Despite their signs, these people are not with Backpage. (Photo: Melissa Gira Grant)

Almost as soon as Craiglist threw up its hands and shut down its "adult services" section, attention shifted to Backpage.com, which is owned by Village Voice Media and often accused of hosting as much as 70 percent of the Internet's sex ads.

Betabeat got an IRL look at the dispute just a couple of weeks ago by venturing forth to dueling protests at the Voice's Cooper Square HQ, where opponents emphasized sex trafficking and adult sex workers defended the site for offering them a way to operate in relative safety.

Well, the heat wave might've broken, but the fight isn't going anywhere. The latest volley in the war: A simple-but-brutal video advertisement recounting (in first person, though by an actor) the experiences of a child sex trafficking survivor advertised on the site. And it's pretty upsetting, even for hard-hearted bloggers like ourselves:

Sponsored by the social service organization FAIR Girls, the ad is scheduled to debut Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos and air several times afterward on cable. In a statement accompanying the video's announcement, FAIR Girls cofounder Andrea Powell explained their motives: "Almost every single sex trafficked girl we have assisted in the U.S. this year was sold by her pimp using the adult section of Backpage.com."

Brooklyn district attorney Charles J. Hynes added:

Backpage.com is the new street corner where traffickers pimp their often underage victims, and many of the 40-plus indictments secured by my Sex Trafficking Unit in the past two years involve advertisements on Backpage.com.

We've reached out to Village Voice Media for comment and will update if we hear more.

Attempts to contact Norman Mailer's ghost via Ouija board were unsuccessful.

An ad from Backpage.com NYC

Earlier this month Craigslist shut down its adult classified section around the world. This followed a lengthy battle with attorneys general and advocacy groups who accused Craigslist of aiding and abetting child prositution.

A similar charge is being leveled against Backpage.com, the online classified section run by Village Voice Media which features an adult services category. Village Voice Media has asked for the case to be dismissed.

In the meantime, Backpage has seen a big uptick in traffic since Craigslist shut down. The site has been seeing about 2.4 million unique visitors a month. But since Craigslist went offline, that number has grown to nearly 3 million a month.

Since this time last year, the average monthly traffic to Backpage.com for the NY region has nearly tripled. The AIM group, which tracks classified ads, says Backpage.com has emerged as the new leader in ads for prostitution. But while these numbers are significant, AIM says Backpage's growth represents only a fraction of the business that once existed on Craigslist.

"There are clear signs that some revenue and listings are migrating to Backpage and to other sites that specialize in prostitution advertising," said Mark A. Whittaker, an AIM Group consultant. "It doesn’t seem likely that alternative sites will be able to absorb all of the money that had been spent with Craigslist."

Wonder where this leaves VVM's super-secret hipster sex blogs...

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper