This article originally ran in the September 2012 issue of AVN magazine.
When YouTube.com launched it was inevitable there would soon be a porn version. What many didn’t anticipate is these streaming video sites would soon be populated by tens of thousands of full-length scenes, most put there without the consent of the copyright holder.
Scorn was quickly turned toward these piracy havens as copyright holders saw their properties being viewed millions of times, generating millions of dollars in advertising revenue for the tubes, yet little to none of that money was being directed to the actual producers of the videos.
Eventually, the owners of these piracy havens were uncovered. Publicly, the owners of Mansef (the one-time parent company of Brazzers) denied having any ownership in tube sites. This was eventually proven to be a completely false statement. What followed was lots of litigation, as producers like Private Media Group and Pink Visual lined up to sue not only Mansef but other tube sites like YouJizz, xHamster and xVideos.
As the lawsuits played out they generally ended in one or two outcomes: the sites have either settled for undisclosed amounts, or they have been forced to clean up their act by working with producers for legitimate business.
As more tube sites make efforts, albeit weak ones, to become legal, a number of studios have decided to work with these sites. But should you line up to put your promotional materials onto tube sites? What should you consider before jumping on the bandwagon?
First, you need to have realistic expectations. While your full-length scene put up on Pornhub without your permission might be viewed by 65 million people, the number of those viewers willing to part with any of their money is minuscule.
The metric to judge online ads is called a conversion ratio, meaning how many viewers of the video or ad you converted into paying customers. Tube sites are notorious for having really low conversion ratios. For the thousands of views your videos might get, you will only get a small fraction of those users who are willing to open up their wallet and spend money.
To make matters worse, the willingness of those viewers to spend money on content is nearly nonexistent. Piracy has devalued content to the point that the consumer no longer sees a need to pay for that which he can get for free.
Next you need to consider what impact giving your content to a tube site might do for your search engine optimization. Tube sites are very popular and thus get very high rankings from search engines like Google. So when a video goes up on Pornhub, it’s very likely to become a Top 10 Google result for certain keywords or phrases. Copyright holders need to keep this in mind when giving promo content to a tube site.
If you use the name of the movie the content is from, you’re likely to see legitimate e-tailers and even your own paysites listed lower than the tube site for your works. So if you just released Anal Spelunkers 12 and you upload a clip to Pornhub titled “Hot action from Anal Spelunkers 12,” it’s very likely soon the No. 1 result in Google for Anal Spelunkers 12 is the Pornhub video. While this might get your video a lot of views, keep in mind it’s doubtful it will convert into many paying customers, and you might have just introduced a potential customer to the world of tube sites.
Another complication from doing business with tubes is not all tubes are in the business of asking you for your promotional content, much less content you might have licensed to other tubes. Many tube sites are set up merely as scrapers. These scrapers take the videos from other tube sites and re-upload them on their own sites.
Many other sites are set up as embedders, which work to mirror the libraries of multiple tube sites. So what was once a single video on Pornhub is now spread out to numerous scrapers and embedding tube sites, which can result in your own site being completely eliminated from the first page of Google.
Like anything else, the results from doing business with tube sites are mixed. Some sing the praises, while others consider it to be a waste. It is worth noting nearly all those who have claimed to get positive results from tubes are those who are not in the business of selling content. Instead those individuals are people in the online dating, webcam, or sexual enhancement fields.
It is a sad sign of the times that content has been so devalued by pirates it is merely reduced to being a giveaway. Content is given away in hopes of enticing someone to sign up to meet fake dating profiles or to double their penis size overnight with a magic pill.
Alas, this is the world we are living in, and if you are considering taking the tube plunge, it’s important you know all the potential pitfalls you might encounter along the way.
Takedown Piracy is an anti-piracy service started in 2009 by Nate Glass, a 13-year veteran of the adult industry. TDP offers copyright holders an affordable and effective means to fight back against content thieves. To date TDP has removed over 1.6 million content infringements, and it closely monitors 200 piracy websites. For details, visit TakedownPiracy.com.
