HOLLYWOOD, Fla. - The "Future of Tech" panelists spoke to the technology and business sides of online adult entertainment, with the discussion ranging from what you need to do right now to what to expect in five years.
Mark Womack, whose SickSiteNetwork attracts more than 75 million monthly visitors, urged content producers to adopt Flash. "Digital rights management (DRM) is worthless. Screw Windows Media," he said. "Use Flash intelligently to generate serious, trackable traffic through viral marketing. With Flash, you can see exactly what numbers you're getting for the money you're spending."
He suggested watermarking your content and letting consumers spread your brand all over the Internet. "I think BitTorrent is a great opportunity to generate traffic, one that's being totally ignored by the industry right now," he said.
Brandon Shalton, chief technology officer for ASACP.org, advised business owners to study their data for signs of fraud. "You can have tons of affiliates driving traffic, you're paying out for member sign-ups, but then the members aren't staying to the break-even point," he said. Building your own database to track how many members join, re-bill and cancel is not difficult - neither is studying your Web logs and affiliate traffic reports, he said.
"You invest so much money in good content, good customer service, but people could be stealing money from you under the radar," Shalton said.
Computer-security expert C. Edward "Chaz" Sowers spoke about address-verification systems, fingerprint scanners and encryption as ways to protect content in the future, much to Womack's dismay. When these technologies are cheap and easy, Sowers said, they'll become part of the experience, not an obstacle for consumers.
Womack and Shalton said they believe the future of porn lies in immersive environments and interactivity. "Let users customize their experience to exactly what they like, and they stay twice as long," Womack said, citing VideoBox.com as a model example.
"Tie the online to the offline," Shalton advised. "And adapt your product to support customer impulsiveness."
Content protection may be a thing of the past, so content producers should change how they think about theft and file sharing, Womack said. The more word-of-mouth you can generate, the more traffic you will attract, he said.
Of course, not all word-of-mouth is desirable. The more information you store about customers, the more vulnerable you are to malicious attacks.
"No one wants the federal government more involved in this industry than it already is," Sowers said. "That's the drum I'm beating right now: No more database leaks."
