50% of Pornhub’s Revenue Comes from Ads

Take action and contact their advertisers.

Did you know that 50% of MindGeek (Pornhub’s parent company) profits come from advertising? MindGeek owns an assortment of products in addition to pornography websites, including a web hosting service, and an online advertising corporation—and it turns out that the popular shopping app Wish and the Italian clothing company Diesel are two of their top advertisers! This means that these two companies are helping to fund and support the infrastructure of Pornhub, despite the fact that it has hosted child sexual abuse, horrifically racist pornography, sex trafficking, and more.

Corporations such as Mastercard and Paypal have rightly decided to cut financial ties with them over this abuse. Wish and Diesel, however, maintain their financial partnership with MindGeek, funding them through advertising.

The Wish Shopping App

You may know Wish as the popular online shopping platform, which markets itself with the logo “Shopping made Fun”. Ranked as a top ten retail website and used by over 500 million people across the globe, Wish is certainly a thriving entity. However, its success comes with a cost: it fuels the egregiously exploitative pornography company, MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub. (For this reason and more, Wish is also on the 2021 Dirty Dozen List!)

Wish promotes its products through MindGeek’s advertising corporation, TraffickJunky. Third party advertising is a key way in which MindGeek generates revenue; which means that companies like Wish are playing an enormous role in enabling MindGeek’s exploitative practices, by forming the infrastructure that their business rests on.

With so much media and government attention being given to MindGeek’s criminal activity, it’s improbable that Wish is ignorant of the fact that they are partnering with an exploitative company. Their failure to join other mainstream corporations in cutting financial ties with MindGeek likely indicates that the protection of children, victims, and survivors does not rank amongst Wish’s priorities.

To add insult to injury, some of Wish’s products directly promote the kinds of abusive acts filmed and uploaded to MindGeek. These products include child sex abuse dolls and spycams, which they advertise as being useful for filming women in an intimate setting, without their knowledge and consent. This leads us to ask: “What does it lead to when hardcore pornography videos sexualizing minors are shown with retail advertisements for childlike sex dolls by their side? Or when non-consensually filmed pornography is shown next to an ad selling spycams?”

TAKE ACTION: Email Wish Executives At the Bottom of this Blog and Post on Social Media.

Diesel Clothing Company

Diesel is an Italian clothing company, famous for its jeans and its controversial advertising campaigns. With respect to the latter, Diesel’s various advertisements over the years have sparked much discussion on account of their often ironic or edgy depictions of social issues and/or sensitive topics such as global warming or bullying. We at the National Centre of Sexual Exploitation would like to bring attention to another element of Diesel’s advertising practices: the fact that they enable the exploitative practices of MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub.

Diesel has continued this financial partnership with MindGeek, despite the fact that the Pornhub/MindGeek has recently been exposed for hosting videos child sexual abuse, rape, sex-trafficking, and other illegal content.

Diesel’s Code of Ethics

Diesel’s failure to discontinue their financial partnership with MindGeek is especially egregious because it is in violation of their own Code of Ethics. This Code lays out key ethical values and principles of behavior which Diesel says must govern all the company’s activities, including its conduct in various third-party relationships. These values include:

• Protection and respect for the individual (But not only has MindGeek failed to protect children and vulnerable people, they have actively victimized them by distributing and profiting from their sexual abuse.)
• Respect for human rights (But inperpetuating the sexual abuse and rape of victims, MindGeek has shown a flagrant disrespect for some of the most basic human rights, such as a right to safety and security of person.)

• Legality and honesty (But MindGeek is a Canadian-based company, and thus subject to Canadian law. In 2011, the Canadian parliament passed a law that required internet content-hosting services to report all cases of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) which they are made aware of. For almost 10 years following the passing of this law came into effect, MindGeek failed to report CSAM, despite the fact that they had received numerous complaints from victims.)
• Integrity and consistency (We could of course point out numerous times where MindGeek has failed to show integrity and consistency. But let’s instead look directly to Diesel. Does not their financial partnership with MindGeek, a company which blatantly and egregiously violates Diesel’s Code of Ethics in every way, display a lack of integrity and consistency on Diesel’s part? Recall that Diesel emphasized that the ethical values laid out in the code must permeate all their company’s activities, including their third-party relationships.)

Diesel’s partnership with MindGeek goes against all of these values.

ACTION: Join us in calling Wish and Diesel to change, and cut ties with MindGeek entities. Email both companies below – this action will take 2 minutes!