This week I read an article on how Netflix offered a $1 million dollar prize associated with a contest to improve its movie recommendation system by at least 10 percent.

I assume everyone knows who Netflix is and how they work, but in case you don’t it is an online DVD movie rental business. Customers create accounts and pay monthly fees to receive DVDs through the mail. When finished viewing the movie, the customer mails the DVD back to Netflix and Netflix mails out another movie that is on the customer’s movie wish list.

A company with a subscription based business model, Netflix needs to focus on keeping customers signed up with their service to grow their business. The recommendation system is one means to accomplish this. When customers provide feedback on how much they like a movie they rented, the recommendation system provides additional movie suggestions for that customer. If the recommendation system works and accurately suggests new movies to the customer that they might not have known about, then the customer is more likely to continue with their subscription.

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Since launching in 2004, LeadPoint has provided a single, secure and highly liquid market where lead buyers are able to purchase real-time data and consumer initiated voice leads from top direct marketers across multiple verticals. In overseeing each transaction, LeadPoint insures that the highest level of integrity exists. For the lead buyer, this means offering transparency into the likelihood that a lead will convert. For the lead seller, this means rewarding with greater payouts campaigns that historically generate higher converting leads for our buyers.

The LeadClass Quality System is the instrument that ensures integrity for both buyers and sellers. It accomplishes this by providing buyers within the ability to price their orders based on the answers to the following three performance drivers.

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There are four primary advertising campaigns used to generate Internet leads. These include:

1. Pay Per Click
2. Organic Search
3. Display Advertising
4. Email Marketing

Pay per click
In this model advertisers generate leads typically by purchasing keyword phrases on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. When consumers look for a service and enter in the purchased phrase in the search field, the ad from the direct marketer shows up within a paid search section on the page. The advertiser pays the search engine a fee each time the listing is clicked.

For Google, this is generally the top three placements on a page or additional listing on the right side of the page. Consumers who click on these pages are taken to a web page created by the advertiser where they are encouraged to enter their information to be contacted about the service they are interested in.

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