When you've tested over a thousand sex toys, you develop opinions. Not just about motors and materials, but about the gap between what brands say they're doing and what consumers actually need from them.
Venus O'Hara - sex toy reviewer, designer, sex tech consultant, and self-described holistic self-love content creator - has spent 16 years building an audience around that gap. Her starting point is a line from her recent book, Orgasmic Manifestation, that stops you mid-sentence: "Sex sells everything except for sex." The perfume ad, the car ad, the beer ad - sexuality is the universal shorthand for aspiration. In the category that sells sex directly, she argues, that approach backfires. The brands that work, she says, are the ones that look like wellness companies. "A nice, clean website that looks aspirational and inspirational. Not kind of too sexy."
It's a position that has direct consequences for how sexual wellness brands should be building their online presence - and for what they're currently getting wrong.
The demographic nobody is talking to
Venus is direct about where she focuses her energy, and why. "I'm really passionate about the straight monogamous couple," she says. "I think they've been a bit abandoned, to be honest."
Her argument is that while much of the industry's content - including a significant proportion of the educator and influencer community - is pushing awareness of alternative relationship structures, the largest demographic is being systematically underserved. "People are pushing it like it's mainstream, but it really isn't. And I just want to think, let's not forget about the couple who are bored, the couple who have lost the spark, they don't want to divorce. They just need some help in rediscovering themselves."
The commercial implication of that observation is significant. If the biggest buyer segment in the category feels that the content, the branding, and the product education isn't speaking to them, brands are leaving the most accessible conversion opportunity on the table.
This connects to something Venus says about what people are actually purchasing when they buy a sex toy. "When people are buying a sex toy, especially a couple, they're buying hope." That framing - the product as an emotional object rather than a functional one - should reshape how brands write product pages, structure email sequences, and brief their content partners.
The education gap that keeps costing brands sales
Venus has a specific grievance about what happens after the sale, and it shows up repeatedly in her inbox. "I get so many messages on my YouTube: 'Oh, it's not charging,' or 'It's not this.' And it's like - 'How can I turn it off?' I've had that a few times."
Her point isn't that consumers are failing to read the manual. It's that the manual, in most cases, doesn't exist in any useful form. She singles out a product from S-Vibe that arrived with illustrations showing different ways to use it - genuinely different positions and use cases, not just a charging diagram. "I thought, this is really good. I haven't seen that on many products."
For brands, the translation is straightforward: product education is a purchase funnel decision, not a customer service afterthought. Pre-sale content that explains what a product does and how to use it on a human body reduces overwhelm, increases conversion, and eliminates the post-purchase frustration that kills repeat purchase. Venus frames this as the central problem she's solving for her audience. "There's a massive problem with overwhelm, and people don't know what to buy." Brands that solve that problem in their own content reduce their dependence on creators to do it for them - and earn the kind of trust that generates repeat customers.
On authenticity, and why most people aren't
Venus is skeptical of the word authenticity in the way people who've earned the right to be skeptical tend to be. "I think the word authenticity is kind of a bit overused, and I think a lot of people use it, but not many people are actually authentic."
Her own version of it is operational rather than aspirational. She reviews only products she would use herself. She excludes certain product categories entirely - not for optics, but because "I just don't find that it's something I would ever use really." She has a set of review criteria she applies consistently: packaging, motor strength, noise level, usability, and what she calls "orgasmbility" - a word she invented, and the only honest measure of whether a product does what it claims.
That granularity is what makes her recommendations trusted. It also points to what brands should be looking for in creator partnerships. The question isn't whether someone has the right following size or the right tone of voice. It's whether they have the kind of hands-on product experience that makes an endorsement mean something. As Venus puts it: "I want to promote things that I find to be safe, from reputable brands, and things that I really would use."
What Venus wants from brands in 2026
She's direct about this too: more originality. "I found there's a lot of just copying," she says, reflecting on a recent trade event. "Originality is lacking. And sometimes you can tell there hasn't been a human in that development process. You're thinking: what? This looks painful."
Her advice for any brand entering the category is to invest in people with deep product knowledge before they invest in marketing. "Invest in pleasure education and have a more substantial and complete offering on each product page." The product page, in her view, isn't a listing — it's a conversation with someone who doesn't know what they're looking for and needs to be guided to a decision they'll feel confident about.
Venus O'Hara is at venusohara.org and on Instagram and YouTube as @VenusOHara. Her podcast, The Orgasmic Lifestyle, is available on all platforms.