

So, when you're thrust together around holiday time or when the new year is upon and you reflect at the year past and the year you're going to have, that's when decisions are made. And people tend to make those decisions and say, “You know what? I need to do something for myself. I work so hard every single day to provide for my family. I do this for my partner, I do this for my children, I need to do this for myself.” And that's the decision they make.

At that point in time, they can probably take a number of avenues. They can probably look in their circle of influence to pursue what they want to pursue. They can look to go to Las Vegas, where everyone knows their marketing campaign is What Happens In Vegas, Stays In Vegas. They can look to have an office romance. Or they can now look to Ashley Madison and pursue something a little more discreetly, a little more anonymously. And that's what I think what millions of people are going to choose to do this holiday season.

Avid Life Media, the parent company of Ashley Madison, manages a number of other edgy online dating platforms. Could you see one of these usurping Ashley Madison as your flagship brand in the future?

Noel Biderman: I don't know that anything could ever surpass Ashley Madison from a point of controversy. It might be the most controversial website ever created. If not Napster, then pretty close to it.

But in terms of growth and success, as far as that goes…

Noel Biderman: Yeah, I don't think so. I think with Ashley Madison you're genuinely looking at the fastest-growing social network on the planet, excluding Facebook. You're looking at 100+ million user base, ultimately, in multiple countries. I don't know that anything else has that kind of universal appeal. The universe of people who are single and looking to connect with one another, that is a very big universe. But the people already in relationships, looking either to stray or move on, that is a much bigger one than the single one. And we're at the forefront of that and tapping into it.

I can't imagine taking a subset of that singles marketplace whether that's people who want to date older women with Cougar Life, or wealthy guys with Established Men, or same-sex relationship with ManCrunch, or open relationships with SwapperNet. All those other brands that we have are all interesting verticals. But nothing can have the potential reach of Ashley Madison.

You had an IPO in the works back in February. Why was that put on hold?

Noel Biderman: I don't have a ton of insight into that because I personally wasn't necessarily pursuing that directly. That was something that we were discussing on an investor level and a board level, and really it was also being done around a potential acquisition that fell through.

I, for one, am totally happy with Ashley Madison and Avid Life Media being a privately held company. We have some great investors who provide a lot of guidance and insight. We're wildly profitable.

At some point, [an IPO] could be relevant. But we don't lack full resources. We actually have more marketing dollars than we know how or can spend. We're one of those companies that, at the end of the day, would like to spend more on marketing, but are prohibited it running a Super Bowl ad at all the places they want. So we're not really in need of the kinds of funds that would help our expansion.

You had a number of unconventional marketing strategies in the past where you tried to get an airport and New Meadowlands Stadium named after Ashley Madison. Do you have any big plans like that on the horizon for marketing ploys?

Noel Biderman: I don't know if I would call it a ploy. What we do is take a look at a marketing opportunity, that would allow us to, for example, with the Meadowlands Stadium, it's hosting the Super Bowl in 2014. We had worked really hard the last couple of years to do a lot more stuff for the NFL. We know that's where our customer base sits. We hadn't had a lot of success. Why not try, we thought, to find a way so that every Monday night football game that's played in New York for the next five years?

For them to be saying, “Welcome to Ashley Madison Stadium.” What an incredible opportunity to further your brand, and they were looking for a sponsor. So our point of view was, let's have a Plan A, and let's have a Plan B. Plan A is let's try and get the market we want to pursue if the world was a more just place. Plan B was, if they say no, let's tell people about it and ask them, “Well, why would they say no?” It's the same thing with renaming the airport. We found out that hundreds of people were going to be laid off – unemployed.

And our view is, we'll step in and provide the funding so you don't have to fire these people, you just have to rename your airport. That seems like a really fair pitch from my perspective. But that city would rather fire people and put them into unemployment than to partner with Ashley Madison. So that's a great media story. That says a lot about how people feel about affairs, how people feel about our brand. That's a statement worth having.

I would have loved for every time someone lands in Las Vegas, and my guess is 25 million do every single month or year or whatever the number is, to hear about my brand and my alignment. But if that doesn't happen, then great, I'm gonna try my second part of my strategy, which is tell the media about it.

But make no mistake about it: I would always prefer Plan A. Plan A gets me continued marketing, continued customer acquisition. I could grow my business more consistently and more effectively if I was able to market my service how I wanted to. Having the local Toronto newspapers talk about my attempt to [inaudible] is really great for those couple of weeks.

But what about right now? What about the hundreds of thousands of people I want to speak to today that aren't seeing my ad? They're in the same opportunity as long-term marketing, and it's unfortunate we are still in a society where they can't allow me a level playing field as they would [inaudible].