Paid ¥199 to see results, then ¥5,490 charged the next day: how an IQ test site broke into Japan's top 5k in three months
What it is An IQ test site: free to take the test, a few hundred yen to see results, then an automatic charge of ¥5,000–6,000 every 4 weeks. Mainly targets Japan.
Why it's taking off The company behind PDF, resume, and expert Q&A subscription tools swapped its proven funnel onto an IQ theme. Starting in July it concentrated paid acquisition in Japan across Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Meta, while testing a dozen-plus landing pages and four intro price tiers.
CHow you could approach it Don't copy the hidden auto-renewal. If you do this, go with a one-time payment and a test report with real substance. Borrow its playbook of one landing page per channel and multiple intro price tiers, and test in markets it doesn't focus on, like Korean or Traditional Chinese.
Global rank 106k · 90 days ago, top 1M+
Wittio is an IQ test site registered in April 2026, and within half a year its traffic in Japan was already on par with the category leader, wwIQ. The product has nothing new: 15 minutes to take the test, a few hundred yen to see results, then an automatic charge of ¥5,000–6,000 every 4 weeks. What's worth looking at is the machine behind it: a Cypriot company that specializes in "cheap trial to expensive subscription." It took the funnel it honed on PDF and resume tools, swapped in an IQ theme, picked Japan, and ran a landing page for each of five ad channels in parallel. Below: how it got running, how the money comes back, and whether an ordinary developer can follow.
A "I was scammed" blog post
On Sep 4, 2026, a Japanese user posted on Ameba Blog a piece titled 「Wittio(wittio.io)オンラインIQテストは詐欺です」(Wittio's online IQ test is a scam). She had seen an ad for a "free IQ test," clicked through and finished the questions, and the page then said she'd need to pay 199 yen to see her results. "If it's 199 yen, forget it," she thought, and she paid. 199 yen was charged on the spot. She assumed that was the end of it, but the day before she posted, another 5,490 yen hit her card: she'd been automatically enrolled in a subscription. She emailed asking to cancel and get a refund. The cancellation was confirmed, but the refund was refused. She had to cancel her credit card and get a new one, spending another 400 yen. "Altogether it's about 6,000 yen, and I'm really bitter about it." The post has 14 comments.
A month later, in Oct 6, a hatena blogger wrote a post dedicated to Wittio's banner ads, which read "あなたのIQを無料で測定!" (Measure your IQ for free!) and "たった15分でIQがわかる!" (Know your IQ in just 15 minutes!). Questions about it kept piling up on Yahoo! Chiebukuro, some asking "how do I cancel," others asking "is the IQ it gives deliberately inflated?"
The more people complain, the more ads are running.
What it's growing on
We can't see its traffic or revenue. What we can see is ranking:
- Global rank: 90 days ago it wasn't in the global top 1M. Sep 17 it was #486k, Oct 15 #187k, and by Nov 5 it had climbed to #106k, gaining roughly 2% a day.
- Japan: Bucketed by real Chrome user traffic, it was outside Japan's top 1M in May, entered the top 500k in June, top 50k in July, top 10k in August, and in September reached the top 5k. In the same tier are wwIQ (wwiqtest.com) and 16Personalities.
- Other countries: Germany, France, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, and Spain each appeared in the "top 500k" bucket only once, in June, and never again.
The timeline is clear: domain registered in April, small test buys in several countries in 5 and June, then (inferred) paid acquisition concentrated in Japan from July.
What users are paying
The English homepage says: 1 week $6.93, then $39.98 every 4 weeks. The Japan version has different pricing (seen on the Japan-facing page in early November):
| Entry point | Intro | later |
|---|---|---|
| Main funnel | ¥2,240 (¥1,120 with coupon), 1 weeks | ¥6,160 every 4 weeks |
| "認知年齢レポート" (Cognitive Age Report) entry point | ¥80, another tier ¥1,531 | ¥5,490 every 4 weeks |
| The version the blogger ran into (early September) | ¥199 | ¥5,490 |
| 12-week tier | ¥11,760 | — |
The same product had four intro prices, ¥80, ¥199, ¥1,120, and ¥2,240, clearly a price test. The full path: take the test for free (already invested 15 minutes, so you're reluctant to leave) → small payment to see results → after 7 days, billing starts every 4 weeks. The cancel option is buried under "avatar → My Profile," and Chiebukuro has people specifically asking how to find it.
