Last week, I took a risk and invested $200 in advertising on porn websites, although my business has no relation to adult content.

TLDR: I spent $70 to interrupt the porn sessions of 4,632 people.

Why was this an experiment I wanted to take?

There are two schools of thought here. Firstly, the quantitative analysis:

* 30% of online traffic is pornographic.
* 70% of traffic originates from my demographic (18-24-year-old men).
* 90% cheaper cost per click.

Secondly, I built my iOS app with a mission to enable people to be consistent in their pursuit of fitness goals. My personal belief (it’s a divisive topic) is that regular users of porn sites are more likely to desire positive change in their life. Becoming fit and healthy tends to be a starting point for achieving this.

How did I advertise?

Unlike Meta or Google, who own their own advertising networks, to advertise on porn sites you need to use a third-party network. I chose ExoClick for ad distribution as they are well-established and offer attractive targeting and retargeting mechanisms. I chose a banner ad for all ad variations predominantly because design is incredibly time-consuming, and I wanted uniformity to streamline the process.

How did my ads perform?

Some important information to preface this: I only know the basics when it comes to ad strategy and optimisation. The initial upfront investment was $200; however, I paused all ads after spending $70 (you'll see why shortly).

From $70 invested, I received 1 million impressions, 4,906 clicks, and 2 downloads.

From the start, I was impressed with the number of impressions, and the click rate told me my ads were causing intrigue. I was happy with this, so I kept them running instead of pausing and redesigning. However, as a few days went by, there became a significant delta between clicks and downloads.

Usually, this means that the conversion funnel is no good; you're redirecting the prospect to a page that makes them lose interest. I only showed my ads to iPhone users, and my redirect took them directly to the App Store page. While the app is still in its infancy, I have good reviews with a clear and concise pitch. So, here begins the confusion. I thought, "What could be better than taking the user straight to the App Store?". I could switch things up and redirect to my landing page, but admittedly, it needs some work first.

Here comes the really interesting part: 4,906 clicks directly to the App Store should mean my App Store impressions would be around 4,906 for that time period, but instead the number was just 274.

Thoughts and Evaluations

The 274 impressions were a significant uptick from my daily average of 30-40, and I wasn’t running any parallel campaigns on another platform. I knew people coming to my App Store page from the ad were being registered. The only way I can explain the delta is the scenario where a prospect accidentally clicks my ad while going about their business and quickly swipes away from the redirect. Relate’s survey of accidental banner ad clicks puts the estimated accidental clicks as high as 60%.

I am by no means an expert and most probably made mistakes/missed ways to optimise things better. However, my takeaway from all of this so far is that a significant number of clicks from ads on porn sites are accidental. This is likely due to the spammy way they are presented to the user of the site.

In summary, I spent $70 to interrupt the porn sessions of 4,632 people (assuming the 274 weren’t people who couldn’t swipe away fast enough).