Spotify, LinkedIn, and TikTok all use personalization to drive business metrics, but they achieve different goals and get varied streams of ROI from it.
For Spotify, the core of the business model comes back to listening time. Playlists like Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and daily mixes quietly remove the “search” work from the user, allowing them to reach personalized music within a few clicks. As Spotify learns your taste, it puts the right songs in front of you faster, so you stay longer and come back more often. The return on that personalization is higher engagement, stronger habit loops, and lower churn. Once people trust Spotify to be their default music home, they are also more likely to upgrade to Premium, which directly increases lifetime value.
LinkedIn uses personalization to drive session frequency. When users open their feed, it is not just what their connections post, but also what their broader network is interacting with, plus recommended jobs, creators, and newsletters that match their profile and behavior. Each visit feels like “something new that might matter to my career,” which nudges people to open the app multiple times a day. The ROI shows up as more ad impressions, better performance for sponsored posts and job listings, and a stickier ecosystem that keeps both talent and recruiters active.
TikTok uses personalization to increase watch time and improve ad targeting. The For You Page learns from every scroll, pause, rewatch, and like; the algorithm trains on these signals and gets a better understanding of what keeps you hooked. Longer sessions mean more chances to show ads, and the same personalization signals help TikTok serve highly targeted campaigns. The payoff is huge here: users stay hooked on the feed, and advertisers see strong results, so they keep pouring budget into the platform, boosting ROI.
