Editor's note: While the images in this post are free of graphic content, there are many suggestive references to potentially objectionable material.
It has come to my attention how PornHub is marketing itself. It is one of the biggest pornographic websites, and I have no idea who is behind their online marketing strategy, but hats off to their team because they're stepping up the porn websites' game to the next level.
Let me detail here some of their latest actions and you will understand why I'm so impressed.
A bit of context: porn still seen as taboo?
'The Internet has taken porn mainstream' stated Aurora Snow, a retired porn star when EJ Dickson, editor from The Daily Dot asked her about sexting and amateur porn as causes that have contributed to not see porn as a taboo.
In her interview, in which the main topic covered is her participation as speaker in a conference at Harvard, she points out how many porn industry A-list names have jumped to commercial and mainstream channels ('James Deen is in a movie with Lindsay Lohan, Sasha Grey is on Entourage'). It's totally OK if you don't know any of these names, but it can give you an idea on how p0rn is now more accepted in our society.
Mobile first: unlimited videos... but only for mobile devices
Global mobile traffic reached almost 800,000 Terabytes just during last year 2013 and it's estimated to double that figure in the current year, according to the research provided by Statista/Cisco. If that wasn't enough, increase of smartphone ownership went from 35% in 2011 to 56% in May 2013 (source).
Even if those figures are not specific to the PornHub's specific business, we could take the latest statements from Hulu's CEO pointing out that despite of starting as a desktop app, 50% of their five million subscribers are running their service only through devices (smartphones, tablets).
After many years of selling adult entertainment content through network TV channels, and from there going to home desktops, the porn business knows that nowadays mobile screens are becoming part of our daily routine. And what did PornHub do? Delete any kind of restriction for its mobile users by removing the five videos per day limit still enforceable in their desktop version. What happened then? Take a look to some of the reactions on Twitter.
Let's not forget to mention the peak of 15,000 mentions in Twitter (you can see it in Topsy screenshot of the next section). On average they don't go beyond 3,000 - 4,000 mentions per day.
PornHub masters Twitter and social media is its playground
If there are Twitter accounts for things as weird and eccentric such as one for the Big Ben tweeting what time is it, or accounts that only tweet once per year, why shouldn't a porn site have its own bizarre Twitter account?
Would you be more likely to stablish a conversation between an impersonal company account or would you be more likely to talk if you know who is behind the screen? I guess the second answer is your choice, right? Instead of having a team account, PornHub in Twitter is ' PornHub Katie', what is the name of its Community Manager. The same strategy adopted from its related website, YouPorn and Jude, YouPorn Community Manager.
By giving a quick look into their timeline you will see that they know how to play the Twitter game, and how friendly the conversation they can engage in. They are not they typical conversations that you would have in a open public space though. Not going to include here some of their latest tweets but you can nose around some of their idiosyncrasy (though not all of their tweets are appropriate for all workplaces).
To have deeper insights based on data and not only in my unbiased opinion (I'm more than a follower of their tweets, I'm a devotee!), let's take the first three competitors for the 'adult' category provided by Similar Web.
By analysing them through Topsy, we can see that that effectively xVideos and xHamster can't compare with PornHub in terms of Twitter presence. If there is another website that is starting to do great on it, that's YouPorn. But oh surprise, YouPorn belongs to the network of PornHub.
Would you retweet a high-level erotic photo? PornHub knows that you are not likely to do that. Instead, they clearly know how virality works and images are their aces up the sleeves. These are some of their latest memes that you can find if you are following them through Twitter.
Are they not great? Do you think you could it better? Well, today's your lucky day. Late in 2013 they announced a campaign in order to look for a Creative Director to join them for a year. Their goal? Launch an all-publics national advertising campaign that can be channeled through mainstream media.
