Zomato, India’s food search, and delivery giant, has started advertising in one of the most unheard-of ways. They have begun posting ads on porn sites. Yes, you read that correctly on porn sites. Unsurprisingly (since India is one of the biggest porn viewing countries), this has become a huge hit for the company.
Pramod Rao, the Senior Vice President of Growth, has explained the brains behind this advertising technique. He has said that the main aim was to get more people to click on the ads.
“Our strategy for this was fairly straightforward, to create something that’ll take people’s eyes off the video, they’ll click on the banner because they’re (obviously) hungry now, and then they’ll order online on Zomato.”
The company has further explained the decision behind this move by providing a few statistics.
The first statistic is that India is the fifth-biggest user of Pornhub in the entire world. Pornhub, for those of you who are pretending not to know, is the world’s biggest porn site network.
The second statistic is that other than Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and e-commerce sites, Indian’s visit XVideos the most.
The last statistic is that the average time spent by Indians on porn sites is 8 minutes. While that might be a bit too fast for some of you, imagine the fear of the person who’s watching the porn. What if their parents walk in while they’re ‘enjoying’ porn. Porn is against India’s sanskaar, after all, you know.
Rao says: “The easiest part was creating ads that didn’t look like all the other ads on porn sites because most ads on porn sites are for…wait for it….more porn!”
If you have a look at these ads, once you’re done laughing at them, you’ll see that they’re actually very well done and are very witty:
“If you’re looking at this, you’re probably into a different kind of porn.”
“Nibble around these delicious holes.”
“Swallow the whole six inches.”
Zomato also launched a print version of zomato. xxx, a site dedicated to food porn. Zomato has posted the results of this experiment online. These findings, in fact, provide support to typical Indian stereotypes (such as the life of engineers and Delhi)
Firstly, advertising on porn sites costs tiny money compared to advertising on other platforms such as Facebook. 
Secondly, the highest number of clicks have been from Delhi (why is that not surprising), with Bangalore coming in (no pun, I swear) as a close second. The average click-through rate of the campaign has been 0.22%.
Thirdly, the number of clicks per area was revealed. We saw that this number was highest in the Hauz Khas area of Delhi, Koramangala in Bangalore, and Powai in Mumbai. Those of you who don’t know, these are the areas that house the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT’s) in the respective cities. Well, who can blame those guys? The only girls that they get to see are virtual.
Lastly, the ad campaign that worked best was the Big Beautiful Wrap (BBW) one. The “Hot Sticky Mess” and “Hot Singles” ads also did very well.
Talking about the success of the campaign, Rao says: “These are pretty awesome numbers by any standard, and we’re quite pleased with the number of clicks and app installs driven by these ads so far. We’ll keep you posted on how many people skip going back on Sunny Leone and choose to go down on a Big Beautiful Wrap instead.”
It’s not only the site benefiting from this advertising technique, but it’s also saving many porn viewers across India. The next time someone walks into your room while you’re watching porn, all you have to say is that you’re ordering your dinner.
Thank you, Zomato, initiating this public service and for saving thousands of Indians.