Beyond the test, the site also hosts personality quizzes, love-type quizzes, career tests, brain-training mini games, and articles, so the subscription looks like it has "plenty to use." The "latest global results" scrolling on the homepage is a fixed set of names (Sarah Jenkins, Thomas Dubois…) that stay the same on every visit, just a social-proof wrapper.
Who's behind it
The site footer reads "© 2026 Lemandale Limited, Gibraltar"; the seller of the iOS app listed in Sep 19 is TSFF Holdings Limited (Limassol, Cyprus, registered 2019); the credit card statement shows STP*V*WITTIO.IO (LIMASSOL).
These two names have appeared together. Britain's consumer group Which? published an investigation into subscription traps in September 2025, and its subject was the expert Q&A site Howly: it claims to be Lemandale Limited, while also running several other sites under TSFF, with the tactic "£1 trial → £24–50 per month." TSFF also owns the resume tool BetterCV, the job site JobLand, and a batch of PDF conversion sites. The feature-flag configuration on the Wittio site mixes in paths like /pdf-to-xls and /pdf-to-webp, which suggests it runs on the same funnel and payment system as the PDF products.
So Wittio isn't a new team's new product. It's the Nth production line from a subscription-funnel factory: PDF → expert Q&A → resume → IQ. Payments, risk controls, refund scripts, and the multi-entity structure are all ready-made. Only the theme and language change.
Where users come from
Ad traces you can see directly on the page:
- Google Search and Display ads: Google Ads conversion code is present, and landing pages come in two versions,
iq-test-jp-searchandiq-test-jp-display. - Yahoo! Japan: the page loads a Yahoo ad script, and three landing pages carry the
-yhsuffix (standard, jigsaw, visual). - Bing: Microsoft Ads conversion code is installed.
- Meta / Instagram: the privacy policy states the Meta Pixel is used for ad targeting and retargeting. Users on Instagram have posted screenshots saying they saw it in ads, and the price in the screenshots is ¥6,160 / 4 weeks.
There are more than a dozen landing pages, each angled from a different hook: "jigsaw," "curiosity," "compare with others," "thinking ability," "cognitive age," "brain training," "focus training." A traffic splitter randomly assigns them by device, layered on top of the intro price test.
Channels not found: TikTok, X, Reddit, creator partnerships, press coverage. It doesn't rely on content or word of mouth. It's paid acquisition all the way.
Who it's competing with
| Competitors | Scale (early November) | How Wittio differs |
|---|---|---|
| WW IQ Test(wwiqtest.com) | About 71k globally; top 5k in Japan; 2,058 Trustpilot reviews | A Polish company, the first in Japan to do "¥199 to see results + diagnosis fee + ¥4,950 / ¥5,490 subscription" and the one with the most complaints. Wittio's pricing is nearly a copy of it. |
| myIQ(myiq.com) | About 49k globally; top 5k in Germany, only top 500k in Japan | Focused on Europe and the Americas, including the US, and was called out by a US ad-watchdog site. |
| IQ Booster(iqbooster.org) | Japan top 100k | wwIQ's bundled subscription |
| 16Personalities | About 11k people worldwide; top 5 thousand in Japan | A truly free personality test, growing through search and word of mouth |
| Shindanmaker (shindanmaker.com) | Top 5 thousand in Japan | Free entertainment diagnostics, homegrown in Japan |
| Lumosity / Peak / Elevate | Each has millions of downloads | A legit in-app subscription brain-training app |
In the IQ-test subscription business, Japan already has two players at the top: wwIQ and Wittio. They sell exactly the same thing, and the difference is execution. Wittio's brand feels "cleaner", like a serious brain-training platform, and its iOS app makes it look more legit. Each channel gets its own landing page version. All of this is easy to copy, which means nobody can stop anyone else.
Why it grew so fast
- The factory already exists: the funnel, payments and refund handling don't have to be built from scratch. Register a domain in April and you can scale ads by July.
- The market has been validated by others: wwIQ has stayed in Japan's top 5 thousand for years, which shows people there will pay to "see my IQ". Credit card penetration in Japan is high, and it's hard for overseas merchants to fight chargebacks. Consumer centers in Hiroshima Prefecture, Saitama Prefecture (2026-08-25), Kawasaki City and Ise City, plus the National Consumer Affairs Center (2025-04-22), have all issued warnings about "IQ tests turned into subscriptions", but they target the whole category and name no company.
