CNET Content Solutions & RichRelevance Enter Strategic Partnership to Enhance Retail Personalization for Consumer Technology

RichRelevance to take over operation and development of CNET’s Intelligent Cross-Sell™ technology, which incorporates deep product data with personalized recommendations in key vertical categories

San Francisco, CA – April 20, 2011 –– RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalization for the world’s largest retailers, and CNET Content Solutions, the world’s leading independent source of technology product information, have entered into a strategic partnership to offer CNET’s Intelligent Cross Sell™ as a RichRelevance solution. Under the terms of the agreement, RichRelevance will sell, support, and enhance Intelligent Cross Sell™, a product-recommendations solution specialized for the technology, consumer electronics, and office products categories. CNET will provide industry data, domain expertise, and sales support to RichRelevance for customers in these categories.

In addition, RichRelevance will license CNET’s DataSource™ for use with Intelligent Cross-Sell and the RichRelevance personalization suite.  Through DataSource, RichRelevance will integrate the industry’s most comprehensive database of product attributes and compatibility data, covering more than five million tech, consumer-electronics, and office products worldwide into its personalized recommendations and Shopping Media offerings.

“RichRelevance is the established leader in retail personalization,” said Sean Murphy, VP and General Manager of CNET Content Solutions.  “Their broad knowledge and reach is unsurpassed in the industry and, when combined with our vertical offering, will deliver powerful personalization for the largest retail sites on the Web. After careful consideration, it is clear that RichRelevance is the right strategic partner to continue to evolve our Intelligent Cross-Sell technology.”

RichRelevance currently serves more than 350 million product recommendations each day for a world-class client base that includes Wal-Mart, Sears and Office Depot.  Moreover, with this partnership, RichRelevance will now serve seven of the top 10 online retail chains as ranked by Internet Retailer magazine based on revenue and volume.

RichRelevance CEO David Selinger explains: “CNET has established itself as a recommendations leader in verticals like technology, consumer electronics, and office products.  These are critical categories for the largest sites on the web, so it’s natural for us to integrate that specialty into our offering, particularly as we continue to build out relationships with big box retailers in the electronics vertical. This partnership provides best-in-class and category-specific technology, product data, and intelligence that will be an important differentiator as the recommendations and personalization space evolves.”

Technical Fit
CNET’s data and technology provide a unique extra layer of intelligence for recommendations and personalization. Whereas RichRelevance’s flagship personalization offering RichRecs™ works mostly from anonymous profiles of people’s browsing and buying behavior, Intelligent Cross-Sell adds deep product profiles that include specs, compatibilities, and merchandising rules. This combination of insight about people’s behavior and products’ attributes is unique in the marketplace.

Wave of Consolidation Within Personalization Space
Industry watchers predict that a wave of consolidation will hit product recommendations in 2011.  Writing in November 2010’s “What You Need to Know About Third-Party Recommendation Systems,”  Forrester Vice President, Principal Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru stated: “While the venture capital community gets credit for keeping afloat the number of recommendation engine offers that currently exist, the industry is saturated and the next 24 months should see less outside capital, which will mean the coming of a long-awaited industry shakeout.”

About RichRelevance
RichRelevance powers personalized shopping experiences for the world’s largest and most innovative retail brands, including Wal-Mart, Sears, Overstock.com and others. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who helped pioneer personalization at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase sales and effectively monetize site traffic by providing the most relevant products, content and offers to shoppers as they switch between web, store and mobile. RichRelevance has delivered more than $1 billion in attributable sales for its clients to date, and is accelerating these results with the introduction of a new form of personalized advertising called shopping media which allows brands to engage shoppers where it matters most – at the point of purchase on the largest retail sites in world. RichRelevance is located in San Francisco, with offices in Seattle and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.com.

About CNET Content Solutions
CNET Content Solutions, (www.cnetcontentsolutions.com), a division of CBS Interactive, is the world’s leading independent source of product information. With detailed content on more than 5 million technology products in 15 languages, CNET Content Solutions helps thousands of resellers and retailers convert shoppers into buyers every day. From standardized content delivery to hosted services and custom solutions, CNET Content Solutions empowers businesses of all sizes to maximize the value of product information to improve their customer experience and bottom line. Customers include more than 2,100 e-commerce partners and websites, including CDW, Computacenter, Dabs.com, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Insight, Microsoft, OfficeMax, PC World Business and Tech Data.