based market research firm, announced on May 24 that adult content on the World Wide Web takes in a whopping 69 percent of total Internet content sales. Of $1.4 billion in total worldwide purchases online last year, nearly $1 billion was spent on adult content.
In making its calculations, Datamonitor defined adult content as pornographic pictures, videos, services and chat rooms. Its study excluded the sales of merchandise and advertising revenue.
Datamonitor predicts that subscription and pay-on-demand services will stimulate future revenue. These methods are expected to play a significant role in the predicted meteoric increase in online content revenue as it nearly quadruples by 2003 to $5.4 billion. Adult content sales are expected to claim more than half the anticipated revenue, or about $3.1 billion.
Online gaming is expected to be the fastest growing online content segment, reaching 10 times its current size to $680 million over the same time period. Other predicted growth markets are sports and music. Sports content sales are expected to increase to $130 million in 2003, up from $25 million last year and music content will reap $44 million, up from $8 million.
According to Datamonitor, U.S.-based Websites will continue to dominate the adult content market with a 78 percent sales share in 2003, down from 84 percent last year. U.K.-based Websites are expected to earn more revenue than any other European country, with $500 million in adult content sales, up from $92 million in 1998. The combined sales of these two countries support the fact that 70 percent of Internet users speak English as their first language.
Businesses are rushing to become a part of the phenomenal online content sales growth. Le Monde, Die Suddeutsche Zeitung and TV Spielfim are examples of firms who have set up paid content sites. Europe's biggest pornography chain store, Beate Uhse Deutschland AG, also wants to become an online content provider. The store announced in May that it would sell shares in an initial public offering to raise $65 million so it can extend its services on the Internet.
"Traditional content providers are increasingly migrating to the Internet to complement the traditional content distribution media,'' said Shilpi Oodit, a Datamonitor analyst.
