MediaRecSysEmerging Standard

Schibsted Personalised News & Content Recommendations

This is like Netflix-style recommendations, but for news and media, where editors set the rules of the game and algorithms handle the heavy lifting of matching each reader with the most relevant stories and content.

9.0
Quality
Score

Executive Brief

Business Problem Solved

Traditional ‘one front page for everyone’ wastes valuable audience attention and ad inventory. Schibsted’s system personalises content and news recommendations at scale, combining editorial judgment with machine learning to increase engagement, loyalty, and monetisation across its digital media properties.

Value Drivers

Higher reader engagement (more clicks, time-on-site, pages per session) through personalised feedsImproved subscription conversion and retention by surfacing content aligned with user interestsBetter ad yield via more relevant impressions and increased inventory consumptionOperational efficiency: algorithms automate ranking while editors define priorities and guardrailsRisk mitigation: human oversight prevents purely clickbait/algorithmic drift that could damage brand trust

Strategic Moat

Combination of proprietary first-party user behaviour data at large Scandinavian scale, editorial expertise embedded into algorithms, and a tuned recommendation pipeline integrated deeply into Schibsted’s products and ad stack.

Technical Analysis

Model Strategy

Hybrid

Data Strategy

Vector Search

Implementation Complexity

High (Custom Models/Infra)

Scalability Bottleneck

Real-time recommendation latency under high traffic, plus cost and complexity of maintaining accurate, up-to-date user profiles and item embeddings across many properties.

Market Signal

Adoption Stage

Early Majority

Differentiation Factor

Unlike pure algorithmic feeds, Schibsted explicitly blends human editorial control with machine learning-based personalisation, optimising for both engagement and journalistic values rather than just clicks.