How much is the porn industry actually worth? It’s often said that porn is a, “$[Insert random digit here] billion industry.”
An article published by business news site, Quartz, tends to agree. The article places the industry’s value at anywhere between $6 billion and $97 billion, with the more realistic estimates ranging from $6 billion to $15 billion.
Regardless of what the actual value of the porn industry is, we’re still talking about an absolute ton of money—especially when you take into account the fact that those are possible values for the industry whose main product is shown to harm the lives of its consumers and suppliers (more on that later).
Why, then, is the porn industry so valuable?
Why the porn industry is worth so much money
To put it simply, the industry is loaded with individual porn businesses that generate a ton of money.
Two of the biggest markers for business value, according to Forbes, are recurring revenue and growth. The former speaks to the amount of money the business makes through “automatically recurring contracts or subscriptions,” while the latter looks at how fast the business is growing.
The porn industry is chock-full of porn businesses that receive a lot of recurring revenue and are growing significantly.
With porn businesses, however, these two business value markers are heavily intertwined.
A huge part of that has to do with the way that porn businesses, and therefore the porn industry, make their money.
How the porn industry makes their money
Porn businesses generally make money in two ways.
The first way is subscription-based. Every month, the customer pays a predetermined amount of money in exchange for access to the product or content the business provides—think Netflix, but with porn. In order to draw customers in, businesses that use this model pay other businesses to advertise their product or content.
The second way is ad-based. These businesses offer “free” content to their customers, but must sell space on their website or application to businesses who desire to advertise their product or content in order to make money. This time, think YouTube.
The problem for a porn business, however, is that non-porn business aren’t often interested in selling ad space to a subscription-based porn business, nor in buying ad space from an ad-based porn business. This is because porn is often blocked from traditional advertising outlets.
So, what do the two types of porn businesses do? They sell and buy to and from one another.
And this is where Forbes’ business value metrics really come into play.
How recurrent revenue and growth intersect in the porn business
That’s a lot of fancy jargon, so let’s break it down.
If an ad-based business is growing quickly—that is, it has more and more customers viewing its free content every year—subscription-based businesses will be more willing to pay to advertise their own product or content.
And when a subscription-based business is growing quickly—that is, it has more and more customers regularly paying for its product or content every year—it will have more money to advertise its product or content on ad-based business’ websites or applications.
Because porn consumption, or growth, is consistently on the rise, more money, or recurrent revenue, will flow into both ad-based and subscription-based porn businesses.
Basically, all porn businesses win when more people view and when more people pay specific sites. Therefore, so does the porn industry at large.
Will they buy you, too?
In the porn industry, not much else matters but money and growth because money and growth translate into value and influence in society and consumers’ lives.
The modern economics of the porn industry are extremely concerning based on the record and potential of profiting from nonconsensual content, but it’s not necessarily something that regulation can solve. There is no perfect way to ensure nonconsensual content does not get uploaded to porn platforms, and there’s no reliable way for viewers to distinguish between what’s consensual and what isn’t.
The industry and its businesses don’t keep track of how much harm they can contribute to in their consumers’ and suppliers’ lives—as long as the consumers keep coming back because they are addicted or because performers keep performing.
It’s up to us to fight to stop the demand at the source—the consumer. And we can do that through education and awareness on the harmful effects of porn.
So, we have one question for you: will you let the porn industry buy you, too?
Your Support Matters Now More Than Ever
Most kids today are exposed to porn by the age of 12. By the time they’re teenagers, 75% of boys and 70% of girls have already viewed itRobb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.Copy —often before they’ve had a single healthy conversation about it.
Even more concerning: over half of boys and nearly 40% of girls believe porn is a realistic depiction of sexMartellozzo, E., Monaghan, A., Adler, J. R., Davidson, J., Leyva, R., & Horvath, M. A. H. (2016). “I wasn’t sure it was normal to watch it”: A quantitative and qualitative examination of the impact of online pornography on the values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of children and young people. Middlesex University, NSPCC, & Office of the Children’s Commissioner.Copy . And among teens who have seen porn, more than 79% of teens use it to learn how to have sexRobb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.Copy . That means millions of young people are getting sex ed from violent, degrading content, which becomes their baseline understanding of intimacy. Out of the most popular porn, 33%-88% of videos contain physical aggression and nonconsensual violence-related themesFritz, N., Malic, V., Paul, B., & Zhou, Y. (2020). A descriptive analysis of the types, targets, and relative frequency of aggression in mainstream pornography. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(8), 3041-3053. doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01773-0Copy Bridges et al., 2010, “Aggression and Sexual Behavior in Best-Selling Pornography Videos: A Content Analysis,” Violence Against Women.Copy .
From increasing rates of loneliness, depression, and self-doubt, to distorted views of sex, reduced relationship satisfaction, and riskier sexual behavior among teens, porn is impacting individuals, relationships, and society worldwideFight the New Drug. (2024, May). Get the Facts (Series of web articles). Fight the New Drug.Copy .
This is why Fight the New Drug exists—but we can’t do it without you.
Your donation directly fuels the creation of new educational resources, including our awareness-raising videos, podcasts, research-driven articles, engaging school presentations, and digital tools that reach youth where they are: online and in school. It equips individuals, parents, educators, and youth with trustworthy resources to start the conversation.
Will you join us? We’re grateful for whatever you can give—but a recurring donation makes the biggest difference. Every dollar directly supports our vital work, and every individual we reach decreases sexual exploitation. Let’s fight for real love: