Front Burner - Front Burner Presents: The Pornhub Empire Episode 2

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Not only did Pornhub become a massive moneymaker, it also helped push porn into the spotlight by using data, clever PR, and the power of celebrity. How did Pornhub make itself a household name? This is episode 2 of The Pornhub Empire: Understood. Hosted by Samantha Cole.More episodes are available here.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey everybody, Jamie here. So today we have another episode of our spinoff series about one of Canada's biggest cultural exports, Pornhub. This is the second of four episodes. And if you like it, the whole series is available to binge right now. You can search the Pornhub Empire wherever you get your podcasts and follow the feed. All right. Thanks. Talk to you guys tomorrow. Do you remember your first day on the job?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I got a tour of the cubicles. I got shown my cubicle and essentially was told to like watch a bunch of porn. When we hired new people, that was always the first thing we did, too, is that you spend the first week. We'd tell them, like, literally just sit here and do nothing all day, but just sit and watch porn until you stop experiencing the urge to, like, hide your screen anytime someone walks by. You're watching porn and then you get startled thinking that maybe your manager is seeing you watch porn, but then you realize that, oh, my manager is going to be pissed if they see me not watching porn. Eventually what ends up happening is the thing that you feel like you need to hide on your screen. It's like, oh, I was just like listening to YouTube or something in the background as I was doing stuff. I don't want anybody to see that because they know that that's not work. I was doing stuff.

I don't want anybody to see that because they know that that's not work. Yeah. It was a very boring, very normal, gray, open concept cubicle office building. I think the only difference is that like everybody was had had porn on their monitors. Once you've like seen so much of this that it's, you know, like I used to say I was the opposite of the Matrix. I don't see blonde brunette redhead anymore. Now I all just see numbers. From their innocuous office in Montreal, Pornhub took porn from behind the paywall and put it out there for all to see.

And made this corner of culture that had once been so taboo almost normal. Sure, before Pornhub, a few film titles, like Debbie Does Dallas or Deep Throat, had entered popular consciousness, and a star like Jenna Jameson might have been recognized as a minor celebrity. But Pornhub became part of our shared vocabulary, synonymous even with porn itself, like the way Google is with search engines or Kleenex is with tissues. So how did they do it? I'm Samantha Cole, and this is episode two, Pornhub Goes Mainstream.

In 2016, Noelle Perdue was in her early 20s and looking for work. She's a writer, and she loves porn. And so I ended up Googling, is porn scriptwriter a real job? And MindGeek was the first thing that popped up, and they had a job opening for script writer. I'll just pop in here to remind you that MindGeek is Pornhub's parent company, though now it goes by the even more generic name, A-Lo. And A-Lo owns a huge swath of the porn industry, from tube sites like Pornhub and YouPorn

to big, glossy studios and production houses like Digital Playground and Brazzers. We'll mostly refer to it as MindGeek in this episode since that's what it was called in this era. And I was in Toronto and it was based in Montreal and I was like, oh my gosh, this is it. This is the dream. This is the dream job.

There's an opening and it's in Canada. That's crazy. So I applied with a, I will admit a bit of a fluffed resume. I said that I lived in Montreal. I didn't. I said that I was like a professional erotica writer, which I was not. And they got back to me and they were like, can you come for an interview, you know, like the day after tomorrow? And I was like, totally, no problem. And got on a bus, went there. And then they were like, do you, you know, you got the job. Can you start next week? And they were like, do you, you know, you got the job. Can you start next week? And I said yes. And then I moved to Montreal in one week. And I actually spent the first week of me working at MindGeek. I was living in a hostel.

Noelle was with MindGeek until she quit in 2020. But she still works in and around the porn business. And even after all this time, she still loves it. For the purpose it can serve in people's lives at its best. To have fun, to explore a little bit, to feel excited, de-stress. And she loves it for what it is. Entertainment, escapism, theatrics. Something that I love the most about porn and why I wanted to produce porn and why I wanted to write porn

is I think that there is this really magical quality that porn has where people are able to suspend their disbelief more than I believe any other genre that exists. I think that it is a genre that is defined by its own rules that exist within this world that people understand inherently. In pornography, it is a rule within the world that sex is an option for every scenario, that sex is an option for every scenario, that sex is a potential answer to every problem in the way that it just isn't in the real world and it also just isn't in any other media genre, you know?

