ChoiceStream

ReadWriteWeb is currently doing a great series on recommendation engines. They started with an overview of the market and a guide to recommender systems, and have since moved on to look at individual vendors in the space—from big players like Amazon to startups like Jinni and Mufin.

All the activity in the personalized recommendation space, and the attention being paid to it, is a great thing for the industry and for consumers. Innovation thrives on competition. Competition forces everyone to play their best game or risk being left behind.

So, where is all this competition leading us? I believe it’s leading to personalization that goes beyond a particular retailer or publisher’s web site and extends to the larger shopping experience as a whole. That experience typically cuts across multiple sites and even goes beyond the web to bricks-and-mortar storefronts.

In the months and years ahead, recommendation providers will be working on figuring out how to extend personalized advertising and marketing across the entire shopping experience. They’ll be thinking in a more holistic way about how consumers navigate their way through a purchase—from awareness to research to the final click—and how best to support and influence that purchase through personalization.

Personalized recommendations on web sites are great, but they’re just the beginning. There’s so much more that retailers and consumers can gain from this technology once it’s unleashed into the rest of the marketing mix like advertising, email, in-store kiosks, and direct mail.

Where do you see the next frontier of personalization taking shape? Write us and let us know.