Nonetheless, it's not always sunny in Pornland. With such initiative any designer, or even non-designers, could blame them for doing a spec-based design contest. Spec what? No other thing but ' any kind of creative work (...) submitted (...) by designers to prospective clients before taking steps to secure both their work and equitable fees', as described in NoSpec.com. In other words, they are using royalty-free content submitted that was created painstakingly by designers around the world. Pas cool.
Hijacking trends has also place in its timeline, no matter if it's about the latest Cinco de Mayo festivity, Rihanna news or if it's about the SuperBowl. They are pretty conscious about when a porn website might be more 'needed' in someone's life, and that's the reason they started to offer no video limit on…. Valentine's Day.
A community of people openly admitting to like p0rn?
Apple has a huge amount of people that spread their love for the products they make. Buffer is engrossing a community of startup transparency thanks to some of their latest initiatives like the open metrics dashboard powered by Baremetrics or their open salaries posts. Ryan and the team at Product Hunt really care about the power of a 'true engaged community', and 'not just acquire additional users'.
At the end, it seems 'easy' to grow a community if what you do is good enough. But what happens if your product is porn? What in the beginning seems to be a difficult challenge, growing a porn community in the 21st century is now easier than ever. People are not afraid of showing what they like, even if it's porn. Sexuality is a dish present in everyday TV shows, parents are aware of sexual education to their children, sex is not a topic to avoid any more in many cases.
Would you invite your followers to send you nude pics? Would you take a send a nude pic that you know is going to be shared to 300 K porn fans? PornHub jumps right in when it's about talking to the community and make them participants of PornHub history.
In case you feel curious, you can head off to Twitter to get some of the most imaginative and sexy responses and replies to these kind of contests. Totally NSFW, everyone. You were warned.
Mother nature and porn viewing insights: best allies to get backlinks
How does a porn site earns links from 'normal' sites? By 'normal', I mean non-erotic or non-sexually explicit at all websites.
On one side, PornHub seems to take the role that OkCupid started a while ago with their blog. OkTrends was a blog collecting all original researches and insights from the dating site by giving shape to the 'hundreds of millions of OkCupid user interactions'. PornHub has named it 'PornHub Insights' and it's delightul if you love data and some erotic references.
Extra points: spotted what are two of their favorite tools for visualization: Infogr.am and Tableau
And on the other hand, they have partner up with the Mother Nature by promising to donate one tree for every 100 videos viewed in the 'Big Dick' category. Result? 2294. Trees? No, no yet. 2294 referral external backlinks according to the data from MajesticSEO.
I tend to think that everyone does things right, but do we really believe they care that much about nature, or it's just a 'gimme some backlinks and promo' kind of thing? I have my doubts, but by taking a look to the backlink profile from PornHub and the previous mentioned competitors, it seems Mother Nature is great for some link-building. In comparison with its competitors xVideos and xHamster, there is no presence in their 20 best performing backlinks of other content different than p0rn.
'Translate me this into other words, Javier'. Well, it's not about the trees is about getting the attention of Cosmopolitan, BetaBeat, Gawker, Huffington Post, Vice, GQ and a long list of mass media audiences.
Linkbaiting? Also well covered in PornHub
Type 'pornhub + justin bieber' into the search box of your preferred search engine, and check it out. Certainly a SERPs output quite different from similar search queries featuring other famous like 'pornhub + paris hilton' or 'porn hub + kim kardashian' (not going to link them, but you can look up by yourself).
' We are not interested in hosting any Justin Bieber's sex tapes (...) It's nothing against Selena Gomez, we just don't approve of all of Bieber's gross behavior – spitting on fans, driving dangerously and endangering people, and just being a real jerk' were some of PornHub VP's comments when he was asked about what position PornHub if it was offered to buy or license a possible video leak.
Respectful approach… or just another marketing strategy? Because they might not be interested in such a great asset for their video collection, but they don't hesitate to target the beliebers, hordes of Justin's fans no doubting on go to your jugular if you address no nice words against their Messiah.
