One of the unspoken but generally accepted facts about the internet and the video sharing capability of the medium is that people use it to view adult videos. This seedy underbelly of online activity is one of the most lucrative enterprises on the World Wide Web however recent trends in use have surprised E-stat analysts.
Although the demographic data was unsurprising in that most visits to adult sites were by males the time at which those visits were performed have raised a few eyebrows. The Hitwise Analyst Weblog provided data to show that the majority of visits to adult sites from UK internet users were performed on a Sunday morning. Whether this new trend of behaviour on the day of rest will change now that every mother and wife is aware of this has yet to be decided.
The fact remains that surfing for porn is one of the most popular online activities. The adult E-commerce industry is notoriously tough to tie down for actual revenue levels however a figure that floats around is an annual total of USD 97 Billion. Some believe this to be a massive underestimation as it does not realistically reflect usage but due to the sensitive nature of the subject, objective surveys are tricky to perform, making any behavioural analysis ambiguous.
The current Alexa Top 100 sites in the UK show Google at No1 and Facebook at No2 with the nearest adult contender back at 21 with PornHub. The latter can be compounded by a US government funded a survey In 2006 the that provided evidence that out of all the sites indexed by Google and Microsoft only 1% contained adult material. This does not reflect the levels of search however with the keyword ‘porn’ estimated by Google at 55,600,000 searches per month.
Despite these overwhelming search volumes new data from Hitwise illustrates that social network sites have overtaken adult sites in popularity:
Social network sites overtook adult sites in October 2008 and have remained ahead since however there has been no widening of the gap. This could be interpreted as being reflective of the demographic of social network users being 55% female. With the number of unique users on sites such as Facebook sky rocketing the sustained approximate 1% gap would be reflective of the predominantly male usage of sites containing adult material.
With no clear winner emerging, the overall conclusion of this most recent data shows two online entities which will be commanding massive market segments for the foreseeable future. However it is important to draw attention to the fact that social network site statistics have far greater accessibility and that the aforementioned monthly search statistics dilute the Hitwise data.
Related posts: