I never understood why ad networks and advertisers were so militant about porn. I think advertising on porn sites is actually a great idea: jacked off, shop for a motorcycle; watched porn, get an expensive fishing kit, etc.

Whoever creates a brand ad network of premium advertisers which is tolerant to adult content (or at least to any user generated content) and competes with AdSense will make very significant money.

The first reason is basic conservatism. There will always be an objection and it's safer to avoid.

Otherwise, many parts of online advertising form a very competitive market and if it was valuable (eg you can find customers this way) there would be demand.

It just doesn't work well (yet). Users don't trust porn sites.

You've got the problem backwards.

People are militant about porn ads appearing on their website.

I've never heard anybody complain about their ads showing up on a porn website.

> I've never heard anybody complain about their ads showing up on a porn website.

Then you've clearly never worked in media or advertising.

Most advertisers would be livid if their ad showed up on a porn website. Many of them will even be upset if you put their ad on a slightly risque article.

They don't want their image associated with porn (or tragedy). Even legitimate mainstream news organizations have to put in code to exclude advertisers from certain article categories.

> Even legitimate mainstream news organizations have to put in code to exclude advertisers from certain article categories.

And see eg Private Eye's "Malgorithms" or Need to Know's Doh! gifs for examples of poor ad placement.

Advertisers are usually very wary of what content is associated with them. I'm sure the morally conservative vocal people would complain to the brand or something like that. Or maybe not, if that would imply that they were watching porn...

This article achieved a terrific balance between entertaining and informative - great read! Can't wait to see more advertisers like this next time I'm conducting scholarly research.

Am I the only person on HN who just thinks this is terrible, terrible brand positioning? I feel like I've been sucked into a weird alternate reality where everything is topsy-turvy. I mean, have you seen the ads that usually run on porn sites?!

Sure, maybe they've got a high clickthrough, but I wonder how many people have just filed away eat24 in their mind with adultfriendfinder and fuckbook. I feel like it's one of the biggest credibility hits that an internet company could take, especially one that's going to quickly need your payment info.

I also feel like this blog post is going to turn up in a very, very uncomfortable way if anyone sues for hostile workplace.

You sure feel a lot, but do you actually know something? Have you read the article? JustEat approached this very methodical and have gotten some great results from it.

Are they still advertising on porn sites? Sounds like a one time publicity stunt to me.

Probably not since the Yelp buy out.

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6359555.

Now I'm wondering if porn sites would be a good place to advertise searchtempest.com. There's got to be some crossover with searching personals in multiple cities, not to mention just being up, online, in the late evening.

If searchtempest.com is a real service I would avoid it. Porn site adverts are stacked with fake personals sites.

It's a search engine for searching multiple craigslist^ cities at once, along with ebay and amazon and such. So one potential use would be searching personals across a wide range of cities, but that would be more of a hook to get people on the site; it's product searches that actually lead to revenue for us.

^ no affiliation

What's most amazing to me about this is that Yelp hasn't expunged the post!

TIL: Cute monkeys are not allowed in ads on porn sites.

While women with their legs akimbo displaying their crotch, whilst eating pizza is absolutely fine.

Thought I had read this before. Should def get a (2013) in title.

This has been posted before iirc.

only other discussion I found was 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6359555

Any chance someone could add (2013) to this title?

Sure.

Thanks!

Since this is from 2013 , anyone know of any followupd? (From them or another company)