- It deliberately avoids strict markets: in early November, opening wittio.io from the US, Canada and Australia returned "Wittio isn't available in your country"; opening it from Japan, the UK, Germany, France, South Korea and Taiwan worked normally. The US FTC and Australia's ACCC are, by inference, the two regulators most aggressively going after subscription traps.
- Heavy testing: five channels × a dozen-plus landing page versions × four first-period price tiers, all running at once.
If it were you
C: learn how the funnel is built, but don't get into this business. Japan's IQ-test subscription already has two players at the top, and the barriers are mature payment risk controls and sustained heavy ad spend. The profit mostly comes from renewals users don't notice, consumer centers are already issuing warnings one by one, and once regulators or ad platforms tighten up, this path can end overnight.
Who it fits: people who want to learn the engineering of a "paid test / paid report" funnel, and small teams that already have payments and subscription systems and want a new theme. They could take this approach and switch to a transparently priced, one-time purchase version.
Who it doesn't fit: anyone who wants to copy the "free → small payment → quietly renew" model. You don't have its multi-entity structure or a payment channel that can absorb refund requests, and the first wave of chargebacks could get your merchant account shut down. It's also a bad fit for people who can build products but can't run paid acquisition: in this business the product is barely worth anything, and the ad spend is what matters.
How to do it (if you must do an adjacent thing): build a test whose paid result actually has substance, such as cognitive age, career tendencies, or a self-assessment of Japanese or English ability, sell the full report for a one-time 500–1,500 yen, and don't do auto-renewal. Following its approach, give each channel its own landing page version and test three or four first-period price points. On language, Japan is already taken by these two, so look at markets like Korean or Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) that they haven't blocked but also aren't focusing on.
How to get users: Google Search plus Yahoo! Japan (Japan) or Naver (Korea) search ads, catching terms like "IQテスト 無料" and "IQ 테스트"; then test curiosity angles like "What's your cognitive age?" with Meta banner ads. Test a dozen-plus creatives with a small budget in one country first. Only add spend after you've pushed the cost of acquiring a paying user below half the order value.
When to get in: there's no window to rush; if you're going to try, settle the numbers before Japan's Consumer Affairs Agency formally moves on this category. A one-time purchase version would be hit far less.
What would show you're wrong: ① Wittio drops out of Japan's top 5 thousand and its global ranking starts sliding, which means this round of ad spend has stopped paying off (then definitely don't follow). ② Conversely, if next year it gets English and German markets beyond the US into the top 5 thousand without being named, that shows the machine can be copied to more languages, and the subscription funnel backend itself is a business worth building. ③ If the Japan Consumer Affairs Agency, Meta or Google name and act against "IQ test subscription" ads, the whole category shuts down, and only the transparently priced approach survives.
Data and sources
- Ranking: global rank comes from the daily Tranco list (as of 11-05); country tiers come from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) monthly data (as of 2026-09).
- Pricing and channels: the English and Japanese wittio.io pages and checkout (early November); the US, Canada and Australia restrictions are as tested at the time.
- Operating entity: website footer, App Store (id6796387987), Which? (2025-09-24), Cypriot company registry, USPTO trademark records, tsffholdings.com.
- User experiences: ameblo.jp/neko3gasuki(2026-09-04), daylight-journal.hatenadiary.com(2026-10-06), Yahoo! Chiebukuro, Instagram user posts.
- Regulatory warnings: official websites of Hiroshima Prefecture, Saitama Prefecture and the National Consumer Affairs Center.