By the way, were you impressed with PornHub's performance against its competitors on Twitter? Wait to be speechless when you see the analysis between the 35 million-visits/day-porn-website vs the canadian singer personal account (54 million Twitter foll... Beliebers).
PornHub knows its personas and goes for them
Great marketers have pointed out the importance of setting up the personas you are trying to target within your marketing strategy. A great piece about understanding who is behind the screens can be found also through this same site, written by Mike. Don't bookmark it, all we know you won't end up reading it, so do it now.
' Research and develop who are my personas will take some of my time', you say. If it's well done, for sure. But have you thought what such a great resource are you going to have? You establish who is your ideal user / visitor / reader, and you create a plan to get his attention. And by 'attention', I mean their clicks, their time to spend on your site, their comments, etc. Let's be precise, their money.
Does Machinima mean anything to you? It didn't to me until I watched one of their Youtube videos (kind of NSFW) promoting PornHub. I typed 'pornhub' in Google's famous video platform to check out what other content PornHub was hosting besides their interviews of personalities within their industry.
Machinimia's h1 tag describes its business as 'next generation video entertainment network for the gamer lifestyle and beyond'. Their services go from 'monetization of your channel, grow your audience and expand your reach to new platforms'. With most of its partners belonging to the video-game industry, they are able to deliver and work with these impressive figures.
'Ok, now I know a bit more about these video-gamers, but how does it is relate with PornHub?' Glad you are wondering that too. I must be honest, and say that I have been quite reluctant to the vloggers thing - I just prefer written content where you can read or scan what's being said at your own pace - but after seeing that in just two days Machinima had 700,000 views in a video only featuring PornHub's initiative, I might change my opinion about vlogging.
After watching the video, and seeing more about what's the kind of audience Machinima is targeting, don't you find so many correlations and similarities with Pornhub's audience?
'Innovation' is also possible in the porn industry
A quick analyis of search queries made by their visitors and daily sharing the weirdest ones? They got it.
Some 'machine learning' to create a porn search engine that guess what kind of videos you are likely to enjoy? They have it too. Not PornHub main site, but a little brother.
I don't know if it can be considered as 'innovation', but as I have pointed out before, posts researching, analyizing about what kind of sexual genres are the most viewed, what are the sexual preferences for certain USA regions and football matches impact their visits figure depending if you team is winning or losing, is certainly something you don' t expect from a porn site. And yep, they are on that too through PornHub Insights.
In terms of marketing, promotion, buzzing, if all the porn sites out there would take their business as seriously as the PornHub is doing, marketing friends, we would have such a big pool of opportunities to learn. Because as I read while ago in Jordi's post, 'porn sites are the best places to learn about conversion' and I would add about online marketing too.
That's some crazy data, I would feel a bit odd for digging it up but thanks for doing the "dirty work". I guess to a degree it really comes down to knowing your audience inside and out.
thanks for the post
I can not agree more with you, Chris. Online porn is just another 'business' where building up and recreate what is your 'ideal customer' is also necessary and essential if you want to do it for a living.
I have seen many cases of webpreneurs that picture themselves living of online porn sites but is not that easy. It requires as much time, resources, budget and planning as any other well-known online businesses like eCommerces, for instance. Often goes undernoticed that is not enough with uploading videos.
Really well done post Javier, it's hard to argue against data like that. Dr. Pete should have referenced those mobile statistics in his latest post on why mobile matters.
It's amazing that a pornography site is such a good example of what a great online marketing strategy looks like. They really do a great job in all aspects of digital marketing. A lot of brands, including non-pornography brands, could learn a great deal from their strategies.
Again, great job Javier!
Thanks for your words, Joe.
I'm pretty sure the data about mobile usage/growth shared by Dr. Pete is a good one too. Anyways, I stumbled upon with https://www.statista.com while I was doing some research for this post, and it has become the website-to-go if you are looking for a curated archive of stats, charts, data.
