Surprisingly probably not as much as many think.
Let us say one large network does 100 million video views each day.
Affiliate legal tubes often average $0.50 to $2.00 per 1000 video views.
You could say these tubes do less because it's crappier traffic. You could say they do more because they aren't affiliates and have good terms.
I would guess they do $3 to $5 per 1000 video views at the upper end.
At $5 cpm $500,000 a day or $182 million a year.
It looks like big money but consider how much traffic that is and what it costs them to serve that traffic. Friend Finder Networks for instance did $310 million last year. CCBill did an interview where they stated they process over $1 Billion in transactions a year.
The tubes are HUGE for traffic but for revenue they are fairly small. Which goes hand in hand with what many have been saying for a long time.
With tubes (if you believe this math is close to being accurate) 36.5 BILLION video views are only worth $182 million a year. Imagine what 36.5 BILLION paysite tour page impressions would have been worth in comparison back in 2005 and you just might see something.
What the hell. Let's do it! At 1:200 and a average member value of $40 36.5 billion tour impressions would be worth $7.2 BILLION by my math! So that is where the money went!
But wait. Let us say only 10% of people would ever have actually made it to a paysite tour as opposed to other free content in 2005. That would be $720 million versus $182 million then still.