And that's why things like the pizza guy trope of like, well, I don't have any money, like that's so easy to reference because within this world, the answer is always sex, things like that. So this was her job at MindGeek, where at first she wrote for browsers, creating porn scripts where the answer to every question is sex. And she's heard the jokes, the sarcastic, what, porn has scripts yes the professional stuff she wrote does including descriptions of the plot the set the props the costumes some dialogue some scene direction this stuff isn't all magically made up on the spot and it all had to comply with some pretty strict rules in order to satisfy an

unlikely third party credit credit card companies. But essentially we got like a list of I think over a hundred words that we could not include and we could not gesture towards. Advertisers and subscribers to MindGeek sites could pay with a MasterCard or a Visa. But MindGeek faced fines, even the loss of the credit card company's services, if their content strayed outside the confines of what these companies deemed acceptable for porn. Some of this made sense. I saw one internal writing manual that read, never imply a lack of consent, never imply inebriation of any kind. But Noelle describes the anxiety over upsetting the credit card companies as leading to a sometimes comical level of caution.

So I remember at one point for like a Halloween gonzo scene, I was going to put somebody in like a very, just like a sexy, you know, calling it a cat costume is really stretching that to its its max capacity because it was, you know, it was just like a like a bodysuit with like a wire headband with like two triangles on it. But that was not approved. I'd written the whole scene and it went to the compliance department and it got fully rejected because according to the credit card companies, that was bestiality. Nick Yates, another former Mayan geek writer who you heard at the top of the episode, told us something similar. Well, that's the thing because it wasn't good faith. It was just if you used a word that could on any planet be interpreted as non-compliant. Like, it's like a Walking Dead parody.

And so it's like a sexy zombie and the guy has sex with the sexy zombie. But I'm not allowed to say the word zombie. I'm not allowed to say the word dead. So I can't say zombie. I can't say living dead. I can't say any of that. Because it doesn't matter if context of the sentence makes it perfectly clear what you're saying. It's non-compliant

language that could get you fined. This kind of vigilance may have been exercised on the content that MindGeek Studios were making themselves. But as we'll discuss in the next episode, what got uploaded onto Pornhub by the site's users, or even by the studios Pornhub would partner up with was a very different story. For a company to have a big office building, cubicles, a compliance department, and employees clocking in for their nine-to-fives, they gotta be making money.

So where was it coming from? I mean, I had a pretty good understanding of how they made money. I think the vast majority of money came from ad space, at least in tubes. That was the huge bulk of their income. And then secondary was people paying directly for the product. But mostly, you know, it was the traffic that made money. And then on the studio side, it was much more straightforward where it was memberships. That a tube site like Pornhub, which gives porn away for free, makes money from selling ad space on a site which gets hundreds of millions of visits a month, is a no-brainer, of course. The former CEO once

estimated about half of MindGeek's revenue came from advertising. Who's actually willing to pay to have their brand alongside hardcore pornography, on the other hand, is a bit trickier. hardcore pornography, on the other hand, is a bit trickier. So you see a lot of ads for, like, weird, erotic mobile games and hot singles in your area. Just last year, the Russian private military company Wagner Group

briefly advertised on Pornhub with a woman's voice recruiting men to stop masturbating and join the, quote, coolest army in the world. It was removed for violating the site's policy on political ads. But another big advertiser on MindGeek's tube sites are MindGeek's own paid subscription sites. Here's how Nick sees it. So the thing to bear in mind is that if you see an ad on Pornhub for a browser scene, for instance,

right, then that is their own property because that's what the whole business model of those free sites is, right? Like they put free content so that people will see their banner ads and then click the banner ads. And if, you know, a tenth of a percent of people who see that video will click the banner ad and a tenth of a percent of the people who click that will sign up for a free membership. And a tenth of a percent of those people will forget to cancel that membership. Boom, there's 50 bucks in their pocket. Right. So that was the whole thing was just funneling people to click on those gifts. Those gifts Nick's referring to should be familiar to anyone who's been on Pornhub.

