Zomato taps porn for late night users

Zomato, online food ordering company, has discovered a new way to tap late night users—advertising on porn websites like Xvideos, PornHub, YouPorn, RedTube, etc.

By Avanish Tiwary

Zomato, online food ordering company, has discovered a new way to tap late night users—advertising on porn websites. In the last week or so, Zomato said it has started advertising on at least six porn websites such as Xvideos, PornHub, YouPorn, RedTube, etc. to increase its late night food deliveries.

Zomato said choosing to advertise on porn websites turned out to be a cheaper alternative compared to other platforms like Facebook and Twitter campaigns, that costs ten times more in terms of cost per click (CPC). The campaign aims at increasing its late delivery orders in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru.
“Highly optimised Adwords, Facebook, and Twitter ad campaigns are commoditised and therefore quite expensive,” the blog post said. The CPC for Google’s Adwords and Facebook are Rs.23.5 and Rs.17.5 respectively, whereas Xvideos Network’s CPC is Rs.1.98. The Zomato banner advertisements that ran on desktop and mobile sites appeared right next to the videos on the porn websites, between 11 pm and 4 am. The company did not specify how many of the clicks on their ads actually lead to people ordering food.

In an email response, Pramod Rao, Senior Vice President, Growth, Zomato, said,”We had planned to roll out this campaign for a week but after the traction we’ve received we plan to run this for a longer period. The first week has been a test for us and we’ll now be optimising the campaigns and creatives for the remainder of the campaign based on what we’ve learnt.”

Another food ordering website Eat24, ownedby Zomato’s global competitor Yelp too had advertised on pornography websites a year ago.

In a blog post Zomato said, “The goal was clear – get people to click. Our strategy for this was fairly straightforward, too – create something that will take people’s eyes off the video, they’ll click the banner because they’re (obviously) getting hungry now, and then they’ll order online on Zomato.”