In the Netflix earning report yesterday it was noted that 75% or all streamed hours of content were recommended by the algorithm. What does that tell you? It’s an example of the algorithm winning over social recommendation — social recos being the “likes” and “ratings” and “reviews” which are the ballast of so many web communities.
Many marketing studies rate purchase influence and far and away the winning source of influence is always “friends.” Advertising is usually way down in the pecking order. But where is the algorithm in those studies? Not included.
Ad serving is pretty dumb most of the time. I’m still getting ads served based on project work, not even closely related to what I care about in my personal life. Sluggish algorithm. But the algorithm employed by Pandora and Netflix? Now these use energetic algorithms. This is where big data targeting is going. This is where Twitch Point Planning is going. In the “understand, map and manipulate” triumvirate of the TPP process, smarter algos will feed the understanding component. (I am so excited about Twitch Point Planning I could pizzle myself. Even The New York Time paper-paper is using it by providing video links to twitch to a multimedia part of the story.)
Understand the algo — the many competing algos — they are the keys to the marketing future. Peace!