Just For You: Dynamic Yield Delivers Personalized Sites

Now, every Web site can be unique to the visitor. Dynamic Yield, an automated real-time content optimization engine, is launching a platform that gives online publishers the ability to give readers a personalized news experience.

The process works by optimizing content in real-time to adapt to the specific needs of each visitor. Publishers, for instance, can test different factors that impact journalistic content -- such as headlines, photos, and location -- and automatically make adjustments in real time. 

Most personalization solutions, by contrast, are bound to a specific location on the page -- most often seen on publisher sites at the bottom of article pages and they operate as black boxes, taking the control away from the editors. This is why it’s extremely rare to see personalization solutions running on publishers' home pages. 

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Dynamic Yield’s solution, on the other hand, leaves the control in the hands of the editors, yet fully automates the personalization process. It simply allows them to choose more options to show users. The sports editor, for instance, will choose 10 possible sports articles to show on the home page versus the four to five normally allocated for the sports section.

Then, Dynamic Yield decides in real-time -- based on the historical preferences of the visitor -- how much ‘real-estate’ to allocate per topic for each specific visitor and what articles to show the visitor out of the article pool. It does this automatically, in real-time, resulting in a more relevant home page experience and higher article click-through-rates.

"As the pressures on publishers increase every day -- delivering more relevant content and balancing it with monetization units -- the importance of extracting maximum value from each pixel of the screen overcomes the natural fear of change," says Liad Agmon, CEO of Dynamic Yield.

Advertisers also benefit from Dynamic Yield's optimization engine. When running ad campaigns directly on third-party sites, for example, these advertisers can send a Dynamic Yield Smart Object rather than publisher's static images. This in turn allows them to personalize what the visitors would see as part of the campaign.

Thus, if users previously visited the advertiser's site, they could be served with retargeted ads; at the same time, advertisers can tap into third-party data and target ads per gender, age group, location and even the weather at the ad viewer's location.

There is a lot to optimize after the visitor clicks on an ad. Using Dynamic Yield's personalization engine, an advertiser can optimize in real-time where on their site the visitor will land, and what content to show that user in order to maximize the revenue yield.

Generally, no opt-in is required for Dynamic Yield to work. Yet, several publishers have added a way for users to ‘reset’ the personalization settings.

Still, Dynamic Yield says its major challenges thus far, as with any innovative technology, is to gain the ‘buy-in’ of the various stake holders in the organization, and to reduce the fear of losing control due to technology.

Company executives decline to disclose current clients using its platform, preferring to say that they work with global retailers as well as B2B and B2C marketing companies, to optimize user conversion funnels, online merchandising and the sites’ experiences. 

The company was founded in 2012 and has raised $15M to date from the New York Times Company, ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, Bessemer Venture Partners, Marker LLC and Innovation Endeavors.

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