A 10-second or so loop of shots from a paywalled scene designed to grab the attention of those scrolling through the free site and entice them to click through. Writers were expected to have that loop in mind as they wrote scenes. And what they found worked could get pretty strange. And what's going to get, like, that's where that whole, that trend from a couple years ago of someone stuck in a washing machine or, like, stuck in a wall or whatever, because it just, because the gif is hilarious.

It's just a naked butt and legs flailing, and that's very funny and gets people's attention, right? So it didn't matter how outlandish it looked when you watched it. And even the commenters would be like, why are they making these ridiculous exaggerated facial expressions? It's like, I'm watching Jim Carrey. But it's because that looks good in a GIF that gets people's attention. So anything...

After he said this, I went on Pornhub to refresh my memory. And at the bottom of the page was a big banner ad for a browser site. And Jim Carrey-esque is kind of the perfect way to describe what I saw. A slightly sped up short loop of a female performer making the most exaggerated wacky faces while she's surprised from behind, marveling over an erection,

or going cross-eyed during an orgasm. But what they're really getting from that is all of the eyeballs of the people who said they wouldn't pay for porn, and maybe some of them will. And then if the competitors, on the other hand, want to advertise on their platform, say one of the non-MindGeek-owned sites wants to say, okay, well, Pornhub is the biggest game in town. Our only choices are don't advertise there, which is a win for MindGeek,

because then they're not advertising on the web's largest advertising platform, or advertise with them, and then we're giving MindGeek money. Okay, web's largest advertising platform is an exaggeration, but you get the picture. This was a win-win for MindGeek. They've got a free tube site with tons of traffic that they can sell ads on, But you get the picture. This was a win-win for MindGeek. They've got a free tube site with tons of traffic that they can sell ads on. And some of these ads direct viewers back to their own paid sites where they can sell subscriptions.

To top it off, they also own Traffic Junkie, the company that manages all the ads on all their sites. MindGeek is a private company, so we can't see their books to tell you exactly how lucrative this all is. But the Financial Times has reported that in 2018, they brought in over $460 million in revenue. And Nick and Noel both saw a few hints, which stuck out in contrast to their own meager paychecks. hold your champagne glass up and she would fill it. It was another one. She just had this huge ball gown, like the whole ball gown was just made out of full champagne flutes. So you could just walk up to this lady and take part of her dress and drink it. A couple of times a year, the C-suite

would gather everybody in the company and give this big speech about how much money they make, which I think that they thought was motivating. So they would get up on stage and they would be like, they would brag about how they just bought a vacation home. They just bought a Ferrari. Like, this is what the speech would be. Another sign that the company had major money, one that was out there for all of us to see, were the first annual Pornhub Awards,

hosted in 2018. We analyzed the viewing patterns of all those videos and came up with the unique algorithms to let us know exactly who and what were the best in the world. And that's what makes this show different from any other award show in history. We're about to announce what actual Pornhub visitors really watched the most. Hired to be a creative director of the whole splashy affair was Kanye West. Pre-antisemitic public meltdown and fall from grace Kanye West,

24-time Grammy winner Kanye West. He performed at the event, he styled the presenters' outfits, and designed the trophies, which were made to look like imagined alien sex toys, according to a press release. Here was one of the most famous artists in the world, on stage, proudly collaborating with a porn site. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because

money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Long before Kanye West got on board, Pornhub had already mastered the art of the publicity stunt. Like, in 2013, they claimed to have made a totally safe-for-work Super Bowl ad, but that CBS refused to air it. In 2015, they launched a crowdfunding campaign to make the first porn movie filmed in space. When Boston got hit by a snowstorm in 2017, Pornhub said they'd send out a fleet of snowplows to help anyone who wants to get plowed. Get it?