- Unverified: team size; how much each channel spent; the equity relationship between Lemandale and TSFF; whether Ukraine and Cyprus are also blocked.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one WW IQ Test(wwiqtest.com) Web Earlier than 2025 (unverified) Tranco 71,020; CrUX Japan top 5 thousand, global top 50k; Trustpilot 2,058 reviews A Polish company, the earliest in Japan to run 199 yen + diagnosis fee + 4,950/5,490 yen subscription; Wittio's pricing is almost copied, repackaged as a "cleaner brain-training platform" myIQ(myiq.com) Web Earlier than 2025 Tranco 49,028; CrUX global top 50k, Germany top 5 thousand, Japan only top 500k Focuses on Europe and North America, including the US; Wittio blocked the US, Canada and Australia and concentrated on Japan IQ Booster(iqbooster.org) Web Earlier than 2026-06 CrUX Japan top 100k wwIQ's bundled subscription; Wittio puts testing and subscription under the same brand 16Personalities Web About 2011 Tranco 10,749; Japan top 5 thousand Genuinely free, grows through SEO and word of mouth; Wittio's personality, love and career tests use this demand to funnel people into paid subscriptions Shindanmaker (shindanmaker.com) Web Old site CrUX Japan top 5 thousand Free entertainment diagnostics, homegrown in Japan, no fee Lumosity / Peak / Elevate iOS 2010 era Millions of downloads A legit in-app subscription brain-training app; Wittio only borrows the "brain training" label to dress up renewals - Where users come from
- Confirmed Google Search / Display Ads: the page has the Google Ads tag AW-18154468919; the landing pages include two versions, iq-test-jp-search and iq-test-jp-display
- Confirmed Yahoo! Japan Ads: the page has a YahooAdsScript component; the landing pages include iq-test-jp-yh, iq-test-puzzle-yh and iq-test-visual-yh
- Confirmed Bing / Microsoft Ads: the page has the Bing UET tag ti=187254434
- Confirmed Meta / Instagram Ads: the privacy policy lists the Meta Pixel for FB and IG ads and retargeting; Instagram user posts and hatena blogs say they saw it in ads; our metaads database did not track it
- Confirmed Multiple landing page versions plus price A/B tests: GrowthBook flags show 12 landing page versions; the Japan storefront has several first-period price points: 80 / 199 / 1,120 / 2,240 yen
- Inferred TikTok / X / Reddit / creators / media: nothing found on TikHub or x-radar
Wittio (wittio.io): why it's working
In short: Wittio is an "IQ test → small payment to unlock results → auto-renewal" web funnel that TSFF Holdings of Cyprus (the operator of a subscription-funnel product line including Howly, BetterCV, JobLand and PDF tools) launched in April 2026 years ago. It has grown almost entirely in Japan, driven since 2026-07 by Google Search/Display, Yahoo! Japan, Bing and Meta/Instagram ads. It took off not because the product is new, but because a mature subscription-funnel factory copied the old category (wwIQ, myIQ) into the Japanese market and then kept refining it with repeated A/B tests across multiple landing page versions.
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1. What it is
- Homepage (English): "Test your mind. Train it further." 15-minute 35-question IQ test, plus personality, love style and career tests, along with brain-training games and articles. Pricing is listed on the homepage: 1 weeks $6.93, then every 4 weeks $39.98; 4 weeks $19.99; 12 weeks $39.99 (source: r.jina.ai scrape of wittio.io, 2026-11-07).
- Actual prices in the Japan storefront (scraped the page through a Japanese proxy and read the product config embedded in Next.js, 2026-11-07):
- Main funnel:
wittio_sub_jpy_1w_4w_2240_6160, ¥2,240 for the first week (coupon price ¥1,120), then ¥6,160 every 4 weeks; there are also 4-week and 12-week tiers (¥11,760). - "Cognitive age report" funnel (
/ja/iq-test-visual/checkout/):wittio_sub_jpy_1w_4w_80_5490, first period ¥80 (another tier at ¥1,531), then ¥5,490 every 4 weeks. - The path real users run into: 2026-09-04 a victim on ameblo wrote, "Free test, but seeing the result costs 199 yen, and the next day 5,490 yen was charged" (ameblo.jp/neko3gasuki/entry-12977741566.html).
