Porn Industry Rushes for Good News

Claims of Bump from Tax Stimulus Premature

It’s a bit early for the adult entertainment industry to claim victory. While it may be fun to say that President George W. Bush’s tax stimulus has led to increased porn spend, particularly given his administration’s moral stance and increased prosecution of the industry under obscenity laws, the reality cannot be that simple. After all, how can the industry say that it has benefited in such a specific manner when, in general, it is unable to estimate market size and individual company revenues with any degree of certainty?

 

Kirk Mishkin, the Head Research Consultant for the non-profit Adult Industry Market Research Company (AIMRCo) claims that “[m]any of the sites we surveyed have reported 20 percent to 30 percent growth in membership rates since mid-May, when the checks were first sent out.” He continues to say that the summer tends to be a slow period for this market. LSGmodels.com spokeswoman Jillian Fox, agrees, indicating that 32 percent of members responding to a survey played a role in their deciding to subscribe to the site.

What is missing from the story is detail. AIMRCo says that “[u]sing a connected network of over 400 paysites and 2000 affiliates/traffic trading sites, we gather the data necessary to make informed market trend assessments.” Yet, it does not indicate the size of the sample for this particular survey. It offers no description of the responding companies. For Fox’s survey, there is no comment as to whether members would have joined anyway.

 

Looming in the background, of course, is an e-mail exchange I had with Adult Video News Editor Dan Miller. AVN typically publishes a “State of the Industry” report in its March issue, crunching the numbers on market size, retailer performance and business trends. This year, he says, AVN decided not to issue the report. “We did not do one for this past year,” he wrote, “our industry has nothing scientific in nature with regard to statistical data, unfortunately.”

 

I have been studying the porn market for my doctoral dissertation and have taken a close look at the available data, as well as the history of both the data and some of the assumptions used to formulate it. While I do believe that the statistics have been directionally correct, there has always been controversy as to their accuracy. AVN has done a great job with little information in an industry that values its privacy, but I understand why they have discontinued the “State of the Industry” reports.

 

So, this brings us back to AIMRCo’s claims. Given that AVN has trouble generating high-level data for an industry-wide perspective, how realistic is AIMRCo’s assertion that Bush’s tax checks are stimulating the porn economy? Let’s be realistic. The thought that the bush tax tactic helps porn is great poetry, but that’s about it.

 

Photos of Adrianna Lynn and Stoya by Bam Bam

~ by migrantblogger on July 7, 2008.