According to Click Truth CEO John “Johnny V” Van Arnam, Click Truth takes the patterns that it sees in your website traffic and the very granular habits of any surfer on your network, studies the decisions made during the surfing session and incorporates their entire surfing history on your network. It then guides them to whatever outcome the site owner wishes, which is usually the join button.
“The data is valuable,” Van Arnam said. “Knowledge of your own traffic patterns is valuable; however, the ability to act immediately and guide a surfer toward exactly what they have shown to be their preferred type of content, model, chat, toy, etc., etc., is invaluable and in my opinion a game changer for this space.”
XBIZ recently sat down with Van Arnam to discover how Click Truth presents an opportunity for the adult entertainment online marketing space:
XBIZ: You seem confident that Click Truth is poised to confront the challenges we face today and even stop the pain. Why are you confident and what role does Click Truth play in that process?
John Van Arnam: The adult space has been credited with spearheading several new technologies over the past decade. Even over the past several decades, adult entertainment has driven technology. I believe that Click Truth is an opportunity for our industry to do that again, with the ancillary benefit that folks will make more money in the process.
I know many of the program owners in this space and have seen over the past 13 years the way this industry has adapted to challenges and obstacles. I refuse to believe that our best days are behind us. I also refuse to believe that we as an industry can no longer move quickly, adjust, adapt or lead the Internet as we have for so many years. It actually makes me upset to hear people speaking as if we are stagnating, or moving backwards, or we have encountered a challenge so great, that we should just lay down and give up. I hear that stolen content, the economy, billing and tubes are the “perfect storm,” and that we are headed toward continued decline. I disagree. I believe that we have simply been given an opportunity to change and grow and I believe that Click Truth can assist the space through action.
XBIZ: Who are you modeled after? Who has a program like this out there now?
Van Arnam: I know it may sound strange to say this, but I wish there was someone I could point to and say "we’re just like them," or "this is how we are better than so and so." I can't.
I traveled to ad-tech in April to see who the "mainstream" competition was and determined pretty quickly that this hasn't been launched yet. Many programs offer pieces of what we offer but no one has created and tested an engine that can take this much data and act on it. Click Truth has been literally and figuratively created for adult, by me, for the growth of adult in general. So far, there is nothing out there like it.
Obviously Click Truth is a platform that will see competition, and there are individual companies in adult who are working on similar concepts. They are however a long way from fruition, there are many bugs to be worked out, and they certainly aren't going to share their product with every other program out there and give up user profiles to competition. It is my experience that most programs don't have the bandwidth to create from scratch such a large project right now. Click Truth is ready, tested and available.
XBIZ: Click Truth has received some very good press lately regarding its state of the art technology. Would you care to discuss why Click Truth is so different from anything else out there?
Van Arnam: It's different because it acts on the information it gathers. Most programs just don't go far enough. Metric packages are very heavy to operate and slow down display. Worse however is that they only simply provide you the data. Then you have to analyze the data, make decisions on the data, and implement those decisions. That can't happen in real time, because it takes several humans and usually different departments in your company working together to coordinate that effort. Click Truth does that all for you immediately, based on machine-learned algorithms and surfing patterns. It learns while you are working on your individual offering, and is smarter after you wake up and get out of bed.
Several recent offerings in the space are additions to existing technology, or ways to accentuate existing offerings. Click Truth is brand new. Click Truth is a concept that was brought to life in 2005 and then tested on a large online network. It was then adapted by me to work in the adult space. It is also different because at the moment, no one else is able to offer it.
XBIZ: How does Click Truth work?
Van Arnam: It overlays an individual's specific preferences and surfing pattern on top of the overall traffic patterns of your network. It then makes decisions as to the best content, ad, offer, etc., to display to that surfer with the best chance of converting them to your exact offering. It never loses that individual surfer, and upon their return two days, two weeks or two years later, it immediately picks up that profile again and then displays the most relevant content. Click Truth anonymously and continually grows, learns and adapts. No one should ever show up at the same landing page a second or third time and be given a display that they have already opted out of. That just doesn't make any sense.
When a surfer then joins a site in your network, it follows their surfing habits, videos watched, up sells purchased, time on a cam site, etc., and uses that information to build as much revenue as possible, continuously providing that member the most relevant content possible.
XBIZ: How do you implement Click Truth?
Van Arnam: Click Truth is very straightforward to implement. It is a simple Java snippet on your pages that gathers the information. Decision snippets, that are the same size, are then implemented one by one based on "hot spots" on your network. This creates a path for surfers to follow as they navigate your network. We have been up and collecting data with a large sponsor program in less than 8 hours.
XBIZ: Where on the network is Click Truth best used?