- Main funnel:
- Operating entity: the website footer reads "© 2026 Lemandale Limited, Gibraltar"; the seller of Wittio on the App Store (id6796387987,2026-09-19, listed in Entertainment, 0 rating in the Japan store) is TSFF Holdings Limited (Limassol, Cyprus, registered HE400367,2019). The credit card statement descriptor is
STP*V*WITTIO.IO (LIMASSOL)(Instagram user post DexaDcrgb1L). - Other products from the same group: a Which? 2025-09 report found that Howly calls itself Lemandale Limited (Gibraltar) while also operating docs.howly.com, ask-crew.com and anyexperts.com under TSFF Holdings (Cyprus), using a "£1 trial → £24–50/month" subscription trap (which.co.uk/news/article/subscription-traps-who-are-howly-and-justanswer-aA7xy3o9HCkY). TSFF's website describes its business as "document suites, expert networks and career tools" (tsffholdings.com). The BETTER CV trademark on the USPTO belongs to TSFF, and the jobland.ai privacy policy also names TSFF. The GrowthBook feature-flag config on Wittio's page mixes in paths like
/pdf-to-xlsand/pdf-to-webp, which shows it runs on the same funnel and payment platform as the PDF products. Trustpilot's "People also looked at" section also lists pdfservices.com, wordpdf.com, bettercv.com and jobland.ai. - Domain: RDAP shows registration 2026-04-03; the Trustpilot profile 2026-04 claimed, on the paid plan, with 7 reviews and a score of 3.1.
- Geo-blocking: tested through a webshare proxy (2026-11-07), the US, Canada and Australia return 403, with the page reading "Wittio isn't available in your country"; Japan, the UK, Germany, France, South Korea and Taiwan all return 200. The config has another flag that forces the block on for US, PR, GU, VI, UA, AU, CY and other countries, most likely the blocklist, which includes Ukraine and Cyprus, where the company is based (inferred, unverified). This matches how subscription-trap companies usually operate: avoid the markets where the FTC and ACCC enforce hardest, and avoid their home market.
- Traffic lands on the web, not the app: the iOS app launched in September, with a 0 rating in the Japan store. Its description says "email login", so it's a companion client for web subscribers; our appstore database has no record of it.
2. Growth data
- Tranco (traffic library): rank 9-17 #485,596 → 10-01 #259,949 → 10-15 #186,861 → 11-05 #105,964, climbing steadily about 2% a day. The card notes: 90 days ago it was outside the top 1M (×9.4); 30 days, ×2.16.
- CrUX Japan: 2026-05 top 1M → 06 top 500k → 07 top 50k → 08 top 10k → 09 top 5 thousand. CrUX global: 07 top 1M → 08 top 100k → 09 top 50k. Other countries (Germany, France, UK, US, Canada, Australia, Spain) only hit the top 500k tier once, at 2026-06, and then dropped off. Takeaway: after launching in April, 5–June ran small tests across several countries, then from July concentrated the budget on Japan. The US, Canada and Australia blocks came later, which fits this timeline.
- Same-period comparison (CrUX 2026-09 Japan tier): wwiqtest.com in the top 5k (Tranco 71,020), 16personalities in the top 5k, myiq.com in the top 500k (global top 50k, Tranco 49,028), iqbooster.org in the top 100k. In Japan, Wittio is already in the same tier as category leader wwIQ.
3. Competitors
| Competitors | Where | Launched | Scale | How Wittio differs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WW IQ Test(wwiqtest.com) | Web | Earlier than 2025 (exact year unverified) | Tranco 71,020; CrUX Japan top 5 thousand, global top 50k; Trustpilot 2,058 reviews, 4 stars | Polish company KOMUNIKACIJA Sp. z o.o.; 30 headlines; "199 yen to see results + 1,990 yen diagnostic fee + 4,950/5,490 yen subscription", also bundled with IQ Booster. The earliest and most-complained-about player in Japan (X @motoeri, Chiebukuro both have posts). Wittio's pricing is nearly a copy of it. |
| myIQ(myiq.com) | Web + app | Earlier than 2025 | Tranco 49,028; CrUX global top 50k, Germany top 5 thousand, Japan only reaches top 500k | Focuses on Europe and the Americas (Germany, UK, France); the US has been called out by truthinadvertising and Reddit. Wittio stays out of the US and targets Japan. |
| IQ Booster(iqbooster.org) | Web | Earlier than 2026-06 | CrUX Japan top 100k | WW IQ's companion subscription; a Qiita article broke down its funnel |
| World IQ Test (worldiqtest.com), test-iq.org, etc. | Web | Earlier than 2026 | CrUX top 500k–1M in each country | small-scale similar sites |
| 16Personalities | Web | Around 2011 | Tranco 10,749, Japan top 5 thousand | Genuinely free personality tests that grow through SEO and word of mouth; Wittio's personality, dating and career tests are riding that demand. |
| Shindanmaker (shindanmaker.com) | Web | Old site | Top 5 thousand in Japan | Free entertainment diagnostics, homegrown in Japan |
| Lumosity, Peak, Elevate and other brain-training apps | iOS/Android | 2010 era | Each has millions of downloads | Legitimate in-app subscriptions; Wittio only borrows the "brain training" framing to package subscription retention. |
The only fair comparisons are rivals running the same funnel. Wittio has no real product differentiation.
