Spotify, Linkedin, and Tiktok use different forms of personalization to drive a return on investment for core business metrics.
Spotify optimizes through one core metric, which is minutes listened by a user. To accomplish this, they have refined their song recommendation engine for unique personalization. Also, they have made the user interface of the app unique to each user, who can configure their own library and playlists. Each user can also access uniquely tailored personalized playlists based on the genre of music they want to listen to. Through personalizing this experience, the ROI is clear. The personalization ensures that users stay on the Spotify platform by providing a unique element that other music streaming apps do not provide, which improves retention and thus, revenue with very little cost.
LinkedIn, on the other hand, personalizes their platform through providing the user with a list of jobs and opportunities that are tailored to their profile and the ones that they have applied to in the past. By learning the user’s preferred job titles and places of employment, the user is shown the most relevant opportunities to them, ensuring that the user chooses LinkedIn when applying to positions instead of other platforms like Indeed or ZipRecruiter. The ROI here is that more clicks on job postings correlates with higher retention for companies on LinkedIn and more revenue.
TikTok personalizes their platform through rapidly learning user preferences for content, making the interspersed ads feel like content. This increases the time a user stays on their platform, meaning that they can show more ads and make users more loyal. This drives revenue through ad clicks and ensures that more companies choose to advertise on their platform.
