Hulu said it acquired the assets of The Video Genome Project, a database that will improve the streaming video company’s recommendation engine.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Video Genome Project has a granular, structured database of video content that uses hundreds of contextual attributes from metadata to deliver more insightful and relevant recommendations to the viewer. The data will be combined with Hulu’s current recommendation technology.
"The future of television is not just going to be about where and how you watch, it’s going to be about how personal your viewing experience can be,” said Ben Smith, head of experience at Hulu. “With this strategic acquisition of The VGP’s technology, we’re gaining important data and personalization capabilities that will allow us to serve our users even better as we expand into live programming.”
Hulu says that 75% of its viewing is driven by recommendations.
“We built The VGP because we always believed that every household deserves the most robust discovery tools, ones that deliver a hyper-personalized video experience that mirrors how the human brain naturally curates content,” said Xavier Kochhar, Founder and CEO of The Video Genome Project. “Given its forward-thinking leadership and true emphasis on content discovery, which we saw in the personal user experience they are building, Hulu really was the obvious choice for us to realize The VGP’s vision.”