4. Where users came from (growth tactics)
- Search and display ads (confirmed): the page loads Google Ads conversion tag
AW-18154468919and Bing UET (ti=187254434). The landing page list in the feature flags isiq-test-jp-yh,iq-test-jp-search,iq-test-jp-display,iq-test-jp-1,iq-test-puzzle(-yh),iq-test-curiosity,iq-test-comparison,iq-test-thinking,iq-test-visual(-yh),brain-training-quiz,focus-training. Going by the names, these map to different channels: Yahoo! (-yh), Google Search, Google Display, and so on. The page also contains aYahooAdsScriptcomponent. In other words, each channel gets its own version of the funnel, split with GrowthBook for A/B testing. - Meta/Instagram ads (confirmed): the privacy policy lists the Meta Pixel (Facebook and Instagram ads, retargeting); Instagram users say they saw it in ads (in the Dcsx-aTztRN and Da_qrl9ywDL screenshots, 6,160 yen / 4 weeks); a hatena blog (2026-10-06) specifically wrote up banner ads like "あなたのIQを無料で測定!" and "たった15分でIQがわかる!". Our metaads library found no Page for it by domain or name, but that's because it isn't in our keyword seed list, so it doesn't prove they aren't advertising.
- Google Ads Transparency Center: our googleads library did not track it (not on the list).
- Channels not found: TikTok (a TikHub search for "wittio" only returns an unrelated creator named Witto), local X corpus (0 posts), Reddit, HN, media coverage. No sign of creator partnerships.
- How the money comes back: "free test → sunk cost (15 minutes spent) → 80–2,240 yen to unlock results → after 7 days, auto-charged 5,490–6,160 yen every 4 weeks". Acquisition cost is recovered by a small first payment plus 1–N renewal periods. The cancel option is hidden under avatar → My Profile (Chiebukuro q13330071148). Payment accepts card, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay.
5. Why it took off
- Resource base: the operators TSFF/Lemandale already run the "cheap trial → expensive renewal" funnel, payment processing, risk control and multi-entity structure on products like Howly, PDF and résumé tools. Wittio just reruns that machine with an IQ theme: the same GrowthBook config still contains a PDF path, and the same paid Trustpilot profile is in use.
- Picked the right market: Japanese users are curious about "IQ" and "diagnosis", credit card penetration is high, and consumers have a hard time getting redress from overseas merchants. wwIQ has already shown the category makes money in Japan: it has sat in CrUX Japan's top 5 thousand for years, and consumer protection centers in several prefectures and cities have repeatedly issued warnings about IQ test subscriptions over 2025–2026 years (Hiroshima Prefecture, Saitama Prefecture 2026-08-25, Kawasaki City, Ise City; the National Consumer Affairs Center 2025-04-22). Wittio is a follower: it tested in June, moved to Japan in July, and within three months its CrUX Japan rank rose from top 500k to top 5 thousand.
- Distribution playbook: multiple channels (Google Search, Display, Yahoo! Japan, Bing, Meta) each get their own landing page, while several theme angles are tested at once (puzzle, curiosity, comparison, thinking, visual, "cognitive age"), then price experiments run with different first-payment amounts (80 / 199 / 1,120 / 2,240 yen).
- Deliberate geo-compliance arbitrage: blocks the US, Canada and Australia, avoiding the markets most likely to draw regulator attention, and earns only where enforcement is weaker and redress is harder.
6. Differentiation
Product-wise there's barely any difference: the questions, certificates, "global ranking", brain training and personality tests all show up on both wwIQ and myIQ. The "Latest scores worldwide" scrolling list on the homepage uses a fixed set of fake names (Sarah Jenkins, Thomas Dubois…) that are identical on every crawl, a social-proof packaging trick. The real difference is execution: a "cleaner" brand and visual style that looks more like a legitimate brain-training platform than wwIQ does; multi-theme, multi-price A/B testing; a companion app that feels more official; per-channel landing pages; and geo-blocking. These execution differences are plausibly why it caught up to wwIQ's Japan tier within three months. But they're all copyable, and others are already copying them, so they don't form a moat.
