Pirate movie streaming sites earn $1.3 billion in ad revenue every year. Websites and apps that host pirated movies and TV shows make around $1.3 billion from advertising each year, reveals a novel report highlighted by Bloomberg.

Summary

• Pirate Movie Streaming Sites and COVID-19
• The rise of Pirate Movie Streaming Sites
• Pirate Movie Streaming Sites earning through ads
• Onsist’s suggestion on Pirate Movie Streaming Sites

Pirate Movie Streaming Sites and COVID-19

This is based on online safety non-profit Digital Citizens Alliance and the anti-piracy firm White Bullet. The report also highlighted that these piracy platforms are also hotspots for malware with some ads containing malicious links that could grab hold of people’s personal information or even result in a ransomware attack.

The analysis shows at least 84,000 pirate streaming sites are showcasing pirated movies and TV shows on its platforms. This actually shows how grave the issue of piracy truly is for both studios that make movies as well as companies responsible for distributing digital advertisements. 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic this issue has only gotten worse. This has forced many individuals to turn to the web for their entertainment needs and this has been taken as an opportunity by online pirates to target their newest victims. 

White Bullet shed light on the amount of money these pirated websites are able to make via advertisements by monitoring the most popular sites from June 2020 to May 2021. This list included around 6,000 sites and 900 apps and looked at the ads that were displayed.

The rise of Pirate Movie Streaming Sites

A report from Indiatimes.com mentions 58 percent of all downlink traffic on the Internet is video streaming, and 15 percent of that entire slice is just Netflix. However, that report also indicated BitTorrent usage is on the rise again, leading upstream traffic across the world with a 22 percent market share. The reason for that is simple.

We may have a lot of paid streaming services to choose from such as – 

• Netflix
• Amazon Prime
• Hulu
• HBO Max/Go

Not to forget YouTube as well. Although this indicates more choice that’s not the case as well.

Suppose you have a subscription of Hbo Max and Netflix, would you go and subscribe to Disney+ for the Marvel shows also? This could also be Viceversa. You will not subscribe to all the streaming services just for a few specific shows or movies.

Instead you might opt for the easy way which is going to the pirate movie streaming sites as they are free. The pandemic just amplified the effect with more movies and tv shows releasing in the streaming services.

To check the rise in online piracy in movies check out our previous article ‘Countering the platinum age of Digital Piracy’

Pirate Movie Streaming Sites earning through ads

• Ads by major brands accounted for 4 percent of the total ads that were displayed on pirated websites 

• 24 percent for pirated apps, with Amazon, Facebook, Google being the largest represented companies. 

• Most revenue from advertising, however, came from ‘sponsored content’ that were essentially clickbait links that took the viewer to a news story or interesting videos

• The remaining ads links included adult content, fraud and malware

• The top websites that offer stolen content generate $1.08 billion in global annual ad revenue. 

• For the major players, it’s big business: the investigation found that the top five of these websites made an average of $18.3 million in revenue from advertising. 

• Many of these websites are in a constant state of churn, meaning they are changing domains and redirecting to avoid enforcement and bypass advertising blocklists.

• The top apps that offer stolen content generate $259 million in global annual ad revenue. 

• Just as with websites, piracy apps and advertising can be quite lucrative: the top five of these apps made an average of $27.6 million in ad revenue. 

• The brands that place the most digital ads overall, which include many of the Fortune 500 companies, are among the key revenue sources for pirate operators

• Due in large part to the proliferation of advertising on piracy apps, these Major Brands paid pirate operators roughly $100 million in the last year to advertise on their platforms. One in four ads on piracy apps is from well-known companies

• White Bullet reviewed 664 billion ad impressions and found that roughly one in three piracy websites and apps have risky advertising that exposes consumers to fraud and malware

• These apps remain a smaller piece of the piracy pie than websites, but they are growing at a more rapid pace

Onsist’s suggestion on Pirate Movie Streaming Sites

To counter Digital Media Piracy is to enlist the help of Online Piracy agencies such as Onsist. Onsist has been battling online piracy for the last decade. ”Stop Losing Your Revenue to Piracy“ has always been the motto of Onsist. 

Using advanced automated tools to report and takedown illegal online videos such as popular movies or tv series, helping streamers to go back to the source of the contents. 

The vision of Onsist has always been to protect brands from all over the world against online theft and piracy. Onsist wants people not to fear losing their content to pirates, counterfeiters and other digital threats. 

Streaming platforms such as Zeus Entertainment and BroadwayHD have already found success fighting online piracy by enlisting the help of Onsist. 

All in all, the fight against Digital Media Piracy will only be getting bigger as we enter The Platinum Age of Digital Piracy. 

Our counter should also be swift against it. Educating the audience on the dangers of piracy as well as enlisting the help of online anti-pirating agencies such as Onsist. It won’t stop the storm but it will surely be the first step to slow it down.