Almost two years ago The Filter, a startup backed by Peter Gabriel, launched to bring better music and movie recommendations to consumers. The site got lost in the abundance of more popular music and movie sites out there, so about a year ago CEO David Maher Roberts decided to shift gears and start licensing his recommendation engine to other businesses.
It was the right move. Today, the Filter powers recommendations for sites and devices with a combined reach of about 20 million people, with two more large media deals in the final stages of converting from a trail to a full license which will bring its total reach up to 85 million. The startup’s revenues went from $150,000 in 2008 to about $1 million in 2009. “All that money came from licensing,” says Roberts. “I think we get $2,000 from Google for advertising.” Since November, the company has been “borderline breakeven.” And it just added to its board of directors former Google engineering VP Doug Merrill, who left Google to briefly serve as president of EMI for a year.
“Recommendations—from friends, from newspapers, from colleagues—are the most common way to find new content,” says Merrill. “However, there is more information available than there are people to recommend. The Filter analyzes data to provide measurably better, more relevant recommendations, automatically.” The Filter creates personalized music and movie feeds based on user’s activities (rating. listening, saving, sharing) as well as their preferences in other accounts such as iTunes and Last.fm. Roberts claims that in trials, customers have seen a 20 to 40 percent lift in media consumption (video views, dwell time) than using their own recommendation algorithms. Not counting those two big media deals in the wings, the Filter’s recommendation technology is currently being used by Nokia Music, Sony’s MyPlay, DVDPost (a European Netflix), ThePlatform, and We7 (another music site also backed by Gabriel).
The Filter’s own site is still growing steadily, if slowly, with about 800,000 unique visitors per month. “It was a much slower process than we had wished,” says Maher. People liked the technology, he says, but they wanted it on sites where they already consume content. The Filter’s experience shows how tough it is to build a standalone music or movie property. But if its recommendation algorithms really do provide the kind of improvements Roberts claims, more sites will adopt it. You can try out its relevance engine for yourself on The Filter website.
Founded in 2004, The Filter is the global leader in recommendation and relevance tools. The vision of music legend Peter Gabriel, The Filter is delivering proven, measurable results and value to businesses across the content industry. Through a scalable SaaS offering, The Filter supplies some of the world’s largest audio and video publishers and aggregators with powerful and effective entertainment optimization systems. The Filter’s clients include NBCUniversal, Dailymotion, Walmart’s Vudu, Warner Bros., thePlatform, Nokia, We7 and DVDPost, amongst others. Using a...
In April 2008 Merrill joined EMI Group as President of EMI’s Digital Division. He resigned in March 2009. Douglas Merrill was the Vice President, Engineering at Google until April 2008. He joined Google late in 2003 as Senior Director of Information Systems. In this capacity he led multiple strategic efforts including Google’s 2004 IPO and its related regulatory activities. He holds direct line accountability for all internal engineering and support worldwide. Previously, Douglas was senior vice president at Charles...
ChoiceStream provides personalized marketing and advertising solutions that are proven to increase revenue and customer engagement for today’s leading brands. For more than ten years, companies like AT&T, Zappos, Tesco, Ticketmaster and MTV have relied on ChoiceStream to create a more engaging, personally relevant experience for their consumers. By transforming shopping behavior and media consumption into intelligence about a consumer’s unique preferences, ChoiceStream is able to help today’s biggest brands target their most qualified prospects with the right...
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