Brands Discover Feelings Make Recommendation Engines Work

Recommendation-engine technology is reshaping the entire digital consumer experience from entertainment to online shopping. To make a lasting impression, experts recommend focusing recommendation engines not only on user activity but the emotions driving those decisions.

For cable and entertainment providers, recommendation engines infuse algorithms with emotional connection data to create recommendations based on similar benefits, drivers and emotions that consumers are looking for in a show.

“If the consumer is given recommendations that are not relevant, do not resonate with them and do not seem to match their tastes, that will lead to a lack of trust,” Jill Rosengard Hill, executive vice president of Magid, told AListDaily.

Magid, a research-based consultancy for television and entertainment industries, curates “emotional DNA,” a database of consumer-rated emotions and attributes associated with TV prime time and network programming.

“We believe that those emotional drivers and connections that consumers have to content will make recommendations more relevant and more appealing than the current matching algorithms being used to make suggestions,” said Hill. “So much of [recommendation engines is] based on a matching algorithm. ‘Do you like this drama? Here are three other dramas you’ll like.’ That is somewhat obvious and it doesn’t necessarily surprise and delight consumers.”

Read more from [a]list here.