Max's New Homepage Aims to Fight Search Fatigue

David Zaslav
(Image credit: Warner Bros. Discovery)

Max has officially rolled out a new homepage personalization system for all adult U.S. profiles,

According to The Verge, the system, began quietly rolling out to select profiles in December, allowing Warner Bros. Discovery to test the technology.

On the new Max homepage, the vertical rails of content and recommendations within them are dynamic, and ordered differently depending on the user.

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As an example, fans of romantic comedies would likely see a collection titled “Love and Laughs” towards the top of their homepage, while horror junkies might see “heart-pounding thrillers.”

The streaming service says it will also improve its recommendations by removing titles that have already been shown to users if they fail to show interest.

“We’re going to refine and make sure those collections and those rails that are most relevant to you are the things that bubble up,”  Liesel Kipp, Warner Bros. Discovery’s senior VP of global streaming product told The Verge. “We’ll always balance that with what’s really important on the platform.” 

The homepage update is also intended to suppress shows and movies that subscribers have already watched.

With the update, Max says the home screen can now recommend titles more efficiently, so they spend less time browsing for unwanted content.

Kipp said that since implementing the new home screen, Max has seen a “meaningful lift” in the time users spend engaging with content, the amount of times they come back, and the diversity of titles they watch.

The goal, as with most streaming services, is to connect viewers with content they want to watch more quickly.

Max calls this upgrade “whole page optimization.”

The streaming service is also reportedly working on Netflix-esque technology that would allow users to “like,” “love” and indicate content that’s “not for me.”

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Jack Reid is a USC Annenberg Journalism major with experience reporting, producing and writing for Annenberg Media. He has also served as a video editor, showrunner and live-anchor during his time in the field.