The Personalizer service and its origins

Personalization engines have been used across many web retailers for decades to make some rudimentary recommendations as a user completes their online order. This type of recommendation became prevalent, as organizations could see that they were able to add to the overall sales by making these recommendations to accompany what the user purchased. As the personalization of web assets has proliferated beyond traditional shopping cart recommendations, Microsoft saw an opportunity to provide services that could cover several required solutions. Some of the solutions seen were as follows:

• A customized user experience that includes where to best place advertisements within a web page
• Having key content highlighted for a consumer that they might enjoy reading, based on previous articles they’ve read on common topics or themes
• Personalized product recommendations based on previous purchases or items already placed in a shopping...