
How to Advertise on a Porn Website - dohertyjf
http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn-website/
======
FreeKill
That was actually a really interesting article. I think it really helps that
they were able to come up with a really good set of ads that worked perfectly
with the audience on the adult websites. That's always the goal, but execution
is never quite as easy as it seems :)

~~~
venomsnake
And what is the audience of the adult websites? It is the same audience that
reads NYTimes and WSJ and WaPo. Everyone on the internet watches porn - except
some that prefer to read it.

~~~
namenotrequired
They're definitely in a different context / mindset though.

~~~
richforrester
That's because the "audience" is not necessarily defined by properties that
are set in stone. Yes, they're the same people that read certain other
sites/mags/newspapers, but they're different in that they are horny, and not
distracted by the visual cues advertisers usually employ.

In other words: no, this is a different audience than the audience that's
reading those sites; these are _horny_ readers of those sites.

A big difference.

------
rfergie
"Of the total traffic generated by our ads, over 90% were first-time visitors
to Eat24.com"

Or a large proportion are browsing incognito.

But what a great article!

~~~
PeterisP
Umm, as they do delivery and accept creditcards, then they can be rather sure
which orders are from new users and which are repeated. Unless they have
amnesia.

Just as Chrome says - browser incognito mode doesn't really work if you tell a
website where you live and what name is written on your card.

~~~
thedufer
"Total traffic" and "people who gave us credit card info" are two very
different things, and they are discussing the former. They would only be able
to disambiguate in the (presumably small) portion of people that went on to
log in/sign up.

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throwaway2120
Why is there so little non-porn advertising on porn sites? If CPMs are low,
and conversions are good enough, what's up with the ROI gap? Is this really
the cost of social outrage? I'm really curious to see if anyone has any
theories/answers...

~~~
speeder
I wanted to, but in my company case we cannot risk it at all, even 4chan was
banned by the CEO...

We make games for children aged around 5 years old... If we advertise that at
a porn site, beside probably missing our target market, we risk people making
those huge outraged internet firestorms that after 4 republications by blogs
and newspapers will result into people concluding I am a pedophile.

~~~
corin_
So.. why did you want to advertise your game for five year olds on porn sites?

~~~
dagw
Lots of visitors to porn sites have 5 year old children?

------
midnightmonster
I skimmed 96 comments looking for anyone to say, "You know, this is pretty
offensive and/or wrong." I found only two posts comprising one sarcastic
attempt at pointing that direction.

No one's making the _argument_ that porn's good, but a lot of people either
genuinely assume so or want to signal that they're really pragmatic and modern
and liberal. (If you think everyone's just bracketing the moral questions and
that it's appropriate to do so, ask yourself how well a post on successfully
marketing on white supremacist websites would fare.)

I'm not going to make an actual case that porn is evil either: it's clear we'd
have to do a lot of work on finding common philosophical ground first, and I
don't have the time. But in the face of apparently-overwhelming social
acceptance of evil, it's better if someone says, "Hey, everybody, this is
wrong," even if they can't convince people of it at the moment. Since I can't
find much to upvote here, I'll be that guy:

Pornography is evil in concept and in practice. Building your business through
it is considerably worse than, e.g., using huge email spam networks. It
beggars belief that--in a community that can at least entertain the idea that
it might be wrong to create a business by exploiting people's lizard brains
with notifications, gamification, and misleading social ads--ninety-eight
percent of comments on using porn to promote your business either avoid
considering morality at all or go out of the way to indicate that everything's
a-ok here.

~~~
nsxwolf
They've certainly taken a stance on porn that is opposite of, say, Apple.

Too bad you're being downvoted for expressing a different opinion on porn.

~~~
belorn
Comments which tries to appeal to emotion without any supporting facts should
get downvoted. If one where to replace "porn" with "Microsoft" in
midnightmonster comment, it would be a common microsoft bash comment. If you
replaced it with Apple, it would become an Apple bash comment. As it stand, it
is now just a porn bashing comment.

