Adult is considered a gray vertical that can yield a lot of targeted leads, as the niche is tied to basic human needs. Adult content attracts a broad audience numbering in the billions, with the key demographic being men aged 25 to 45. In this article, the MyBid team will explain how to drive traffic to adult themes in 2024.
What is Adult Traffic?
"Adult" translates from English to "grown-up," thus "adult traffic" refers to internet users interested in 18+ offers. These can range from informational resources to products, and they are divided into several main categories:
Adult Dating — dating sites and apps, "sex over the phone."
Adult Content — platforms providing access to pornographic content.
Webcam — streaming platforms where users can interact with models in real time.
Adult Games — online games and applications featuring explicit scenes and plots geared towards adults.
Nutra Adult — products aimed at improving male potency, increasing genital size, as well as supplements for women's health.
And even HR offers — job openings for webcam models.
Each of these categories has its similar subcategories targeting alternative audiences, including representatives of sexual minorities.
Key Features of the Vertical:
The adult vertical in traffic arbitrage can be seen as a sandbox — it is often where newcomers start. It is accessible, straightforward, and offers several clear advantages:
A high profit margin due to constant demand for adult content and a willingness to pay for access.
A wide variety of offers suitable for any GEO.
Promotion of offers without complicated moderation bypassing in countries where the adult industry is legally allowed (Europe, USA, Canada, and Latin America).
A diverse target audience by age (18+ to 60+) and interests.
No proficiency in English required. All text content can be created using online translation tools.
Simple conversion action — most commonly, registration or app installation. This is convenient because the simpler the conversion goal, the easier it is to acquire leads.
However, this vertical has its drawbacks, which can be managed:
High competition — many webmasters start with the adult dating niche, leading to rapid declines in the effectiveness of similar offers, and the target audience ceases to respond to "I’ll buy you a beer, let’s have fun" banners featuring half-naked women. It’s essential to constantly seek new approaches.
Strict moderation — the adult niche is gray and closely tied to bypassing rules on advertising platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. There are various ways to circumvent these, such as cloaking and using doorway links, but this can lead to account blockages or bans on advertising platforms.
In Russia, profit from the adult industry is effectively prohibited — anyone involved in the production or distribution of pornographic materials falls under Article 242 of the Criminal Code. This can result in fines starting from 100,000 rubles (depending on the income size). Distributing content to minors incurs criminal liability (ranging from two to five years). However, no one forbids driving traffic to foreign countries outside the CIS.
Free Traffic Sources:
Traffic to adult offers can be generated through both paid methods (via advertising networks and affiliate programs) and relatively free methods — utilizing organic traffic. Let’s first explore ways to get traffic at no cost:
Messengers
In Telegram, you can promote both chats and subscriptions for adult content, nutra products, sex toys — whatever you desire. There is no moderation, and you can initially build your audience through mutual promotion, and later, organically purchase ads from other channels. Free offers work well for Russia and CIS countries, while subscription models are easier to promote to foreign markets.
Video Platforms (TikTok, Shorts, Reels)
We discussed various traffic arbitrage methods with TikTok in detail last year. Similar strategies apply to Shorts and Reels as well. One way to promote adult dating might look like this:
Create an account for a dating app.
Post videos or photos of “profiles” with a general message like “I’m beautiful and lonely, open to dating.”
In the profile description, include a link to either the offer or a pre-landing page.
If the post goes viral, some organic traffic will flow to the profile, leading to the link in the description.
The user completes the targeted action.
Driving traffic from paid sources to CIS countries isn’t particularly profitable since payouts are unlikely to cover the webmaster's expenses. For example, in dating, it makes more sense to target foreign markets from the start, as English-speaking countries generate over three-quarters of the world’s paying traffic on dating sites. Therefore, focus should be on traffic from Tier-1 and Tier-2 countries.
Paid Traffic Sources
Advertising Networks
Advertising networks serve as intermediaries between webmasters and website owners, simplifying the ad placement process. They aggregate advertising spaces from multiple platforms and offer a way to reach a wide audience for any offer. These networks provide various ad formats (push, pop-under, in-page push, video, banner, native, etc.), as well as tools for targeting and analytics, helping to optimize campaigns for better results.
One of the main advantages of this method is that advertising networks do not moderate ad campaigns, so there are no barriers to promoting adult and other gray niches (gambling, nutra, betting).
For those working in the adult niche, MyBid is the most effective traffic source. This advertising network has its own platforms, delivering quality traffic and minimizing your involvement in routine tasks through full support from a personal manager and process automation.
Social Media
Traffic can be driven from ads on Facebook or Pinterest if you don’t mind strict placement policies. You’ll need to learn how to create creatives that hint at the subject rather than displaying explicit images and to use cloaking — a technology that swaps content after clicking on the ad link.
