The Future of Content Recommendation

By Anisa Holmes

More than 15 billion hours a week are spent on Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Youtube and Netflix. What these companies all have in common are their amazingly successful recommender systems. These systems are quickly becoming one of the most vital revenue-building tools for digital platforms. Bibblio helps other media platforms harness the power of recommendation and personalization, plug and play style. With his wide breadth of experience, Mads Holmen, the CEO of Bibblio shared some key points on how big data and AI can help media diversify their traffic and referrals, boost engagement and monetize through content recommendations.

First, Holmen explains, publishers need to move away from static data and static models for content recommendation. Doing so operates under the assumption that humans are static and unchanging in their preferences, which couldn’t be further from the truth. “The same person can have vastly different consumption habits depending on different circumstances,” he says.

Second, Holmen advocates finding ways to turn readers from ‘tourists’ to ‘residents’ by “actively encouraging users down more valuable journeys”. In other words, there should be a greater focus on gaining traffic from loyal readers as opposed to social media referrals (which accounts for 80% of all traffic).

Third, content should not be siloed, but should exist within a greater network that is tailored to each user’s preferences, in real time. How to do this? Holmen recommends implementing internal recirculation, powered by AI and machine learning, to ensure webpages are fully optimized for engagement. Internal recirculation can lead to a 130% uplift in CTR. In a similar vein, collaborating with other sites to recirculate content boosts dwell time and reduces Facebook and Google’s share of traffic by 8%. Additionally, distributing sponsored and premium content leads to a 4.8x return on investment, and uplifts CTR and page views.

For Holmen, Bibblio’s vision is all about diversification, engagement, monetization, and driving power away from centralized giants with the help of AI and big data.