Targeted marketing and customer segmentation

In a manner similar to recommendations, targeted marketing uses a model to select what to target at users. While generally recommendations and personalization are focused on a one-to-one situation, segmentation approaches might try to assign users into groups based on characteristics and, possibly, behavioral data. The approach might be fairly simple or might involve approaches that try to assign users into groups based on characteristics and, possibly, behavioral data. The approach might be fairly simple or might involve a machine-learning model such as clustering. Either way, the result is a set of segment assignments that might allow us to understand the broad characteristics of each group of users, what makes them similar to each other within a group, and what makes them different from others in different groups.

This could help MovieStream to better understand the drivers of user behavior and might also allow a broader targeting approach where groups are targeted as opposed to (or more likely, in addition to) direct one-to-one targeting with personalization.

These methods can also help when we don't necessarily have labeled data available (as is the case with certain user and content profile data), but we still wish to perform more focused targeting than a complete one-size-fits-all approach.