Is Google Making Hardcore Profits?
Did anyone catch the documentary on BBC2 last night called “Hardcore Profits”?
It was a look at how the porn industry has changed over the years and was trying to determine which companies are profiteering from the porn industry. In the industry these days they say that the women get a really rough deal and its getting a lot more hardcore in what is expected of them. The program went down some weak avenues trying to point the finger at Hotel chains who have pay per view porn channels available in the rooms and organisations who may have stocks and shares in companies like Sky and Virgin Media who have porn channels.
But they did raise an interesting point about Google profiteering from the porn industry and highlighted that there are sponsored listings allowed for terms such as “hardcore sex” and “anal sex” which each time they are clicked will be generating Google revenue. The programme compared it with search terms that Google are more strict on such as “guns” and “drug related terms”, and the porn industry due to the way it has changed should perhaps be treated in the same was and Google shouldn’t be helping to promote. Except Google continue to allow for PPC to run.
They did have a forensic accountant (sounds an interesting job) do some digging into Google accounts and apparently there was no division in the company figures that stated how much PPC revenue came from porn related terms. That seems quite hard to believe that their accounts are so generalised that they are not broken down by industry sector on the advertising front.
Anyway I kind of thought while I watched it that Google came off quite badly from the program, and was seen as one of the worse corporate offenders in generating profits from porn after the movie makers themselves.
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I’m sure Google know exactly how much is made on porn terms (and every other term). Google are probably one of the biggest collectors, storers, analysers, slicers and dicers of data there is. Weather it’s public domain is another matter and the forensic accountant was just probably looking at SEC filings, etc
So what was the revenue from actual porn ppc?
I guess google aren’t required to publish their internal accounts by cost centre but you can 100% guarantee that internally, the paid search management teams do. They’ll be targeted on revenue and will be working with the largest agencies and advertisers to that end. I wonder how the ‘adult’ revenue stream compares in size to ‘travel’…
Google is probably one of the worst offenders at generating any kind of profits, simply because they’re the middlemen in so many transactions. In the end, many of their users want hardcore porn, and Google can either be self-righteous and let SEOs make money from the search results, or maximize their profits and let their shareholders get the money instead.
As for women being exploited by porn, it’s a possibility — but a remote one, inasmuch as porn is one of the few industries in which women earn far more money than men. Here’s an illuminating discussion of the exploitation issue, from the film Orgazmo:
Lisa: [to Maxxx] You pig, you’re responsible for degrading all of those women.
Clark: Equally degradable in pornographic films.
Lisa: Men are always in a position of power.
Rodgers: They’re the ones who want the product so bad, they’re the victims.
Lisa: Well, it exploits men by exploiting women.
Clark: Hence, it exploits people.
Maxxx Orbison: [pissed off] SHUT UP!
Clark: Yeah.
Maxxx Orbison: I do what i do and i make a lot of money and i don’t care what i do to people because they’re all idiots.
Clark: Yeah.
Maxxx Orbison: Especially you Clark, you pig fucking hunk of shit!.
Clark: Yeah.
I should imagine Google not only makes a huge chunk of cash from PPC porn ads and that they know exactly how much right down to the last penny.
out of curiousity I entered some of the terms featured in the screenshot above in Google’s AdWords keyword selector to see if it would give me some idea of search volumes and CPCs, instead in each instance it told me:
“We’re sorry , but we were unable to generate relevant keywords for this keyword. Please make sure that you have entered the keyword correctly. Or, enter another keyword into the box to see related keywords.”
I’m happy to leave my research there but it would seem they’re not that eager to let people know how much they cost and how many of these searches there are.
I would love to know how much they make from porn ads. I’m still very suprised they allow the use of the terms ‘hardcore’ and ‘anal’ to be promoted, especially after stopping my ads for a high class escort agency!!
Is it a joke??? All the sponsored links in this page belong to pornographic sites…
Ha that’s so funny (your google adsense) – are you therefore making money from Hardcore sites too? I’ve just taken a screen grab – the irony is giving me heartburn.
and yes – i think Google are getting more and more distasteful as the days go on, they are making MSN look like the plucky outsider who i want to support.
They arent ads. Good image.
Have google left our good books forever do you think?
@sam HAHAHAH that is funny oh but wait I do make money from the adult industries lol.. I have no issues with Hardcore Porn industry ( I don’t promote that ) or in fact how my pension is invested, but apparently some people do and have a ethical pensions that only deal with companies that fit that slot 🙂 and Google isn’t in that slot but still get the ethic investors ..
Dave
Let’s face it, sex sells – and it does very well on the net. (Trust me I know)
If I were Google, I’d be saying ‘screw ethics’ as well… Adult sites that do not follow a membership model struggle to raise revenue via advertisements, but this is predominantly due to Google taking their approach. The current market for adult advertising is very poor, offer a very lousy CPC (cost per click) for sites like mine.
Once Google openly allow ads to contain adult content, money will start flowing in.
And the remaining innocence of the internet will be lost.
The fact is that there is a huge chuck of money to be made and google wants a piece of it too. It’s business, after all.