Van Arnam: The best place to use Click Truth is everywhere. I know that sounds cliché. The very first place you have an opportunity to "see" a surfer should be Click Truth enabled. If that is your landing page, great. However I strongly encourage folks to have their affiliates Click Truth enabled as well, because we can then dynamically change the landing page upon the surfer’s arrival, which will increase conversions, which is good for affiliates and good for programs. The short answer is everywhere. A profile is a profile, however the more depth to that profile the better able you are to convert that surfer.
XBIZ: Why do you think it is a game changer for adult?
Van Arnam: The adult space has shrunk because of free content, a more savvy consumer and the economy. Fine. The best way to combat those elements is to provide the surfer a better experience and exactly what they are surfing for every time they enter your network. Even if you don't have as much money in your pocket as you used to, if you are presented with exactly what your preference is upon arrival to a site you are more apt to buy. That is not rocket science. The days of sending random traffic to a single landing page in hopes of an acceptable conversion rate are over. You need to target exactly what the surfer is looking for right away and make immediate decisions as to the best content to give that surfer as he travels around your network. This is not being done online right now, and adult has a chance to lead in the field of technology-based individual marketing.
XBIZ: Who are the target consumers of Click Truth?
Van Arnam: Click Truth acts on the information it receives from any individual network. Obviously the larger the network and the more information it gathers the more precise it can be. Click Truth works on any network. The target consumer is an adult program that seeks to convert surfers to paying customers whether or not that is a paysite, a cam site, or toys. Click Truth gathers profiles of surfers and keeps them for your network to learn from and grow with; and never loses that surfers profile for you.
The adult space has shrunk, it has not died. I would be willing to go on record right now and state that “as long as there are Men who have access to the Internet and a payment vehicle, the adult entertainment industry will continue to exist.” Any program that understands that keeping the active (and ever growing / changing) profile of all of its surfers will bode well for the immediate or eventual conversion of that surfer, is whom we want to speak with. Again, this is a new technology. It is simple in its concept yet incredibly valuable in its deployment.
XBIZ: What is the greatest aspect or best use of the software?
Van Arnam: We have identified about seven different ways to increase revenue to your network by using Click Truth. We thought of some and our clients thought of some. I'm not going to tell you if this was ours or theirs, but I like the cancel patterns. There are two ways to make more money in adult IMHO: 1) have more people join, and 2) have the people that join stay longer.
With Click Truth identifying dozens and dozens of patterns on your network traffic, we obviously can also see "cancel patterns" — a pattern by which we identify that a member is headed toward canceling his membership based on the hundreds and hundreds of other members you have had cancel. We can see when someone is 100 percent going to cancel as they press the cancel button. We can see that they are 90 percent going to cancel as their surfing in the members area drops to zero. We can see that they are 80 percent going to cancel if they have been a member for two months (as an example), and are looking around the same site they are usually on and displaying surfing habits way outside their normal patterns; (or the patterns that brought them to the join button in the first place).
So, it is very easy to simply send that member a message that says "We put up some new content," as they enter into an 80 percent cancel pattern. That "new content" is simply content on another part of your network where they have never been; you know they have never been there because you have their entire surfing history at your finger tips; and it is content that they prefer, because you know what they like based on the patterns that brought them there in the first place, and were displayed as they are members. If you keep just a few folks happily through another billing cycle, the increase in revenue from this one aspect is significant.
Instead of identifying each way we have determined that you can increase revenue to your network, let me give you a good analogy: If you were a realtor, and every time someone walked over the threshold of the house you were trying to sell, and you could instantaneously have all the pictures changed to look like that person, or couple, and dynamically have all the furniture fit the color scheme preference of the potential homebuyer's shirt and pants you would sell more homes. That is what Click Truth can do on your network.
XBIZ: Click Truth seems to be the key to success for forward thinking website operators. Are there any last thoughts on why now is the time for companies to investigate this new technology?
Van Arnam: One last point I would like to make about Click Truth. I understand that times are scary right now for many people. I understand that folks have had companies that have run and grown significantly for the last 10 years, and that that is changing dramatically. However, just because you are lost in the woods, does not automatically mean that your compass is broken. The adult space has led technology for a very long time, and we have a chance to lead in technology again, become a force for growth, and combat the challenges set ahead of us. It is not a risky bet that selling pictures, videos, and personal experiences of naked adults will always have a market online. If you can discover exactly what any surfer is looking for based on information they provide you, give them that content or experience right away, and use that profile to become smarter in how your network operates, you are going to convert more surfers and make more money. I believe this is an exciting time to be in adult, and I hope to share that sentiment.
A Click Truth demonstration is scheduled for the upcoming XBIZ Summer Forum in Las Vegas.
