![]() ![]() So I think it is fair to say that the internet has propagated badly sourced and low credibility estimates about the scale of porn because they sound sensational rather than because they are plausible.Ī recent survey of internet searches ( reported here, possibly NSFW) reported the following: It isn't even obvious that porn constitutes a big proportion of internet search traffic, according the The Straight Dope. This is small compared to internet commerce (Amazon alone is $30bn-$40bn) or Hollywood (in the USA about $10bn box office and $20bn DVD, see this great visual aggregation here). Putting all this into perspective suggests that the porn industry in the USA might reasonably be of the order of a $5bn to $10bn a year industry. The numbers become more plausible if you accept that many actual paid consumers of pornography won't admit it to strangers. Thus, the $2.5 billion in annual internet pornography revenue and the 3.3 million internet pornography paying customers seem reasonable estimates. Pay sites charge $10 to $100 per month (in 2007, for example, charged $30 per month), so $61 per month is a fairly reasonable average. So I divide the $2.5 billion by 3.3 million consumers to get $737 per paying customer per year, or $61 per month. But dividing the revenue estimate by the pornography consumer estimate helps evaluate whether either of them seems to be biased in the directions we fear. These numbers could be an underestimate, because people may fear revealing themselves as an internet pornography user during a telephone survey. According to the May 2004 tracking poll data, 20% of internet pornography consumers admit to paying for onlineĬontent, which, combined with PIAL’s finding on consumption, yields about 3.3 million paying internet pornography consumers in 2005. Doran In an attempt to validate the Adult Video News estimate that internet porn generates about $2.5bn in revenue in 2005 he goes throughout the following logic:Īccording to the PIAL 2005 May tracking poll, 66% of Americans aged 18 or over used the internet, and 11.25% of these (about 16.7 million) accessed pornography. ![]() The study, Industry Size, Measurement, and Social Costs is by K. The industry is tiny next to broadcast television ($32.3 billion in 1999 revenue, according to Veronis Suhler), cable television ($45.5 billion), the newspaper business ($27.5 billion), Hollywood ($31 billion), even to professional and educational publishing ($14.8 billion).Ī more recent study done as part of an attempt to understand the social impact or porn is more generous to the industry. This Forbes piece from 2001 estimates US revenue at less than $4bn. Some skeptical analyses, though, suggest far smaller numbers. ![]() These numbers look more plausible but far less impressive compared to mainstream media and internet companies. The estimates from the USA suggest about £13bn total spend in 2006 with about $3bn on the internet, $1bn on magazines and maybe $4bn of videos. That isn't internet revenues at all but a crude estimate of worldwide revenue from all sources which includes three huge contributions from countries where the statistics are most likely very ropey (about $72bn from China, Japan and South Korea alone with the porn spend in Korea topping $500 per person). All the really big numbers come either from dodgy sources trying to "big up" the industry or from campaign groups opposing porn who want to exaggerate how big the problem is for their own reasons.Įven the famous $97bn estimate ( from here) is often misunderstood. One of the key problems in evaluating anything to do with the Porn industry is that almost nobody has any incentive to report honest numbers. ![]() Good numbers are hard to find, but the answer is still certainly NO. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |