With coronavirus-caused lockdowns, shelter-in-place orders, and quarantines in effect around the world, millions of people are spending more time than usual at home with their families…and with themselves.
It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that adult website Pornhub has been seeing noticeable upticks in global traffic since early March. We know this because, at the request of Forbes, Pornhub’s statisticians recently began publishing daily info about worldwide spikes in viewership as well as region-specific data from countries impacted by COVID-19.
Pornhub generally sees around 120 million visitors each day, it says. To figure out how today’s traffic compares to the norm, statisticians are comparing current numbers to a period of usual traffic from early February.
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Using that method, Pornhub determined that traffic was up a slight 1.8% on March 1. It dipped March 2 (0.5%), but by March 4 was up to 2.2%. On March 9, traffic was 2.7% higher than usual, and almost every day since, it’s continued to rise, all the way to 11.6% more visitors than usual on March 17 (the latest day for which Pornhub has reported stats).
Now, to be clear, that’s a global average, measuring Pornhub’s total number of visitors from everywhere. It has seen dramatically larger jumps in traffic from Italy, Spain, and France–all of which are COVID-19 hotbeds, and all of which have been granted free access to Pornhub’s Premium service.
In light of expanding quarantines, we are extending Free Pornhub Premium for the month to our friends in Spain! Pornhub will also donate this month’s sales from Modelhub (model earnings will remain untouched) ¡Vamos, España! pic.twitter.com/CNCgPNYVmC
— Pornhub ARIA (@Pornhub) March 17, 2020
The majority of Pornhub’s content is free, but those who pay $9.99 per month to subscribe to its Premium service get access to extra videos, plus features like high-quality playback, downloads, and no ads. Pornhub began offering free Premium in Italy March 12, after the country locked down in response to widespread coronavirus cases (which now total more than 41,000). The site expanded its offer to similarly affected France (now 11,000 cases) and Spain (18,000 cases) on March 16.
And the move appears to be paying off for Pornhub. On March 12, its traffic from Italy went up 57%. On March 16, traffic from France was up 38.2%, and traffic from Spain jumped a whopping 61.3%. Pornhub asserts that “millions of people” from these countries signed up for its free Premium service. It appears users will have free access through the end of March.
As for how Pornhub is doing in the U.S., where lockdowns aren’t yet as widespread, traffic was up 6.4% March 17.
In addition to offering free Premium, Pornhub is donating all its March revenues from Modelhub, its cam site, to COVID-19 relief in Italy, France, and Spain, the site said. (Models will receive their usual percentage–Pornhub is simply donating its cut, which ranges from 20% to 35% of each sale depending on the service sold.)
Pornhub’s Premium offer is the latest in a string of timely social good moves it’s made. Others include snowplowing in Boston during the 2017 blizzard and producing racy pollution education content last year amid the outcry to eradicate plastic straws.
