The other type of porn industry research.
Figures detailing the size and shape of the jizz bizz are always fun to look at. They tend towards the overoptimistic, whomever’s behind them.
Analysts (Wall Street’s so-called experts) exaggerate because a lack of publicly listed companies makes researching (or using Google to read shareholder statements as I like to call it) useless. They extrapolate the few companies they have real data on, normally Vivid, Playboy and Private, and then guess at how much bigger than average these giants are. They guess wrong and their supposedly conservative estimates are always too large.
Industry professionals exaggerate sales based on a desire to seem like a bigger fish than they are. If you believed every CEO’s numbers the planet’s economy would be entirely porn based.
The Christian-Right exaggerate, because the bigger they can make the business seem, the easier it is to reverse reality and take the role of David against an imagined jizz bizz Goliath. In truth the churches have vastly more wealth, people, power and influence than pornographers.
This hasn’t stopped AVN, the industry’s leading magazine, from attempting to compile some data on what’s actually going on. Clearly their research isn’t independent, but they have referred to reports by Jupiter, Forbes, The New York Times and others which, assuming a modicum of honesty, should make these numbers as good as anyone else’s.
Highlights:
- 1B adult VHS/DVDs were sold in 2005
- 35% (the largest portion) of adult website viewers earn over $75K per anum
- 35-44 is the median age of adult website viewers
- 40% of online video-on-demand is adult
- 55% of hotel video-on-demand is adult
- 45M unique visitors are recorded by adult websites each month
- 13,588 hardcore video titles were released in 2005
- 90% of adult video sales are on DVD
- $700M worth of mobile adult content was sold worldwide in 2005
- $12.6B – is the value of the US adult market in 2005
- $4.8B (34%) – US adult video sales and rentals in 2005
- $1B (8%) – US adult magazine sales in 2005
- $800M (6%) – US adult cable pay-per-view sales in 2005
- $2.5B (20%) – US adult internet sales in 2005
- $500M (4%) – US adult hotel room video-on-demand sales in 2005
- $35M (<1%) – US adult mobile content sales in 2005
- $1.5B (12%) – US adult novelty sales in 2005
- $2.1B (16%) – US exotic dance club sales in 2005
Surprisingly, based on these numbers, the magazine industry is still significant, toys are surprisingly huge and the internet’s now bigger than the club industry. What does that mean for you? Argue among yourselves…
Download the data in full here (3MB .pdf) and here (2MB .pdf)
Popularity: 61% [?]
Useful stuff, especially the demographic data- thanks. I saw some of the statistics mentioned in their article a while back, but I don’t get the magazine.
I’m not really surprised at how huge toys are, considering how in the past two years, thanks to certain cultural factors (and tv shows) most women have become a lot more willing to try toys (solo especially). It’s become almost completely normalized, even expected, to own- and love- your vibrator. It’ll be interesting to see if this is a temporary spike or not…
You’re right Katie – you can buy ‘personal massagers’ in UK branches of WalMart’s empire…
1,000,000,000 copies divided by 13,500 titles = ~75,000 copies per title. Who knew people love “Blown O-Ring, Volume 3″ so much?
Clearly I am doing something wrong.
Tony, as I said – these numbers are always highly questionable… That said – some titles may do huge business (especiually in overseas market where the range of titles to buy is far smaller than in the US.) ‘One Night in Paris’ sold a lot of DVD’s…
It said that 1B copies were sold and 13,500 released. That doesn’t mean that 13,500 titles accounted for 1B in sales. Interesting figures nonetheless.