To examplify: _" Microsoft platform is evil in concept and in practice.
Building your business through it is considerably worse than, e.g., using huge
email spam networks. It beggars belief that--in a community that can at least
entertain the idea that it might be wrong to create a business by exploiting
people's lizard brains with notifications, gamification, and misleading social
ads--ninety-eight percent of comments on using Microsoft platform to promote
your business either avoid considering morality at all or go out of the way to
indicate that everything's a-ok here."_

Comments that has that attribute should not reside on hacker news. It brings
nothing to the table, and only tries manipulating the other readers with
emotions, rather than with valid logic, to win an argument.[1]

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion)

------
kennywinker
Those pornstar tweets sure do look like paid promotions... article implies
they are organic, but they don't look that way to me.

~~~
derefr
I have a feeling that pornstars know all about the "unsolicited, easily
quotable backpat" trick. Enthusiastically edorse random things you like, and--
if the recipient persoh/company understands marketing-industry SOP--you'll get
endorsed in turn. (You can notice this in, for example, every blog post or
podcast Patrick McKenzie has put out lately. It almost feels like he has a
secret cabal he's colluding with to pass traffic between then, for all they
mention each-other in shining terms--but it's just unsolicited praise. A war
of gifts, you might say.

------
brianbreslin
This was one of the most interesting articles to pop up on hn recently. Kudos
to eat24 for sharing that research.

What are some other things that could appeal to porn users? Travel? Legit
online dating( ie match/eharmony)? Credit card savings? Subscription services
(would dollar shave club do well?)

~~~
tdfx
Adult traffic is pretty useless to most traditional affiliate marketing-ish
offers. It's almost like the users just have this one, single thing on their
mind and can't be bothered with anything else at that moment.

~~~
bdlbdl
And yet, the stats presented in the post seem to suggest otherwise. After they
finish watching the porn, users click the ad and convert. Even if they click
and convert at a lower rate than traditional media the data suggests that the
lower CPMs more than make up for this.

It's not great for brand advertising (potentially). But for affiliate type
marketing this seems like an untapped goldmine.

~~~
brianbreslin
that's what I was thinking. half the stuff sold from affiliate marketers isn't
of name brand stuff anyway.

food makes sense after porn, you're appealing to humans base needs.

------
singold
Google cache link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.eat24hours.com%2Fhow-
to-advertise-on-a-porn-website%2F&rls=com.microsoft:es:IE-
SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=)

I get a 503, probably HN effect ;)

~~~
lucb1e
WP effect I'd say.

------
shitlord
This was hilarious and definitely worth the read. The ads alone have
definitely persuaded me to try out their service. The company seems like a
breath of fresh air, considering how everyone else avoids associating with
porn sites like they're the plague.

------
kpommerenke
Their porn statistics are questionable: they say "2/3 of men admit to watching
porn" and "70% of those men are between the ages of 18-24". This implies that
at least 47% of all men are between 18 and 24, which is clearly wrong.
Otherwise, good article.

~~~
Mgccl
It could mean "2/3 of the men who took the survey admit to watching porn" for
w/e survey they had in mind...

------
dnautics
I read this and it was really interesting. Here's a question, HNdom. Should I
advertise my nonprofit* on porn? (I won't use nonprofit funds, I'll pay from
my own pocket) Do you think the total nonsequitur will work? Is there any
downside?

Sub question: If I were to do it, how non-sequitur-ey should it be? I could
play it as "help save boobies" or just straight-man it "help cure cancer"

*we'll be crowdfunding to get an public domain anticancer compound through preclinical trials, it may be effective against triple negative breast cancer, and other other cancers.

~~~
chris_wot
Nothing like using porn to advertise your non-profit. Because porn sites don't
exploit _anyone_.

~~~
Gusfoo_2
> Because porn sites don't exploit anyone

The one's you visit may do, but don't tar the whole industry with the same
broad brush.

~~~
chris_wot
Ooo... I guess you got me good!

Excellent rhetorical technique - I give you 5 out of 5. Very weak on actual
argument substance though. I give you 1 out of 5, with half a point to
encourage you to try better next time.

------
mdisraeli
You know you're a hacker news reader when your first thought after reading
this isn't "order food!" or "watch porn!", but "I wonder if any fast food
delivery websites have affiliate schemes...."

~~~
brokenparser
Mine was "do they have an API?" and to my amazement, yes they do.

------
joshfraser
I find it fascinating that order sizes increased for people coming via the
ads. Your pre-frontal cortex is the part of your brain responsible for
willpower. It gets tired like any other muscle. The fact that you're watching
porn is an indicator that your willpower is depleted and therefore far more
likely to give in to the dessert as well.

~~~
robg
I like this theory but hard to disambiguate from working up an appetite and
the associations between the two forms of pleasure, perhaps the most
overwhelming forms of pleasure in our biology.

------
nicholassmith
That was quite an enjoyable article actually, they certainly had fun with it.
Clever idea as well, they had a good chance of hitting their target market.

------
Semiapies
Genuinely ascinating article!

Pity their search threw nonsensical errors when I put in my home address. ETA:
Ah, I see the problem. They can't seem to give a message as useful as "We
don't provide service to that city/ZIP code/etc." and instead just say, "Oops,
something went wrong" or suggest that the ZIP code is invalid.

At least their ad strategy is smarter than that.

------
lowmagnet
I predicted that "Wash your hands" wouldn't work. I'm sure a higher percentage
of porn visitors are dudes, and dudes don't want to click on other dudes,
generally.

~~~
thezilch
It wasn't the CTR that was the problem; though. It was the product not
matching the advertisement. There are 9M LGBT in the US, alone. It's fairly
likely that there is a demographic for this kind of ad, so why not have it
available; not everyone is going to want to see a girl spread eagle.

------
terabytest
This is the first article on HN I actually had fun reading. The puns were
terribly hilarious.

------
ilolu
Unrelated question : But whats a good hosting service provider for hosting
Adult content ?

~~~
tdfx
When I needed to host adult landing pages, Rackspace indicated they had no
restrictions on regular adult material. You might want to check what their
limits are, but they're certainly OK with your run-of-the-mill hardcore porn.

------
peterwwillis
A couple interesting things i'm considering from this.

1\. Typically any business that supports even the concept of porn would get
crucified in the media. It seems like because eat24 is a young internet
startup that its users don't mind it being associated with porn. If the
service becomes nationally recognized, will the small vocal minority
eventually come out of the woodwork to protest? (I think yes) Other
consideration: almost all food services are in some way family-oriented
(families eat a lot of food) and thus would be more vulnerable to topics that
are inappropriate for kids.

2\. If somehow they find a way to keep their porn ads up while still bringing
in users that are morally opposed to porn, could this create real social
change? Could it eventually become socially acceptable to support businesses
that support porn and alternative lifestyles? And towards that end (hehe I
said end), should the company push for higher standards and more stringent
requirements on the kind of content included in the porn? Could the company's
ad push eventually improve the conditions and content of the porn industry?

------
austerity
If anyone is inspired by this article and feels adventurous, I'm currently
trying to sell a 1.5M/day inventory that is mostly across porn sites. Hit me
up at dr8ww@notsharingmy.info for dirt cheap CPM rates.

~~~
kunil
I also have a cheap lawn mover! Send me a pm! If you pm now, I will add 2 xxl
size trash bags to the deal!

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BWStearns
To riff of of AznHisoka, is the eat24 delivery man a new archetype for these
sites?

Seriously though well done on their part identifying the opportunity and I
hope it works out well for them in the future.

------
kokey
I always enjoy reading these interesting strategies for marketing to the
consumer. However, it makes me a little sad that I can't really apply it to a
b2b product.

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broodbucket
Seems like the perfect advertiser for 4chan. A lot of traffic, the ads are
ALWAYS for porn so people will notice, and the user-base never leaves the
house.

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AznHisoka
They should bribe some of those actresses to make a movie with them, and give
them 100% free membership for life :)

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sathishmanohar
I haven't seen these ads anywhere before. REALLY.

And its a good reminder, instead of competing in places where everybody is
already competing, while paying high and raising the price for everybody else.
Find a new efficient strategy from a different niche.

------
covgjai
Best creative I've seen in a long time.

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jdkanani
Great article.

------
dreamdu5t
eat24hours is a shining example of a successful, bootstrapped startup that is
in it for the long-haul and not out for a quick buck.

It doesn't hurt that they gave me a bunch of free credit for reporting a CSS
issue.

