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Pornhub says it wants to help ailing merchants expose themselves to a whole new audience. The giant smut site is giving away $300,000 worth of free advertising — a move it hopes will stimulate small businesses that have been beaten down by the coronavirus crisis. In a competition launched Tuesday, Pornhub will select 100 small …
Pornhub says it wants to help ailing merchants expose themselves to a whole new audience.
The giant smut site is giving away $300,000 worth of free advertising — a move it hopes will stimulate small businesses that have been beaten down by the coronavirus crisis.
In a competition launched Tuesday, Pornhub will select 100 small firms to receive 10 million impressions each from ads run alongside Pornhub’s massive collection of kinky videos.
While nearly all of its advertising currently comes from other sexually oriented businesses, Pornhub hopes the “Big Package” contest will attract other entrepreneurs eager to reach the site’s 130 million daily visitors as they grapple with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Many of the businesses this contest will appeal to have never considered marketing themselves with Pornhub before, and we are hoping that this campaign will help them consider us in a new light given our reach and appeal to mass audiences,” Pornhub Vice President Corey Price told The Post.
The company — owned by Canada-based porn conglomerate MindGeek — has made a significant effort over the past two years to bring small businesses on board, such as cannabis dispensaries that have struggled to gain traction with Facebook and Google ads, according to Price. He said Pornhub views itself as a supplement to those larger ad channels for small firms.
“Yes, their customers are on Facebook, but they’re also on Pornhub,” Price told The Post. “They might not remember seeing your business on Facebook, but they’ll definitely remember seeing you on Pornhub.”
Pornhub has already picked 10 businesses that don’t deal in sex, including Bed-Stuy tea shop Brooklyn Tea and El Florista, a flower seller in Madrid, according to the contest’s website. While other porn companies are eligible to apply, Price said an internal panel of Pornhub marketing, sales and advertising executives will choose the other winners with an eye toward “originality and diversity of business and location.”
The adult-content site will create customized ads for the selected firms and place them through TrafficJunky, an advertising platform that serves Pornhub and other adult sites. Any company with fewer than 100 employees can apply to the contest until Aug. 14.
Pornhub did not provide exact statistics about the makeup of its advertisers, but Price said a “growing portion” comprises small businesses that qualify for the “Big Package” campaign.
Pornhub has remained one of the internet’s most popular adult websites despite concerns about the platform hosting clips of sex-trafficking victims. In response to those concerns, Pornhub has said it has a team of moderators reviewing uploads and a “robust” system for flagging illegal material.
