A Mumbai-based marketing executive has caught the internet’s attention after revealing that his company once ran advertisements on adult websites because Meta ads had become “too expensive.” The unusual experiment, he said, eventually led to an unexpected business insight about consumer behaviour.
In a LinkedIn post, Lakshaya S recalled his time as interim CEO of a nutraceutical brand, where the team actively looked for unconventional marketing strategies to gain an edge. “We ran ads on an adult site because Meta ads were too expensive,” he wrote.
Lakshaya said that advertising on Meta and Google at the time cost the company around ₹300-500 per thousand impressions. In comparison, ads on adult websites allegedly cost only “9 paisas per thousand impressions.”
“The decision to promote Shilajit there came as a no-brainer,” he said, explaining that the platform seemed like a perfect fit due to its largely male audience and “high intent.”
However, Lakshaya said that the campaign failed to generate meaningful sales. “We got great customer impressions, good traffic, and good clicks, but almost no conversions for Shilajit,” he wrote.
{{/usCountry}}However, Lakshaya said that the campaign failed to generate meaningful sales. “We got great customer impressions, good traffic, and good clicks, but almost no conversions for Shilajit,” he wrote.
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Lakshaya said the team later noticed that traffic on such websites peaked late at night. That observation prompted them to experiment with promoting sleep supplements instead.
“Not only did we get the same quantity & rate of impressions, with similar traffic & click rates, we actually started getting orders for the sleep supplement,” he wrote.
The marketing exec said that the experiment ultimately changed how the team viewed customer targeting. “We had focused on the demographic fit, but the winning variable was state of mind,” he wrote.
Lakshaya also claimed that even users who did not click the ads appeared to remember the brand later, as the company noticed an increase in organic traffic over time. “The impressions we had gotten seemed to have created a subconscious brand recall,” he added.
“We spent 9 paisa per thousand impressions. What we gained in return was a significant increase in traffic, audience for retargeting, additional sales, and an insight that said: You will never know what works until you go ahead and test it out,” Lakshaya concluded.
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How did social media react?
The post sparked a discussion, with several users praising the unconventional marketing experiment and the insight it uncovered.
One user wrote, “This is why I love weird experiments like this. Most people would’ve stopped at “adult traffic converts badly.” You went one layer deeper and realised the intent wasn’t performance, it was exhaustion. That’s the kind of nuance dashboards alone never show.”
“Interesting takeaway around state-dependent demand behavior. Markets are rarely driven by demographics alone. Timing, emotional state, cognitive bandwidth, and situational context often influence purchasing decisions more than static audience definitions. That is why experimentation can uncover insights that conventional targeting frameworks completely miss,” commented another.
“This is such a good example of why context beats demographics. Same audience, different emotional state, completely different outcome,” wrote a third user.
In the comments section, one user also asked whether running advertisements on adult websites is legally allowed in India for wellness and performance products.
Responding to the query, Lakshaya clarified that legality depends more on the product claims and creatives rather than the platform itself. “In our case, it was a legal wellness product with non-explicit creatives. But definitely a space where brands should take proper legal/compliance advice before experimenting,” he wrote.