xHamster 2019 Trend Report

From Stormy Daniels to SESTA/FOSTA, 2018 was a watershed year for porn. But for all the attention paid — and in some cases, attacks lobbed — consumers are just starting to feel the effects.

What’s coming in porn for 2019? We looked at several year’s worth of data, from traffic to searches, to identify what’s growing (and what’s shrinking) for porn users in the year ahead.

The Biggest Trends for 2019:
● Women expected to reach 30% of users worldwide
● Censorship already causing major declines
● Millennials driving pay-for-porn revival
● Barcelona becoming porn industry’s newest HQ
● Studios, brands fall as diversity rises

2019: Women Become Porn’s Growth Market

Last year, we predicted that Porn for Women would be one of the big trends of 2018 — and was it ever! Visits to xHamster from women increased by an astounding 41% in the US, and 12.3% worldwide. Our Porn for Women category jumped nearly 284%, and is now our second most popular category stateside.

Worldwide, women viewers make up 28.05% of viewers — we expect it to rise to over 30% in 2019.

In some countries, women are already much closer to reaching parity with men as a percentage of viewers. In the Dominican Republic, an astounding 53% of visitors are now women!

While in others — often countries where access to the internet is limited, or where steep restrictions have been placed on women’s access — the percentage is much smaller. (North Korea has 0% women users.)

When we launched our Porn for Women Fund in 2018, we knew one thing: women like hardcore pounding just as much as men. But that’s where the searches start to differ.

2019: The Effects of Censorship
After twenty years of expansion, internet freedom is beginning to finally contract — and we expect consumers to really feel the effects in 2019. Over the past year, we’ve seen massive drops in China, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Indonesia, as countries shut down VPNs, took over ISPs and put bounties on porn watchers.

But it’s not just a word away. From FOSTA/SESTA in the US to the new Digital Economy Act in the UK to platform shutdowns like Patreon and Tumblr, consumers can expect fewer options, and more difficulty accessing them. For example:

UK
By Easter 2019, the UK’s Digital Economy Act will implement strict age-verification to keep out under 18s — and banning porn sites that don’t comply. Paradoxically, we’ve often seen anti-porn measures actually increase interest in the hard stuff, and all the talk about the coming DEA meant Brits watched +5.83% more porn this year.

United States
President Trump’s signing of the so-called anti-trafficking bill FOSTA/SESTA bill in April had some immediate effects — the shutdown of whole communities on Craigslist and Reddit — but we expect the trend to intensify, as anti-porn activists use it to attack adult producers and performers. But all that drama — and Stormy Daniels — made us horny. This year, traffic in the US grew +12.94%!

China
After years of spotty censorship, in late 2018 China began banning VPNs and offering citizens a cash rewards — up to $80K — for reporting “iIIegaI content,” such as porn, to authorities in 2018. And porn sites have suffered — traffic from China dropped nearly -81% this year.

Starbucks
Starbucks joined Subway and McDonalds in announcing they would begin to block users from accessing adult sites over their wifi in 2019. We expect more corporations, from restaurants to hotels, to bow to pressure.

Tumblr
The Tumblr shutdown was the biggest shock to porn fans in over a decade. After being removed from Apple’s App Store in November, Tumblr banned all adult content which shows “real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples”, as well as anything that depicts sex acts. So far, Twitter and Reddit remain free, but unfortunately we expect the influx of porn to provoke a similar backlash. Meanwhile, searches for ‘Tumblr’ on xHamster have more than quadrupled in just the past month (Dec 2018), up 208%.

India
On October 27, the Indian government instructed a ban on 827 porn sites but despite this, traffic from the subcontinent is up +44.35% for 2018 — the biggest increase by a major country in the world this year. (It’s no surprise that searches for “VPN India” spiked in October and have remained higher since according to Google search trends data.)

Nepal
Nepal waged a ban on all digital porn this year. But like India, users quickly figured out ways around the ban. The real danger? Countries like Nepal and India adopting the more aggressive techniques of China and Saudi Arabia.

2019: Barcelona Emerges as Porn’s Newest Capital

Forget Los Angeles and Las Vegas — thanks to low cost of living and a relative paucity of public nudity laws, Barcelona has quickly emerged as Europe’s porn capital, with more and more films shot in the city, and more major companies establishing beachheads … for beach head.

In fact, you may not have realized how much porn is being shot there — the city’s beaches easily double for better known locations like LA and Miami.

Most interestingly, the city is drawing some of the most innovative producers of adult content — from feminist icon Erika Lust to VR-pioneer BaDoink — not to mention the controversial Lumidoll sex doll brothel. And Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau has even thrown her support to the country’s sex workers, backing their fight to form a union.

With the industry’s rapid growth, there may be some growing pains. But in 2019, expect to see more producers and performers operating openly from BCN.

2019: Millennials Show Muscle — And Money

Thanks to increased government censorship, and the closure of free platforms like Tumblr, consumers are once again taking porn seriously — and paying.

The two factors driving this? The decline of free, social networks, and the simultaneous rise of performer-driven productions like cams, clips, customs and fan-subscription sites, including monetized Snapchat. Consumers used to be content with any content, so long as it was free — but exclusivity and community have risen as driving factors.

At xHamster, we have seen registrations increase by nearly 200% in the past year, with more users uploading content and commenting than ever before. And we have millennials to thank.

Millennials drove the free porn revolution, in part because they came of age during a recession. Today, the oldest millennials are nearing 40. They are less ashamed about porn than any previous generation, and increasingly open to paying for it.

By the end of 2019, one generation — millennials — will make up more than 60% of all porn visitors, with radical shifts coming in what they watch, and how they get it.

We also see millennials moving away from brands, and gravitating toward amateur content. Only three studio brands now show up in our top 100 search terms, and two of those are showing rapid declines.

2019: The Money Shot
We expect 2019 to bring porn fans more women, more income, and a greater diversity of content. This is all good news — assuming you can access the porn in the first place. There will be more censorship, and fewer platforms. Be excited about what the New Year will bring, while remembering to defend your right to watch it!

Download the 2019 Trend Report here

More to come!

Always yours, xHamster