consumers

This page considers audiences for online adult content, consumption patterns and consumer issues.

It covers -

• audiences - age, nationality and other demographics
• time spent online and frequency of visits
• destination - which sites are visited and what is bought
• consumer issues such as fraud, mousetrapping and spam

     audiences

Who is visiting adult sites (and paying for the privilege)?

The answer is that we don't know much detail. Although not necessarily stigmatised, consumption of adult content/services is still a private activity for most people and there are considerable difficulties in gathering (and validating) data.

Much media coverage has not moved past claims that "four out of every 10 people using the Web have visited an adult site in the last week".

That appears to be a figure extrapolated from early studies - such as that by Marty Rimm, highlighted here - that were severely criticised for methodological inadequacies - or based on the 2001 Forrester report that claimed 19% of North American users are regular visitors to adult content sites. Of that 19% approximately one in four are women, 46% are married and 33% have children.

Forbes pointed to a Nielsen//NetRatings report claiming that during April 2001 there were 22.9 million unique visitors to adult content sites. That is less than the 41 million who visited news sites, 34 million to finance sites and 25 million to greeting card sites. (In May 2001 we noted that one US card site scored 2 million visits on Mothers Day.)

A later 2001 NetRatings poll claimed that 25 million US users visited adult sites during September. 7% were supposedly men with an average age of 41 (so much for teenage hormones), an annual income of US$60,000 and a preparedness to spend big, download music or do other things that gladden the hearts of e-marketers. Porn star Asia Carrera said that

The Internet has been good for the adult industry as a whole, because it's a whole new market that reaches the entire world 24/7, and people who would never be caught dead in an adult bookstore are now enjoying adult entertainment for the first time from the safety and anonymity of their own homes.

The 2002 US National Academies' report on Youth, Pornography & the Internet noted that

According to industry statistics, approximately 70 million different individuals per week view at least one adult Web site on a global basis - 20 million view adult pages that are apparently hosted on sites in the United States or Canada. The number of paying subscribers is on the order of several million in the United States, and may be as high as 10 million. The majority of these viewers and subscribers are male, though the fraction of female viewers may be growing. On average, a paid subscription generates $20 to $40 per month in revenue. The majority of subscribers cancel within a month, but of those who remain after a month, the typical retention time is approximately 3 to 4 months.

As we suggested earlier in this profile, such industry statistics should be approached with caution.

A 2009 study (PDF) by Ben Edelman, whose earlier research is commended elsewhere on this site, unsurprisingly noted that consumers of adult content were located in both the 'red' and 'blue' states of the US. Edelman drew on two years of de-identified credit card data from 2006 to 2008 that included a purchase date and each customer's postal code.

     time online

A 2001 MSNBC survey of around 38,000 surfers argued that the "average" US surfer spent under three hours per week at adult sites.

The survey designer, Alvin Cooper, had earlier gained attention through problematical research that labelled the net "the crack cocaine of sexual compulsivity", with one in 10 (self-selected) respondents claiming that they are "addicted to sex and the Internet" - a figure that we suggest is somewhat lower than those who'd report an "addiction" to the telephone or television.

One outcome is the APA paper on Sexuality on the Internet: From Sexual Exploration to Pathological Expression by Cooper, Coralie Scherer, Sylvain Boies & Barry Gordon. We have discussed questions of cyberaddiction elsewhere on this site

Metrics specialist NetValue claimed in 2001 that in the EU Spanish users visit 'adult' sites the most, French visit the least, and Germans spend the most time (an average of 70 minutes per user per month). Highlighting regional variations (or identification problems?)

NetValue commented that French seniors visit sites for the most time each month, UK women are more connected, in Spain more young people go online for porn than in other countries, whereas youngsters in Denmark are less connected. In the EU those aged 50 years old and over supposedly spend the most time connected to adult sites. The Spanish figure presumably reflected the age profile of Spain's online population at the time of the survey: users were younger than their European counterparts, with 60% under 35 years old.

British users connected for the shortest time: 36.7 minutes per user per month. 38% of Spanish home users supposedly visited adult sites in November 2000 (3.5 million unique visitors at an average of 66 minutes per user per month). In France 80% of users visiting the sites were men (average 54 minutes per month v 12 minutes for women).

Curiously, the study claims that 4% of French visitors were under 14 years old, at an average of 26 minutes per month. How could NetValue tell? Did the kids announce that they're logging out in order to view the local version of Playschool?

In the UK, it is claimed that women are more frequent Adult site users than in other countries (28% v 20%) but spend less time - an average of 13 minutes per month. The percentage of women connected to Adult websites is higher in the UK than in other EU countries tracked by NetValue. In Germany, 81% of visitors were men, an average of 81 minutes per month.

Closer to home NetValue claims that 40% of internet users in Hong Kong visited porn sites in December 2000. Visitors grew from 434,100 in October to 451,150 in November and then fell slightly to 420,220 in December. 70% of adult site visitors were male. Men spent 78.3 minutes on porn sites; women spent 49.6 minutes.

