NETTING IT OUT

The recommender systems market is in a growth phase. Solutions from the leaders are maturing, while newcomers continue to raise their heads. The classic wave of market consolidation is still in the future. Providers of recommender systems are mostly offering their solutions as a service (SaaS), which increases the pressure and challenge to market, sell, and deliver efficiently. The SaaS model also makes for more successful customers: it is common to see improvements in conversion in the triple digits.

Our series of quarterly recaps, begun 1Q2011, summarizes product, customer, and company activity for leading providers of recommender systems based in the U.S. and Europe.

TRACKING TRENDS

Recap Approach

The intent of this series of quarterly market recaps, begun 1Q2011, is to identify trends in the technology and marketing of commercial recommender systems.

We interview recommender system vendors about events at their companies: new products, product enhancements, customer wins, target markets, market messaging, management changes, funding, patents, and financial news.

Many companies are prohibited by policy from sharing all the information we ask for. At the birth of this recap series, we prize inclusion above completeness.

Recap Participants

Our choices for periodic review are leaders offering a broad range of services provided to the retail, B2B, media, and other markets. We strive for a balanced mix of American and European companies. At this point, we have not identified leaders based in South America, Asia, or Africa.

The following companies are covered in this recap:

• Adobe
• Avail
• Baynote
• iGoDigital
• Locayta
• MyBuys
• PredictiveIntent
• Strands

Two other leaders, Certona and RichRelevance, were not able to participate in this recap; we hope to include them in the future.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

Five of the companies represented in this report describe their value in terms of personalization: Baynote, iGoDigital, MyBuys, PredictiveIntent, and Strands. Six of the companies target retailers exclusively. Only Adobe and PredictiveIntent name target markets beyond retail and B2B ecommerce. See Table A...