Wow, great find Javier! Thank you for passing that along!
"It's amazing that a pornography site is such a good example of what a great online marketing strategy looks like."
I agree. But, in my opinion, I'd say it's sad over amazing.
Really content related to porn didn't harm your blog, because i am really scare to post porn content in my blogs,
I would also say that this particular brand has been mentioned on TV many times in jokes, in sitcoms, and just normal data with the campaigns that they run. So their online marketing efforts where they donate to charity actually turn up in both searches and also are put right in front of people that are just watching TV during the primetime hours. Also this industry has massive numbers of people who are secret about their viewing so though they may have a bunch of traffic it is more due to the people looking at porn not for whatever cause they are promoting. That also would make for the point that though they put effort into marketing their visitors to their sites will show up anyway because of their content not their marketing, but the marketing helps. Last if you notice they have more than one site that they host having PornHub as the main focus, but then many other types of sites that cater to other needs. Great post on the data and how the Porn Industry is looked at, but in comparison to other internet marketing this stands alone and would not be compared to normal business, as they own the market in this area.
What a great post. Great facts, data on your end Javier. It's funny to be so impressed with a porn sites marketing but when good marketing is done right, it is hard to go unnoticed.
Javier,
This is truly a well done post. You have my applause.
Much appreciated, Robert.
This is great to see, especially for those who work w/ websites where engagement is low because of the subject matter - loans, taxes, legal, etc. If PornHub can make it work, there's no reason why sites in those areas can't do it the right way too.
This article is awesome. They definitely know their market. I think the key to their marketing is that they know the vast majority of people will only openly talk about porn sites in a humorous way. I for one have never seen someone post a video from the site on facebook, but I definitely saw that Wood campaign posted!
One question about the wood promotion, though. It was not really for "backlinks" in the sense that they're trying to get links to rank higher in Google. Porn sites and organic search don't mix; except for super explicit, graphic searches, but I would like to see if they get any organic traffic. I'd wager it's not a whole lot. it was more of a PR campaign, since I highly doubt a porn site is worried much about organic search. Not nitpicking (OK maybe a little), just genuinely curious at the wording since I always associate the term back links with SEO.
Yeah I think you're right, but but my head is spinning with ideas to pitch to clients with link bait pages like this that could net authoritative/trusted .org links and links closer associated with their respective niches. For example, a scholarship campaign can net a lot of .edu backlinks, and while the value of those links for converting pages can be argued (when it comes to ranking improvements), there are a lot of benefits from establishing a more diverse backlink portfolio to branding, PR, and reputation management.
Incorporating something like the Gives America Wood - if the client can handle it - could provide the same type of thing as a scholarship and could really help out clients with newer websites or ones that need to shine up their image a bit.
Thanks for that suggestion. The site is actually applying the scholarship campaign (https://thenextweb.com/media/2015/09/02/real-college-girls/) which has bring them 190+ external linking domains in a month
ahah great one :)
Thanks for doing all the "dirty work" for us!
The porn industry is certainly not to be neglected and can have impressive data to show.
Unique take on it
Nice work Javier! I like your presentation and writing style.
If I skip getting look around that particular Business industry and see the insights into marketing campaign, I would admire their online marketing strategy. Target user engagement is the key and the same thing happened with this Site to get popularity among their base audience.
hehe did you get distracted often whilst doing this study? ;)
What a great post. Great facts, data on your end Javier. It's funny to be so impressed with a porn sites marketing but when good marketing is done right, it is hard to go unnoticed.
I suggest to take a look @ bestpornsites.net @ - it's a new website that lists only the safest websites
Take the example Pornhub is a bit daring, but very rewarding :) The data you have collected and analyzed to us are very conclusive.I would say that Pornhub is an example to copy ...
