The adult industry has a reputation for both adopting and driving technology, with a range of the latest tools and techniques providing intriguing opportunities for boosting market share and profitability.
This spans everything from interactive two-way live content and remote-controlled sex toys to augmented, mixed and virtual reality, to artificial intelligence for better business decisions and content discovery. Industry execs revealed the path forward when asked:
It’s all about making AI easy and accessible to paysite operators. AI is the most powerful tool in tech, but it hasn’t been within reach for our clients. -Mitch Platt, Founder, Vendo Services
“What technological innovations will shape 2018, especially for your company?”
James Deen
CEO, JamesDeenCash
“I recently hired some additional developers so hopefully, I will be able to add all kinds of features and functions and keep up to the moment on the latest and greatest tech.”
Steven Grooby
President, Grooby Productions
“VR is still in slow growth and we’re looking to expand that as well as working outside the transgender niche in it. I don’t see anything else exciting at the moment.”
Colin Rowntree
CEO, Wasteland
“I anticipate that the tech innovations that will be exploited by our studio will be similar to 2017 — 4-6K shooting and virtual reality.”
Mugur Cosmin Frunzetti
CEO, Studio 20
“We expect 2018 to finally have a successful VR/3D live cam market with visitors being able to use their mobile phones to see VR/3D content with no other devices needed.”
Karen Campbell
VP, OrbitalPay
“Online fraud continues to rise. OrbitalPay will help minimize the risk by providing new tools to mitigate fraud and reduce potential exposure for our adult clients. Also, credit card acceptance continues to become more complex and rely more heavily on technology to drive it, so we are working to facilitate the consolidation of processing to help simplify our merchants’ experience.”
Yannick Ferreri
Head of Business Development, Porndoe Production
“This we like to keep secret. Tech is all about having the edge.”
Jim Austin
Head of Business Development, Stripchat
“As with everyone in the adult space I’m keeping an eye on VR and also AR, to see its adaptation by the users and how that will affect the industry. I also think that machine learning and AI has a role to play in building algorithms that will better understand user behavior and help increase user satisfaction.”
Mitch Platt
Founder, Vendo Services
“It’s all about making AI easy and accessible to paysite operators. AI is the most powerful tool in tech, but it hasn’t been within reach for our clients. They haven’t had the financial, data and human resources to work with AI. In 2018 they will be using it across many key areas of their business.”
Wouter Groenewoud
Affiliate Manager, Traffic Company
“Since all of our software is created in-house, we’ve always been on the lookout for the latest developments in technology. But right now, our main technical challenge is keeping up with the immense growth of traffic over the past years. Our focus right now is to keep our platform stable and to allow for even more increases in traffic. Besides that, I can also tell you that we are working on a secret project. It’s not ready to be revealed just yet, but it will be a real game changer!”
Steve Hamilton
Model Manager, Cams.com
“The biggest technological leap this year will be mobile broadcasting. We are continuing to work on getting mobile broadcasting from the concept board to reality. This is one of our major technological focuses this year.”
Anthony Rivera
Founder, LALExpo/AJ Studios
“We will continue to see new technologies and product innovations that that can be use on the live cam space for greater interaction with customers helping the models have a high impact on its members. Such as VR, interactive sex toys, smart accessories, clothing, and cameras. Two interesting new technologies we are looking to take on a lot are the new high-resolution front cameras of smartphones and its sophisticated processors and software will generate the influx of apps that allow the model to do webcam broadcastings from her phone, as it happens now with Periscope or Meerkat, this technology will make it easier for models to connect and make webcam sessions from anywhere; and Google’s instant translation headphones. One of our main setbacks is the language barrier our models find with many of their users worldwide. So we plan to capitalize on this new technology to enable our models to better communicate and hold smooth conversations with their fans online.”
Gian Carlo
Founder, BitterStrawberry
“We think that the current model is always something that can improve on, that is to say, the membership site in itself. Not so much in the VR sense, but usability and performance. A lot of people talk about filming in 4K but then waste a lot of the value in their editing and compression. Instead of just jumping on the trend we plan and make sure it is applied properly.”
Jimmy Hess
CEO, VixenVR
“Beyond VR and AR, I would be remiss if I did not touch on the part AI or artificial intelligence will play in the way content is created and used as a means to determine what content people interact with. Machine learning applications and platforms will see huge growth across all sectors including adult. The robots are coming...”
Paul Acevedo
Marketing Director, DOF Network
“I think you will see a more widespread use of machine learning employed in all aspects of the industry, from tours and members areas to billing and beyond. It’s something that we’ve been hearing about for years, but has finally come to fruition and is undeniable. We are using it in our billing systems, and hope to have the capabilities in our tours and members areas as soon as possible.”
Axel Vézina
Chief Strategy Officer, CrakRevenue
“We will continue our investments in programmatic advertising to further increase operational effectiveness and work more efficiently with our partners. Our IT team is working diligently to constantly improve data tracking and reporting assisted by these programmatic technologies and the results are extremely promising. Of course, we’ll also keep working on anti-adblock technologies to ensure more optimal ad delivery rates for our clients — and our affiliates can rest assured that we’ve also got them covered in this regard as well. Finally, our efforts and resources to combat fraud have never been better. We continue to advance in this regard as far as technology has only improved. This allows us to protect our clients and ensure the best performance for everyone. Therefore, traffic quality measurements and fraud detection are at an all-time high at our network and we couldn’t be happier.”
Ela Darling
CAM4VR
“We’re excited about the upcoming release of high-quality all-in-one VR headsets from Lenovo, HTC, and Oculus. This means they don’t require a separate phone or an expensive computer to use. The low price point for these will make virtual reality more accessible than ever before. At CAM4VR, we have set a very high standard for the quality of VR experience we want to deliver. We have to date been unable to find a camera in today’s market that can provide the realism that we are seeking. Because of this, we have had to innovate internally to build and develop a camera capable of streaming live in full 3D with the clarity, color, and depth that we demand, and we will continue to evolve and improve our camera technology in 2018.”
Gregory Dorcel
CEO, Marc Dorcel
“Lately, Dorcel stood out with its mastery of VR, but we do not think that it represents a market at this point. We are working on the evolution of our VOD and TV platforms, as well on our new sex toys which should be released in 2018.”
Dinorah Hernandez
Director, BadoinkVR
“Improved network for online streaming, the proliferation of AR, and more affordable and higher functioning VR goggles.”
Clement P.
President, Bang.com
“We are exploring facial recognition systems to tag our videos automatically with our current database of models, adding an advanced machine learning recommendation engine, and building better search capabilities. We’re also moving more of our backend to the cloud using micro-services such as Docker.”
Silvia
Manager, Angels Studio
“Virtual reality. I am positive 2018 will be the year VR will give its first steps into the live streaming adult industry.”