A May 2001 Nielsen//NetRatings report claimed that the average US male user spent nearly 10 hours 24 minutes online during the month, compared to 8 hours 56 minutes by women. Men went online 20 times in the month, compared to 18 times by women and viewed 31% more pages (760 to 580). SatireWire published this reponse; there is a more insightful analysis of issues in Days & Nights on the Internet: The First Decade of A Diffusing Technology (PDF) by Philip Howard, Lee Rainie and Steve Jones.

A NetRatings spokesperson attributed the variation to adult content sites:

There is a huge list of sites that get 70 percent or more of their audience from men, and almost all of them are adult sites ... These sites have a lot of pop-ups, which increases the number of pages viewed, and visitors tend to spend a long time on adult sites and look at a lot of pages seeking a particular kind of content.

An August 2001 report from NetValue claimed that UK web surfers are among least active porn users, although more than 25% of the online population (3.8 million households) visited an adult content site in June. The supposed demographic included students (23%), manual workers (15%) and professionals (12.8%). NetValue doesn't supply a breakdown for online Archbishops and High Court judges.

Spain again topped the list with 40% visiting an adult site. Germany, France, Italy and Denmark were in front of the UK. Poor Sweden scored a mere 19%, although it's unclear whether that's because the Swedes amuse themselves in other ways or the metrics are skew-whiff. Germans supposedly retain number one ranking as the longest users, online at XXX sites for 60 minutes compared to the UK 45 mins.

In 2001 Internet.au suggested that figures from Jupiter Media Metrix revealed that

Australians are the greatest consumers of online pornography in the world in terms of the proportion of the population visiting adult websites at home. A snapshot of Australians online shows 33 per cent of the nation's 6.8 million Internet users accessed pornography from home in December, up from 25 per cent in January.

A survey of 1,500 subscribers to a UK geek magazine - not, we suggest, necessarily representative of the overall online population - reported that 77% had visited an adult site, over 30% were regular visitors, 10% had paid for membership and 13% "engaged in sex" with someone met online.

Another report claimed that

over 20% of the adult Internet is driven by gay men. While the straight market is considered to be saturated, there is still believed to be room in the gay market for expansion

perhaps reflecting preconceptions questioned here.

     destination

Comprehensive public dissections of traffic (do some categories of sites get more visitors than others) and online purchases aren't available.

That inhibits assessments of whether

• some categories of sites get more traffic than others (eg unique individuals, repeat visits)
• the 'clickspace' of those sites reflects offline demographics identified by the Kinsey Institute and other research initiatives
• particular categories of subscription sites experience greater 'churn' than others
• consumption patterns are changing in response to perceptions about privacy and security

Reports from some publicly listed retailers of adult products give an indication of gross sales of videos, knickers, vibrators and other products. Those reports however don't have much granularity and it is unclear whether particular enterprises are representative of sales online and off.

Figures on file-swapping and self-publishing aren't available. Offline collecting is profiled in Sex Collectors: The Secret World of Consumers, Connoisseurs, Curators, Creators, Dealers, Bibliographers & Accumulators of 'Erotica' (New York: Simon & Schuster 2006) by Geoff Nicholson

     consumer issues

One US promoter of adult sites as a way to "get rich quick" quipped that

consumers are undemanding, provided a certain minimal level of quality is maintained. Even if that level of quality falls to incredibly abysmal levels, customers are reluctant to complain, because complaint indicates consumption.

David Card, in the dissenting Jupiter Media Metrix report noted on the preceding page of this profile, commented that consumers tolerate advertising disruptions, difficult navigation, delays, poor content quality and "a generally unpleasant online experience" while surfing. Perhaps that's because, to use the words of one industry consultant,

adult content sites succeed because they offer two things unavailable in an offline video store: anonymity and choice.

Others have noted major problems with billing, non-provision of services and difficulty in ending subscriptions. We have discussed some of those business practices in the following page of this profile.

Comprehensive figures are not available: in practice statistics for complaints to financial service providers (banks and other credit card companies) or are advice bureaus are the most tangible indications of consumer problems.

At an anecdotal level it appears unlikely that many participants in the industries would get quality assurance certification. Recurrent problems include -

• onerous contracts for subscription or other services
• uncertainty about terms & conditions
• difficulties in ending contracts (eg consumers are required to advise of a cancellation well in advance, are referred to an email address or telephone number that is unattended, or are required to write to an office in the Caribbean)
• mousetrapping, browser hijacking or browser theft (eg being taken into a loop - generally of screens directing you to a sponsor's site - that requires the user to close the browser or even the machine). Some users have found that their browser preference settings are changed, generally to an unwanted new start-up/home page
• pagejacking, where an adult site operator gains control of an existing innocuous domain whose visitors are then flicked to an entirely unwanted destination, increasing the operator's traffic figures (and thus advertising revenue). It is discussed in a crisp paper by Ben Edelman on Domains Reregistered for Distribution of Unrelated Content: A Case Study of Tina's Free Live Webcam
• non-delivery and under-delivery (the user pays for download of a video clip but nothing appears or the clip is shorter than claimed)
• misleading descriptions (the "hot new" high quality content turns out to be a blurry scan of what appears elsewhere on the web) and links
• billing for services that were not ordered or for subscriptions that have ceased
• reliance on spam to attract traffic (as a twelve year old acquaintance commented, even one graphic offer for a penis extension is just one too many if you are a girl)

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