Bravo for tackling a topic could be considered as a social taboo. The content in this article should be no surpise to anyone. Whether it was increasing the need for high speed internet access in every home, pioneering online video and then pioneering mobile content; the porn industry has always been on the forefront of new trends in the internet. I wonder sometimes if some of these Fortune 500 companies should hire some people from the porn industry to help them to monetize their online content. Of course we all know that having PornHub on your resume probably puts you in the "No" pile right off the bat, even though it should be just the opposite.
One woman posted in here. What does that tell you guys? What a load of nonsense.
Hi Stewart,
I see two avatars that represent women, and several that have no gender associated with the name or avatar. Can you elaborate on what you felt is nonsense? Also, have you looked at other posts to see how many have male versus female avatars in the comments? That might be interesting as well.
Are you assuming that porn is just for men, Stewart?
When do we separate from SEO and nothing to do with SEO? They aren't doing SEO, for the sake of SEO. This is just an attention grabber.
I'm surprised at the niche you chose, but if you can learn from them, who cares? It's like law enforcement learning a thing or two from the mafia back in the day. Could there have been a more ethical niche to cover? Maybe. Did we all learn something from this article / niche? Yes.
Awesome insight into digital marketing for an industry like this! Digital marketers will always face the challenge of trying market industries that are either very boring (pest control for example), to the other end of the spectrum (the topic of this article). Fantastic job!
Some really creative marketing campaigns, wonder what the desktop/mobile splits are, I bet its atleast 30/70
Great, its allways a question how porn sites make their SEO, but how do they get there social followers? Not one person I know is following a porn site ;)
I think that is a great question .. I mean who of you is following them via Twitter?
How they do the job is great and you can see it is more than directorys to win that game - it really doesn't matter what your topic is - great post with nice infos I didn't know (the justin beaver tweet)...
Pornhub Insights is a great piece of marketing by the team there. At the start of this year they released all their 2013 insights for various different countries which was picked up by lots of big news websites.
It's not often Porn sites get links from Forbes, Mashable, Huff Po, the Guardian and the Washington Post in such a positive way.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
7 years ago at a place called Aurangabad, Inida i discovered PORNHUB.
that was the time when porn was CD's only but latter it was PORNHUB only
Now after Rehab (I was a pron addict :D ) and working in Digital Marketing your analysis gave me fresh perspective on the effort which is put to deliver the content across the globe...
Great analysis. A lot of those ads remind me of old magazine full-pages. People could learn from this if they get over whatever aversions they might feel, or perhaps just stop lying to themselves. Money, money, money...oh yeah, lots of people could learn from what this industry is doing with social and digital marketing.
Greg, you make a great point -- "A lot of those ads remind me of old magazine full-pages". Sometimes the best innovation is applying what worked previously to a new channel.
Interesting Read; Never thought I can learn that much by reading the analysis of a Porn Website. :P
The way they are engaging their community on Twitter is awesome. I am amazed man Hats off to PornHub.
This article is so informative. Thanks Greg.
Javier is the author of this post, not Greg. Did you perhaps comment on the wrong post?
Javier
Working on a porn website is always a challenging job. But i salute your Data. you have done it in extremely well mannered. Only after reading your post, i got to know that how they are getting huge visitors (apart from Ranking). Your research is very very useful and data is simply awesome...
What do I say! never imagined a porn site doing its marketing right! Plaudits to PornHub and praises for you Javier for such an excellent well researched post!
So I said "I like porn", "Porn is great", I'm sure you'd approve my comment then.
Hi there! I'm seeing both of your comments approved. By default, we sort comments by popularity rather than by time, so if there are some comments with downvotes, those are going to appear after your comments. If you search for "exalting", you'll be able to see your previous comment too.
I don't think that's fair to Javier, to us, or to the spirit of this post. Nobody here (except for the company in question) is actually promoting the content of the porn industry, and we're (as always) watching pretty closely to be sure the discussions in the comments remain constructive.