Each of these marketing ploys got real media coverage, even if the stories were pretty silly. You know, Pornhub's stunts were being posted about on Tumblr, you know, in like 2012. And it was like being spoken about and it was being referenced. And I think that something that Pornhub really understood is how powerful that conversation was. And it doesn't really matter if it's something that people are talking about because they think it's funny. They're still talking about it. And I feel like the

adult industry has always been the butt of the joke, but Pornhub kind of flipped it so that they're in on it. They're the ones of the joke, but Pornhub kind of flipped it so that they're in on it. They're the ones making the joke. Perhaps Pornhub's most successful marketing strategy was how they used data. They had a whole data analytics blog called Pornhub Insights, where they'd put up posts purporting to show how traffic in certain regions dropped during a major sporting event like the NBA playoffs, or spiked during big news events like a U.S. government shutdown. They'd make global year-in-review posts with spiffy infographics compiling all sorts of compelling info on where people were watching in the world, at what times, using what search terms. I just looked up the 2016 year in review and learned that that year,

lesbian was the most popular search term on Pornhub globally, followed by stepmom. Users apparently spent, on average, nine minutes and 36 seconds on the site, up 16 seconds from the year before. 26% of the people watching Pornhub in 2016 were women.

These kinds of neatly packaged press releases proved irresistible to online news writers, even mainstream ones. The stories practically wrote themselves, all with the safe veneer of being based in cold, hard stats. Here's a collection of headlines. From USA Today. How politics led to an 8,000% surge in Bigfoot erotica searches on Pornhub. From the Jerusalem Post, Israelis on Pornhub,

what do the chosen people choose to watch? From Newsweek, many women were watching Pornhub right before the Women's March data shows. Under the guise of data, statistics, and tech, Pornhub smuggled a conversation about hardcore pornography into the mainstream. Pornhub is the company that's getting mentioned on late night talk shows. Pornhub is the company that's collaborating with mainstream celebrities. And prior to Pornhub, there just wasn't really an equivalent where people were talking about porn with such casualty. Pornhub's ability to just get people talking openly about pornography with their friends, with their coworkers,

what have you, with their parents, is kind of incredible. By 2020, Pornhub had become a household name. And then the pandemic hit. And we were all stuck at home. Traffic shot up. Pornhub capitalized on the moment by offering free premium memberships to people in lockdowns, first in Italy, then France and Spain.

And then finally worldwide for a month. Earning themselves yet another flurry of cheeky, friendly news stories. Saturday Night Live even made a skit about it, a parody Pornhub commercial that honestly sounds exactly like a commercial Pornhub would have made themselves. Pornhub. Here for you. For however long it takes. So let's be alone. Together.

The company was riding high. But complaints about Pornhub's business model that allowed anyone to upload anything were starting to fester. And no amount of good PR could stop what was coming. I think that there was a general attitude of we're too big to fail. There is this ego. I think that same ego goes into being like, I actually don't need to acknowledge this. I don't need to talk to any of you. I don't need to respond to any criticisms coming from the unwashed masses, you know? But generally the stance was, if we just don't look directly at it, if we don't make eye contact with any of the people yelling at us, they will stop yelling. Eventually they'll lose

their voices and go home, which I just didn't believe to be true. And then what we saw was that it wasn't. So. Next time. I definitely heard about people having videos taken of them, either with or without their consent, but then being posted without their consent on sites like Pornhub and people's lives really being destroyed. It just goes viral and it spreads around to probably every single person, you know, and more. And that was where, like, I was on suicide watch by all my close friends. So it got really dark.

You've been listening to The Pornhub Empire, Understood. This series is produced by CBC Podcasts and CBC News. The show was written by producer Imogen Burchard, with me, Samantha Cole. Associate producer, Sam Connard. Sound design by Julia Whitman and Sam Connard. Sarah Clayton is our digital coordinating producer. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez, Chris Oak, and Nick McCabe-Locos.

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.