Using this bypass technique, moderators and bots see a page that fully adheres to platform rules after the link is clicked, while potential buyers see a landing page with a more aggressive call to action or payment. When driving traffic from Facebook to adult content, it's important to understand that accounts will frequently be blocked, so it’s better to work as a team where everyone has multiple accounts. This is tedious but allows you to reach up to 3 billion paying users on social media.
How to "Whitewash" (Secure) Adult Creatives for Facebook?
Remove explicit outlines of silhouettes, blur or obscure anything indecent in the images.
Replace naked body parts with elongated or rounded objects: a banana, cactus, balloons.
Create a video creative from the very beginning of a pornographic clip where nothing suggestive is visible. This allows for the editing of a decent clip while making it clear through the stars, phrases, and actions what you’re selling or offering.
Use neural networks: give photos or specific parts of the image a cartoonish look. This will obscure them from the moderator’s view. We previously discussed the top 5 best neural networks for creating adult content in this article.
Examples of Successful Adult Creatives for Strict Placement Platforms:
After analyzing the ways to earn from the adult vertical, a few conclusions can be drawn. First, traffic can be generated for free (through organic traffic from social media and blogs), but this will take a lot of time and effort in creating content and building a funnel. Second, if you intend to drive adult traffic using advertising networks, it’s easier to choose the option of running ad campaigns with a personal manager, allowing you to earn profits without getting involved in routine issues. This option is also beneficial for beginner webmasters.
Monetization and Payment Models
Affiliate Programs
Adult traffic is easier and more profitable to monetize through affiliate programs. They most commonly use a cost-per-action (CPA) payment model. This means that webmasters are paid only for specific targeted actions taken by users (registration, purchase, etc.), with the final results being conversions and sales. Webmasters, in turn, select suitable offers and attract traffic to them, earning a reward for each completed targeted action.
There are primarily four payment models:
SOI (Single Opt-In): Payment for a user providing their contact information (email or phone number) without needing confirmation.
DOI (Double Opt-In): Payment for a user registering first and then confirming their details (via email or SMS).
RevShare (Revenue Share): Payment of a percentage from donations made by the referred user. This is common in webcam ventures.
CPA (Cost Per Action): Payment for users completing a specific action, such as placing an order or installing an app.
Adult Case Studies
ROI of 80% on Webcam with Popunder
Ad Format: Popunder
Traffic Source: Adsterra.com
Offer: Adult Cams
Spent: $655.30
Revenue: $1,185
Profit: $529.70
ROI: 80.8%
GEO: United Kingdom
For the offer, a webcam platform was chosen with a simple SOI registration at $3 per lead. The landing page looked like this:
As a pre-landing page, dating profiles were utilized on Adheart.
Traffic Setup:
Pop-up banners were shown only on mobile devices.
Excluded views in unpopular browsers (UC Browser, Blackberry).
Text was written in English.
Set a limit of one impression every 24 hours.
Bid was set at $1.34.
Driving Traffic to Adult Dating in the USA
Ad Format: Push, In-Page Push, Banner
Traffic Source: ClickAdilla
Affiliate Program: AdsEmpire
Budget: $1,500
Revenue: $4,000
Profit: $2,500
ROI: 167%
Offer: OneNightFriend
GEO: USA
Three ad formats were used simultaneously, allowing for a broader audience reach. The whitelist consisted of premium adult sites, and creatives featured photos of women with intriguing captions.
The campaign was set up for all regions in the USA across all browsers. Ads were displayed for 18 hours a day during peak activity periods. A filter was used to exclude bots via IPv4 and IPv6. The cost-per-click ranged from $0.08 to $0.09 with a daily spending cap of $200.
From the second day, the campaign generated over 200 registrations per day, and registrations continued to flow in even after the campaign ended.
Dating in Tier-3 with 54% ROI over 4 Weeks
Ad Format: Teaser Spam
Traffic Source: Megapu.sh
Affiliate Program: Leadbit
Budget: $1,700
Revenue: $2,584
Profit: $884
ROI: 54.8%
Offer: DOI with payment of $30 per approval and $10 per subscription
GEO: Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda, Somalia, Egypt
Testing focused on countries responsive to teaser spam with subscriptions. During the first week, expenses of $200 did not convert, yielding only $132 in profit due to ineffective creatives.
Webmasters adjusted the model types to light-haired, busty Europeans, leading to increased revenue: with $200 spent, income rose to $340.
Further analysis identified issues with the pre-landing page, which contained too much text. After correcting these mistakes, by the third week, with $300 spent, revenue reached $564. By the fourth week, revenue climbed to $1,548.
Conclusion
Traffic for adult offers can be generated for free through social media and blogs. However, revenue from the adult vertical is fastest and most conveniently earned through advertising networks that provide a personal manager for launching your campaigns. A prime example of such an advertising network is MyBid.
From analyzing these case studies, it became clear that in adult traffic arbitrage, it’s crucial to choose ad formats that yield positive responses in selected GEOs, to use creative types that appeal to the predominant male audience, and to not shy away from using multiple ad formats simultaneously to reach a wider audience.