7. How many people have seen it
- Revenue is not public (no TrustMRR listing, no founder posting numbers); no media outlet or major X account has written about Wittio itself. The LinkedIn company page has only 13 followers.
- The consumer-victim circle in Japan has already spread the word: Chiebukuro Q&A (q13330424553 "Does the IQ come out skewed high?", q13330071148 "How do I cancel?"), ameblo (2026-09-04 "Wittio is a scam"), a hatena blog (2026-10-06), Instagram users posting warnings, and Gridinsoft gives it a trust score of 35/100. The prefectural warnings don't name it; they target the whole category.
- Archive note: it's circulating in small circles. Consumers are calling it a trap, while founders and investors barely know the brand. But the model has been thoroughly dissected in Japan already (Qiita, ameblo, and regional consumer centers have all written about it).
8. What to borrow
- Funnel engineering: one theme gets multiple landing pages, each channel gets its own version, GrowthBook splits traffic by deviceId, and first-payment prices are tested.
- Turn the mature funnel platform (payments, subscriptions, refunds, risk control) into shared infrastructure so themes can be swapped and copied fast: PDF → expert Q&A → résumé → IQ.
- Market selection: find language markets where people are highly curious, credit cards are widespread and cross-border redress is hard. Test with small budgets across several countries first, then concentrate on the one with the best ROI.
- Risk: this model's profit mostly comes from renewals users don't notice, so regulators, chargebacks and payment rails can all choke it. If Japan's Consumer Affairs Agency acts under the Specified Commercial Transactions Act, or if Meta or Google tighten review of "IQ test subscription" ads, it will lose momentum fast. Copying the "hidden subscription" mechanic itself is not recommended.
9. Uncertain
- The recall card's claim of a team of about 2 people (Ukrainian PM/designers) is unverified. LinkedIn shows only 13 followers.
- Actual ad spend and channel mix are unknown (Google, Yahoo and Meta all leave traces, but it's unclear which is the main one).
- Whether the US/UA/AU/CY toggles in the config are the actual block list is an inference. Only the US, Canada and Australia blocks were tested in practice; Ukraine and Cyprus were not.
- The equity relationship between Lemandale Limited (Gibraltar, company no. 121625, from the datocapital summary) and TSFF is unverified; only that the two names appear together on Howly and Wittio is known.
- The English homepage prices ($6.93/$39.98) and the Japanese prices are different product configurations; trial claims like "1 USD trial" vary by channel and test group.
Sources
- Official site: wittio.io (Jina scrape + webshare Japan proxy fetching /ja/, /ja/checkout/, /ja/iq-test-visual/checkout/, /ja/iq-test-jp-1/,2026-11-07)
- RDAP:rdap.identitydigital.services/rdap/domain/wittio.io
- App Store:itunes lookup id6796387987(jp)
- Trustpilot:trustpilot.com/review/wittio.io
- Which?:which.co.uk/news/article/subscription-traps-who-are-howly-and-justanswer-aA7xy3o9HCkY(2025-09-24)
- TSFF:tsffholdings.com;companieshousecyprus.com/company/tsff-holdings-limited-he400367;uspto.report/TM/98759719
- Victims and discussion: ameblo.jp/neko3gasuki/entry-12977741566.html; daylight-journal.hatenadiary.com/entry/2026/10/06/204137; instagram.com/p/DexaDcrgb1L/; detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q13330071148, q13330424553; x.com/motoeri/status/2059996329515041192 (wwIQ)
- Regulatory warnings: pref.hiroshima.lg.jp/site/syouhiseikatsucenter/keihatsu08-0715.html; pref.saitama.lg.jp/b0304/shohisoudan/jirei/tsuhan/20260825.html; kokusen.go.jp/news/data/n-20250422_2.html
- Competitors: wwiqtest.com/terms-conditions/; trustpilot.com/review/wwiqtest.com; truthinadvertising.org/articles/myiq-com/
- Internal libraries: traffic (rank_day, crux_domain, 2026-11-05 charts); metaads, googleads, appstore (no match)