NEW YORK—John “Johnny V” Van Arnam, president of I-Bridge International, an internet commerce-consulting firm, has announced the launch of Click Truth, a unique hosted behavioral-targeting platform that is poised to show huge results in the market. Created to profile user behavior across a sponsor program's entire network of websites and affiliates, Click Truth serves “intelligent” advertisements and user-centric content by running user-profile and advertising events through its advanced decision engine, thus tracking the entire history of any surfer on any network.
"Click Truth gathers data at a granular level, and then our decision engine makes the best use of that data based on parameters that the sponsor program specifies," said Van Arnam. "Click Truth does more than simply make the traffic that enters the sponsor’s network stickier. We can keep surfers on the join form, we can follow them through each clip they watch, we can offer them products based on things we know that they have searched for. Data is power, and this provides the sponsor program the opportunity to actually use that data and make decisions based on patterns it sees for the network as a whole—and for each individual surfer. It's a very powerful and valuable tool."
Long known for his close relationships with banks and major search engines, Johnny V expressed palpable enthusiasm about the launch of Click Truth, which he feels builds naturally on his 12 years assisting clients in the adult vertical with professionalism and integrity.
"I believe that this is the ideal next step in my journey," he said.
The platform—which was developed by a NYC-based software development group—took four years to perfect and currently operates successfully on the largest, single most important and politically sensitive network in the world.
"You'll have to ask me about that offline," said Van Arnam, keeping the developer’s name tightly in check. “I really cannot talk about that in the press." Van Arnam has had changes made to the software to adopt it to the adult vertical and has signed an exclusive franchise license agreement for adult, billing, search engines and entertainment. Click Truth will be officially released in the next several weeks.
“Although it has elements of existing products in our space and in mainstream, Click Truth is unlike anything else on the market,” stated CTO Patrick T.
"To be specific," he said, "Click Truth is a distributed behavioral-targeting platform with advanced user-event flagging for delivering your advertisements, promotions and content to visitors across your network and your affiliate networks. Click Truth's decision engine returns the best possible outcomes to your visitors by using numerous machine-learning algorithms to cluster user profiles into meaningful personality segments. Unlike traditional recommendation engines, Click Truth takes a bottom-up approach by identifying commonality across network-wide visitor traits, rather than focusing top-down through ad-hoc product relationships—an approach which falls short in revealing the many unique dimensions of a visitor's entire, and ongoing, session."
"I am very excited about this product and I believe that most folks will be as well," added Johnny V. "While I'm sure each group will want to make specific changes, the beauty of this platform is that it is malleable and can be easily modified for any group. However, if a program would rather not make any changes, the decision engine will begin compiling data and making decisions organically upon implementation."
Implementation is painless; nothing more than a small snippet of JavaScript for each desired page across the network. "Click Truth is very simple to implement," said Johnny. "It has to be, because no one has time right now for tech-intensive projects requiring hours of integration and testing."
The strength of the software platform, he added, is contained within the decision engine itself and the time it has had to improve its intelligence from historical user activity. It has some very cool ancillary benefits, as well, says Van Arnam. Because you are also able to place the Java code in any banner or ad placed anywhere online, you can collect the data from traffic that your affiliates send you and grow the pool of data you have exponentially, based on the size of your network.
"That way,” he said, “you can also see who sends the best traffic, or if your traffic source is worth what you are paying, as you follow each member through their entire history on your network. You can also gather data on your surfers before they reach your website, which is invaluable in providing the most relevant content to the surfer and also increasing the amount of people who join your site."
"For example," said Patrick T, "a typical recommendation engine may notice a particular camera lens appear quite frequently in orders containing a particular brand of digital camera. Therefore, when future users add the digital camera to their shopping cart, they'll receive the all too familiar up-sell suggestion-area containing the camera lens. While this approach may or may not be convenient for a user, it fails to identify the truly unique dimensions of a user’s browsing personality.
With Click Truth," he continued, "you're now able to overlay tracking against any of your sites unique attributes (e.g. Design, Information Architecture, Content, Purchased Traffic, etc.). These are not one-to-one correlations, but complex personality segments typically invisible through human analysis. With Click Truth, you're able to merge these myriad facets into meaningful decisions.”
Click Truth also is witnessing programs apply the user-based profiles to determine when an end-user may cancel his subscription. This, they say, is incredibly valuable, because you can send your user a targeted offer to a site on your network in which they have already shown interest, but which you know they have never visited because you have their surfing history, preferences, and profile right at your fingertips. Instead of waiting for them to cancel and then trying to get them back, Click Truth can alert you as a user initiates a cancel pattern, which then gives you a chance to retain them by showing them something new.
"It's proactive and smart," said Johnny V. “The platform continues to grow more intelligent based on the amount of data it receives, and it tailors its decisions to your unique network.
"I have never owned a sponsor program, but I am sure that there are benefits to this platform that have not occurred to me," continued Van Arnam. “Some people in the industry have already seen it, and I look forward to showing it to everyone shortly. I am mostly excited because it allows me to go on a new adventure in a new direction, while still maintaining my relationships with the search engines and with the sponsor programs I have worked with for years."
Currently under contract with L.F.P. Internet Group, and beginning implementation of the platform with several other programs, Van Arnam believes this is the right time to let the industry know the product exists, off the shelf, and is ready to go.
"Some companies are trying to manufacture similar products for themselves because they understand its value," said Johnny V. "The difficulty, of course, is the amount of time necessary to build and test a decision engine within a platform like this, and to work out all the bugs."
Click Truth, on the other hand, is tested, completely customizable and ready to implement. Better yet, said Johnny V, it is network agnostic. User sessions are tracked across limitless domains, which is a feature most platforms ignore.
When asked what this may mean to his long-term consulting relationship with Wildline!, and also his other relationships in the adult space, Van Arnam said that he is no longer representing Wildline!, and will be focusing full-time on Click Truth.
“Beyond that,” he said, “I will only spend my time on very valuable one-off projects for folks to whom I have already made commitments."
John Van Arnam, aka "Johnny V," can be contacted at his consulting firm, I-Bridge International, at [email protected] or at [email protected].
Click Truth Inc is a wholly owned subsidiary of I-Bridge International L.L.C.
I-Bridge International is a California consulting firm that specializes in solutions based problem management in all areas of business with special skills in billing, search, data collection, and business consultation.
