Variety; Max Launches New Homepage Personalization System: Here’s How It Works and What Changes Are Next

Story from Variety:

Max subscribers may not have noticed yet, but Warner Bros. Discovery quietly began rolling out a new homepage personalization system last December, when it began A/B testing the redesign. Now, as of the end of July, the changes have been implemented across all U.S. adult profiles.

So what’s new on the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned streamer’s homescreen?

Essentially, Max is now smarter about which TV shows and movies it recommends for each individual user’s profile — and which ones to stop suggesting, if the data shows you aren’t interested in them. The goal, as with most of Max’s product updates, is to more efficiently connect viewers with content they love, Warner Bros. Discovery group senior VP of streaming global product Liesel Kipp told Variety.

On the Max homepage, the vertical rail order and horizontal recommendations within each rail are now ordered differently for each user, depending on their own individual tastes and preferences, according to Kipp. A key element of the new system: “We’re really leaning into title de-duplication so that we can improve the catalog exposure by removing repeat titles and balancing that also with watched content suppression,” she said. What that means, Kipp explained, is that after customers continue to ignore titles after multiple impressions — or if they’ve already watched them — “we have enough information about what they’ve watched, and we remove these to make way for other titles to be surfaced and perhaps more relevant content to be viewed.”

Kipp said that as a result of the changes to Max, which the team dubbed Whole Page Optimization (WPO), Warner Bros. Discovery has seen an increase across four specific metrics that are key for execs in measuring success for the streamer: homepage efficiency (meaning the frequency with which a homepage visit turns into playback); time watched in the product; number of return visits to Max; and the diversity of content watched.

“Obviously, the more value you are getting from the catalog, the more likely they are to choose Max and more likely to stay with us,” Kipp said. “Those are the top four that we’re always looking at.”

What’s next: The Max team is working on additional updates, including a button to restart a title from the beginning, rather than needing to rewind to the beginning yourself, and an option for customers to rate titles as “Love,” “Like” and “Not for Me.” 8-Several of the ongoing projects are being developed using generative AI technology. “We’re experimenting with gen AI to help our algorithms pick up additional context on titles, including social and emotional context from scenes within programs,” Kipp said. “This helps make our current recommendations more relevant. And it’s a real ongoing era of innovation and experimentation for us. There’s a lot more to come.”