CBS, Aggregate Knowledge partner for mobile Web effort

March 27, 2008

Broadcasting progress on the phone

CBS Mobile and Aggregate Knowledge have partnered to offer discovery and recommendation technology for mobile Web sites.

The Pique Discovery Window created by Aggregate Knowledge will be deployed on the CBS Mobile WAP site. Visitors to the site are then able to see content suggestions based on what is being viewed, clicked and read by other mobile users with similar interests.

“Aggregate Knowledge is powering discovery for CBS Mobile’s initiative to make mobile content and advertising as relevant as possible,” said Dave Peterson, chief marketing officer of Aggregate Knowledge, San Mateo, CA.

“We believe making it easier to navigate and find great content is a fundamental step to making mobile marketing and advertising work,” he said. “If you make it easy to find new content, people will see new pages, which creates new opportunities to deliver great offers, ads and services.”

What makes this offering unique is that it is claiming to be the first to power user-driven content recommendations in the mobile environment.

“Other mobile sites really only offer the opportunity to read the next article or they provide a list of articles they think you might like,” said Jeff Sellinger, executive vice president of CBS Mobile, New York.

“[CBS wants to] personalize the experience,” he said. “We provide headlines based on what you want in your consumption content and recommendations.”

Visitors to the CBS WAP site at wap.cbsnews.com will see article suggestions initially in the form of a “Your Headlines” function. Content suggestions change during the day based on shifts in interest from morning news and feature stories to breaking stories and trends.

CBS’s WAP site had 5 million unique users and 75 million page views in the fourth quarter of last year.

CBS currently works with multiple advertisers, but in the future it wants to work in more personalized advertisements, such as “people that read these articles also clicked on these ads,” Mr. Sellinger said.

CBS Mobile plans to continue to personalize the mobile experience and look for more partners such as Aggregate Knowledge.

“The phone is the most personal media device ever created,” Mr. Sellinger said. “Your phone is also very small, therefore the content should be as relevant as possible, discovery easy for the consumer and the experience personalized.”