By Mark A. Whittaker

ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla. (Aug. 5, 2011) – Revenue from escort and body-rub advertising at Backpage.com, the classified-advertising site owned by Village Voice Media, declined 1.4 percent in June to $1.95 million, the AIM Group estimated.

Despite the slight decline at Backpage, that site and others that advertise prostitution services collectively continued to gain traffic and revenue since online classifieds giant Craigslist stopped selling adult-services advertising in September 2010.

The fastest-growing escort-advertising site is AdultSearch.com, which in June generated an estimated $110,000, up 16.9 percent compared with May and five times what it generated in September 2010. Traffic to AdultSearch.com has increased at the same rate. In June, the site had nearly 343,000 unique visitors, up 20 percent from the previous month, according to Compete.com.

AdultSearch.com ranks fourth among the five sites for which AIM Group is able to estimate revenue. Backpage.com is the only general classifieds site on the list. The others are dedicated only to prostitution advertising. Since September 2010, those five sites have generated revenue at an annual rate of $34.2 million, about one-third more than the AIM Group estimated last September, before Craigslist eliminated prostitution ads.

Listings for escorts and body rubs on nine sites tracked by the AIM Group increased in June to 209,300, up 2.6 percent from May and 15 percent from September 2010. The AIM Group estimates the nine sites, plus Craigslist, published 214,000 listings for adult services in August 2010. Of that number, 71,000 listings were on Craigslist.

The largest beneficiary of the Craigslist decision to eliminate adult services ads continues to be Backpage.com, which is now the leading U.S. online publisher of prostitution ads. Since last September, Backpage has generated online revenue from escort and body-rub advertising at an annual rate of $22.7 million. That’s a 30 percent increase over the $17.4 million projected by the AIM Group before Craigslist stopped publishing adult services ads.

Craigslist pulled adult services ads due to pressure from law enforcement officials and anti-sex-trafficking groups who complained the ads promoted both prostitution and sex slavery involving girls under 18.

Village Voice Media, which is also facing pressure from law enforcement officials and anti-trafficking groups, has changed the adult advertising sections of Backpage but continues to carry paid ads for escort services and body rubs. Backpage is the online classified advertising site for VVM’s 13 alternative weekly newspapers, the five weeklies published by Creative Loafing, and a number of other publications, mostly alternative weeklies.

U.S. publishers of online advertising posted directly by advertisers are protected by the Communications Decency Act if the ads have not been reviewed before they appear online – even if they promote prostitution or include illegal references to discrimination in housing, for example.

Backpage.com generated at least $1.95 million in June from online ads for escorts and body-rubs, according to conservative estimates by the AIM Group. That’s down 1.4 percent from May, and 34 percent higher than August 2010, when it sold at least $1.45 million in escort and body-rub ads.
The six sites tracked by AIM Group, including Backpage, generated $2.9 million in revenue from prostitution advertising in June, 0.7 percent higher than the previous month. One of the tracked sites, Escorts.com, closed on June 1. Revenue there had declined for several months before the site shut down.

Unique visitors to 24 websites that promote escort services and prostitution advertising have increased 22.6 percent since Craigslist dropped adult services ads. Based on figures from Compete.com, unique visitors to those sites in June increased 2.6 percent to 5.5 million.

Of that total, 3.2 million visited Backpage, the same as May, and 36.7 percent increase since August 2010. The number includes visitors who go to all sections of Backpage.com, not just the sections displaying escort and body-rub ads.

By comparison, Craigslist had 62.8 million unique visitors in June, according to Compete.com.

The AIM Group, an interactive-media consultancy based in Altamonte Springs, Fla., has been tracking prostitution advertising since August 2010.

The AIM Group counts the number of Backpage ads for female escorts and body rubs in 23 U.S. cities over a 30-day period. Revenue is estimated by multiplying the number of ads by the advertising rates in each city, plus an assumed additional charge to republish the ads four times. The research does not count ads published outside the primary cities, so it is likely revenue has been substantially underestimated.

The AIM Group has also tracked revenue for five other sites that sell prostitution advertising – Eros.com, CityVibe.com, MyRedbook.com, Escorts.com and AdultSearch.com. Escorts.com closed June 1.

All of the four remaining sites had revenue increases in June. AdultSearch.com showed a revenue gain of 16.9 percent to $110,085; CityVibe.com’s estimated revenue increased 5.7 percent to $416,310; Eros.com’s revenue increased 3.5 percent to $451,575; and MyRedBook.com’s revenue increased 2.5 percent to $16,227. Here is the estimated monthly revenue from September 2010 through June 2011 at six sites that sell prostitution advertising or listings:

The consulting group also tracks the number of listings on nine sites and unique visitors to 24 sites that promote prostitution either with listings or by allowing “reviews” of prostitution services.

Here are the June unique visitors to the top 10 most-visited sites, according to Compete.com:

The AIM Group tracked prostitution ads and, where possible, calculated the revenue they generate in these 23 cities: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Dallas / Fort Worth, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York City, Orlando, Fla., Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Sarasota, Fla., Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa and Washington, D.C.

Overall, the AIM Group studies 24 websites that either sell listings or promote prostitution in other ways. Of those 24, we are able to compute revenue based on the number of listings and published advertising rates for six – Backpage.com, Eros.com, CityVible.com, MyRedbook.com, Escorts.com (which closed June 1, 2011) and AdultSearch.com. We can also count listings on three additional sites – NaughtyReviews.com, Eccie.com, and A1List.net. For the remaining 15, we track only unique visitors because the other data is not publicly available or because the sites have so little traffic that their revenues or listings would be insignificant. The remaining 15 sites are TheEroticReview.com, Sipsap.com, Preferred411.com, SexyEscortAds.com, BigDoggie.net, LocalEscortPages.com, HotLocalEscorts.com, MyProviderGuide.com, TNABoard.com, FindHotEscorts.com, EscortGuide.com, EroticServicesGuide.com, EpicDreams.com, Escortme.com, and BarebackEscorts.com.

The unique-visitors metric counts a user – a computer or IP address – only once no matter how many times the site is visited from that same location. It does not account for more than one person using the same computer, or one person visiting the same site from two or more different computers (one at work and one at home, for example).

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About the AIM Group: The AIM Group, formally known as the Advanced Interactive Media Group LLC, is the world’s leading consultancy in interactive media and classified advertising. It publishes Classified Intelligence Report, a continuous advisory service often called “the bible of the classified advertising industry.” The AIM Group works with leading media companies, broadcasters, dot-coms, yellow-page publishers and technology companies. It provides strategic and tactical consulting; sales training; proprietary and published research about interactive media, and other services. Founded in 1998, it is based in Altamonte Springs, Fla. For more information call (407) 788-2780 or see http://AIMGroup.com.

This monthly update report has been funded by a foundation that has asked not to be identified, in part because it does not want to seem to be taking credit for the Craigslist change in practice, nor promoting other adult-services advertising media.

The original Sept. 15, 2010, report can be purchased at www.aimgroup.com, and proceeds will be given to report’s sponsor. In addition, the AIM Group’s 47-page 2010 report on Craigslist, “Craigslist revenue to top $122 million,” is available through AIMGroup.com.

Note: Mark A. Whittaker, senior consultant for the AIM Group, and Peter M. Zollman, founding principal of the AIM Group, are available for comment on the research. Whittaker is available at 724-553-8428 or markw@aimgroup.com; Zollman is available at 407-788-2780 or peterz@aimgroup.com .