The hour-long programs ran in the Roosevelt Hotel’s multimedia-equipped CineGrill Room
The first Special Technology Showcase program featured a presentation by Mansion Productions of their flagship products, the MAS Member's Area System and MPA3 cascading billing and affiliate management system, hosted by Mansion Productions' CEO Oystein Wright and MAS expert Ross Dinchev.
"I am very excited for the opportunity XBIZ has provided me to showcase our products,” Wright told XBIZ. “I am looking forward to discussing webmaster issues and talking about how Mansion Productions is constantly looking to provide solutions to webmasters."
Hustler reps were on hand to help Wright and Dinchev discuss some of the finer points of the Hustler member's area, which is powered by MAS.
During the demo of MAS, Wright announced the upcoming release of version 2.0 of the XBIZ Award-winning adult content management system while showing off the powerful publishing platform's many features and easy customization options.
The MAS software's '2257 module and how it eased federal record-keeping requirements was also discussed.
The latest version of MPA3 was next on display, as Wright tried to scratch the surface of all the features contained within this software, which is now powering Internet Payment Service Provider Epoch's client affiliate program.
When asked about the benefits of such a system beyond the increased revenues that cascading billing allows, Wright opined that it was a helpful tool for managing the needs of affiliates.
"You need to make it easier to communicate with affiliates," Wright said. "But you don't want to use a ton of employees to do so."
The next Special Technology Showcase featured a multimedia presentation by Traffic Dude, an adult-focused advertising agency that specializes in bringing consumer advertising options to a broad client base, as well as licensing of its ad serving solution, AdZones.
“We’re very excited to have the opportunity to talk about our services to all who are interested,” Rainey Stricklin, vice president of Traffic Dude, told XBIZ. “Whether you’re a client or not, you’ll be able to gain valuable information about consumer advertising by coming by our showcase.”
The importance of obtaining high-quality, targeted traffic was repeatedly stressed by Traffic Dude CEO Scott Rabinowitz, as was measuring and managing return on investment when making ad buys and some of the lesser-known advertising options available from Traffic Dude.
"The more layers of filtering you can go through, the better," Rabinowitz said, as he discussed how front-page, top-position banner slots were not necessarily the most profitable ad locations.
Director of Ad Sales Danielle Waid joined Rabinowitz in the presentation, offering suggestions on how client's could best make use of available online advertising options and the advantages of working with an intermediary when making traffic deals.
"Part of the service we provide is matching your site to the best advertising venue fit," Waid said.
According to Rabinowitz, some of those venues may not be on many operator's radar, but will provide for a terrific return on investment.
"Start looking for the obscure, rather than the top 2000 sites in Alexa," Rabinowitz said. "[And] definitely be friendly to the concept of social networks."
On the subject of advertising on social networking sites, which are characterized by repeat visitors, Rabinowitz emphasized the importance of using fresh creatives to avoid over-saturating users with repeated exposure to the same ad — a situation which decreases an ad's effectiveness.
The final Special Technology Showcase featured a demonstration by Too Much Media of its flagship Next-Generation Administration and Tracking System (NATS) and its CARMA content management system.
The programs are direct competitors with earlier showcase presenters Mansion Productions' MPA3 and MAS; providing attendees with an excellent opportunity to make an in-depth comparison between the top market leaders in each of these popular software segments.
Too Much Media developer Fred Schank led a demo of the new NATS 4.0 which according to Schank supports more than 60 billing platforms and is able to power membership, store, 3rd-party and affiliate sites.
Boasting a slick and customizable interface driven by the SMARTY templating system, NATS is now tour-based, allowing operators to serve different tours to different market segments or traffic streams, tracking the visitor's behavior through the site and providing detailed charting of those actions.
New in version 4.0 are advanced geo-IP based user statistics broken down by country and ability of admins to view affiliate accounts using the affiliate's actual view and default settings, which are individually customizable.
Robust free hosted gallery management tools allow operators to bulk load and flexibly schedule FHG deployment; releasing, for example, one new gallery per week to a select group of affiliates, then pulling the gallery from circulation after a set period of time.
Another feature that seemed popular with the audience is the flexible mailing system that allows operators to email, for example, discount membership offers to non-recurring trial subscribers or members that cancelled within a specific time range.
The flexibility of the affiliate interface which allows affiliates to set defaults such as automatically going to a dump of the latest video FHG codes upon login was also highlighted.
Wrapping up the presentation, Schank demonstrated some of CARMA's advanced features while discussing the benefits of loading up a few month's worth of content "and then heading off for a vacation on some beach somewhere."
If audience reaction was any indication, the Special Technology Showcases will become a staple of the XBIZ Hollywood Conference.