Josh, I won't be able to be in front of a computer to answer your comments until next Tuesday. Something quick, I'm just pointing out a great marketing strategy from an industry we are not really used to work with. This time was porn, next time could be horse races, real state, etc. It's not about the porn, but the marketing.
I, for one, would love to see further studies into the various "taboo marketing" fields. Thank you for touching on this. It was a very refreshing read.
Fantastic Post Javier!!
You've done some great analysis. I can't imagine that Porn sites also gets such huge visitors. And Pornhub is really doing some of the exceptional work. They are taking every advantage of world affair like recent fifa world cup biting, brazil's loss to germany etc. It seems they understand their consumers & know how to reach them.
Right now, their main goal is to just get as much visits & backlinks to their site but how to earn revenue is one of the obstacle many porn sites face because porn is accessible everywhere for free. One will definitely think twice to pay for their videos. Don't you think so?
Hey Javier,
This post deserved to be promoted here. You really nailed it here with insightful data.
It can be concluded now, you can be succeed in every niche/industry, if you know how to play smartly and efficiently. Hats off to their marketing brains.
Anybody knows why Pornhub isn't indexed in Google?
I'm seeing it indexed. Could you have safe search on? That may be the issue.
This is absolutely unbelievable. Why are you exalting the porn industry, let alone this porn website? It's hard to believe that there aren't more people that have a problem with this post.
I'm right there with you. Even got my first ever 'thumbs down' when I commented about how sad this is. I'm not knocking Javier's research & insights here at all, but this really makes my stomach turn.
I just didn't think Moz would let this fly. This pushes my limit.
You're both waaay off here. This post is about data and excellent marketing tactics. Just because it's a "taboo" subject does not mean there isn't great insights to be learned. In fact, Dr. Pete did little piece on PornHub at Mozcon this year...to deny the brilliance in what they are doing with their marketing efforts is doing yourself a disservice.
I don't think the post was meant to exalt the industry at all, rather to point out an example of a company that's doing some surprisingly well rounded and effective marketing in an industry that's incredibly difficult to market.
It's been said many times (even in Dr. Pete's MozCon presentation this year) that the porn industry is unlike any other for SEO, because nobody wants to link to it. In that sense, this is a fairly eye-opening (if a little shocking) example of marketing for companies that are hard to market, a characteristic we often hear applied to "boring industries."
The content of the post certainly isn't for everyone (and we tried to note that at the top of the piece), but I actually thought Javier did a great job talking about his insights at an appropriate distance from the actual content of that particular industry, and stayed well enough away from adding anything here that was purely for shock value.
I agree with everything you're saying. Javier did an excellent job with this article & really, it's about the marketing, not the porn. A few things come to mind though…
First, I think we're overestimating how "difficult to market" the porn industry is. Competitive? Of course. But hard to market? Compared to those frequently referenced "boring industries"? C'mon! It's an engaging product with incredibly high demand – and one that’s scientifically proven to be addictive (see appu.rohiwal’s comment, for example). Now of course there’s the SEO-specific “no one wants to link to a porn site” point, but wouldn’t that affect all of them, so no one site would have an advantage in the SERPs from a linking perspective?
Second, I'm really hoping this inspires marketers to not let a site like this be the example of great marketing. Maybe that was the point of this article, maybe it wasn't.
All good points, Sheena! I'd imagine that with an industry where 98% of traffic is in Incognito windows and nobody links to the pages, knowing much about the relative success of marketing is as much a guessing game as anything... but I suspect you're right -- their marketing is more complex and different than it is difficult.
I'm right with you in hoping this inspires other marketers -- if porn sites can be held up as examples, let that be a good incentive for everyone else to be even better examples. =)
Sorry, I just can't get past the unethical nature of this post. Marketing or not, the author could have came up with a more suitable niche.
its still a lot more relevant than rand fiskins fashion tips.. https://moz.com/blog/5-fashion-hacks-for-the-modern...