Coronavirus Update – March 25th

In our previous Coronavirus Insights, Pornhub’s statisticians took a detailed look at how worldwide traffic to Pornhub had changed as people were forced to self-isolate and work from home. Not only had visits to Pornhub increased, but we also found that people were choosing to visit the site at different times of the day.

In this post, our statisticians have provided updated stats with several additional days worth of data. We also take a closer look at visitor demographics to see how traffic has changed for men, women and within various age groups.

UPDATE: Please see our April 14th Coronavirus Insights for new data.

Worldwide Traffic Changes

Since February 24th, worldwide traffic was above average, but began to increase more noticeably around March 10th. Traffic had increased by 13.7% on March 20th, but a massive increase of 18.5% occurred on March 24th when it was announced that Pornhub’s Premium service would be free to all visitors worldwide for one month to encourage people to stay at home and help flatten the curve of new Covid-19 cases.

Comparisons were made to an average traffic period in February. Because traffic varies depending on the day of the week, each day was compared to the same day of the week during the average period. (You can see Pornhub’s normal traffic levels as detailed in our 2019 Year in Review).

For that reason, you may notice that the increases are less pronounced on weekends (March 14-15 and 21-22). With many events cancelled, people were naturally spending more time indoors on Saturdays and Sundays, but the effect on traffic was much less than weekdays when people were working at home, and finding extra time to visit Pornhub.

As self-isolation efforts were increased in North America, the following charts illustrate how traffic to Pornhub increased in both Canada and the United States. Pornhub’s free Premium offer caused big increases of 17.8% in the U.S. and 16% in Canada on March 24th.

Traffic from the United Kingdom saw a similarly large increase of 19% on March 24th.

Italy became the first country to enforce quarantines, so traffic there began to increase much sooner. On March 12th, the free Premium service was first offered to Italian visitors, which resulted in a single-day increase of 57% above normal traffic levels.

The free Premium offer was next extended to France and Spain on March 17th, resulting in a 38.2% and 61.3% increase, respectively. Traffic in all three European countries remained much higher in the week that followed, indicating that people were indeed watching more porn to pass the time.

Below you will find the traffic increases for all of Europe and numerous individual countries our statisticians have been closely following.

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To see how hourly traffic was affected in various countries, be sure to see our earlier Coronavirus Insights.

Visitor Demographics

The following data shows how Pornhub’s traffic increased by men and women over the last month. The worldwide traffic changes were similar for both genders until the 16th of March when (proportionately) a larger number of women began visiting Pornhub than normal.

On Friday, March 20th, female traffic had increased by 17.4% while male traffic was up 12.1%. When Pornhub’s free Premium offer was extended worldwide, both genders seem to have taken equal advantage of the offer with female traffic up 20.5% and male traffic up 20.1%.

The following chart illustrates the countries which had the biggest changes in traffic by gender during the week of March 16th to 20th. Italy, Mexico, France and Spain all saw female traffic increase by more than 30%, while Poland’s male traffic increased by 40% followed by a 38% increase in Australia and 34% in the Netherlands.

Not only did self-isolation efforts cause traffic for both genders to increase, it also led to men and women each visiting Pornhub at different times. When compared to an average day, women tend to visit Pornhub much more in the early morning hours from midnight to 3am when compared to men.

Traffic for both genders was below average at 9am before increasing above average mid-day. At 1pm, female traffic was -11% below that of an average day, while traffic from men was 14% above average. Throughout the rest of the afternoon, female traffic has higher than normal, while men tended to visit Pornhub a bit less than they normally would.

When we look at the age demographics during the same period, we can see that millennials (aged 18 to 34) are much more likely to visit Pornhub in the early morning hours than they would have before quarantines began. Traffic from visitors over the age of 35 dipped as much as -31% below average at 5am before going 11% above average at 8am.

Millennial traffic was much higher at 10am and 1pm, while it was relatively normal for those over 35. For the rest of the afternoon and early evening, millennial traffic was above average, while visitors over the age of 35 visited less at 6pm and 8pm, but 11% more than usual at 7pm.