how do porn companies make money when their product is free?
In: Economics
TLDR: To quote Zuckerberg “Senator, We Run Ads”. Paying content creators for running ads on their videos is the same revenue model as youtube.
Porn is by far the most pirated form of media.
A lot of internet porn **isn’t** actually free but people steal it all the time. It’s so prolific a practice that Porn companies have learned to just deal with it and find other ways to make money.
To quote the song: “The Internet is for Porn”, there’s so much porn content online… it’s actually a very competitive industry and the studios are fighting over getting people to watch videos for only a few minutes at a time.
Most people either don’t want to pay for porn, or *don’t want to be caught* paying for porn. Combined with the ease of access of free pirated videos on the early internet resulted in a wide spread culture of piracy.
Meanwhile the porn industry doesn’t have the lobbying power of Hollywood, and because of the stigma associated with porn it’s hard to go to Congress or on the news and convince them to be tougher on internet piracy on their behalf. A lot of Congressmen (despite being hypocrites and watching tons of porn themselves) can’t be associated with porn related legislation unless it’s banning or restricting it due to their family friendly Christian image.
The other problem is the average length of viewing for porn is very short. The average person visiting Pornhub spends around 9 minutes 20 seconds, and clicks on 8-9 videos so less than 1 minute each. So clips are far more popular than full length videos.
These days Porn studios will regularly upload their own clips to sites like Pornhub. This both acts as advertising for their studio and gets them ad revenue.
A small percentage of people that watch a video on pornhub will go to the studio to get the whole video or more related content. They either subscribe for a month or two, or just buy a few clips.
Most consumers though don’t watch porn for long, but generate tons ad revenue for the studio due to large numbers of people binge watching clips.
Individual actors also typically earn revenue on the side with merchandising, sponsorship deals, and custom content like OnlyFans. Let alone illegal (but extremely common) activities like escort services, private parties, and prostitution.
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