Comparisons
Personalization, segmentation, targeting, recommendation, and customization name different layers of one loop. Each page gives a term a plain definition and a single distinguishing test.
- Personalization vs customization
Customization is a change the user makes through explicit settings; personalization is a change the system makes from data about them. The distinguishing test is who chose.
- Personalization vs targeting
Targeting and personalization pull in opposite directions. Targeting chooses which people receive a fixed message; personalization chooses what a given person sees. The test is which one varies: the audience, or the content.
- Recommendation vs personalization
Recommendation is one way to personalize: it selects or ranks catalog items predicted to be relevant. Personalization is the broader goal of adapting an experience for a person or context, and recommendation is a single mechanism inside it.
- Segmentation vs individualization
Segmentation groups people by shared attributes or behavior. Individualization is personalization whose decision unit is a single person, so two people in the same segment can get different experiences from the same logic.
- Propensity vs uplift modeling
A propensity model predicts how likely an action is. An uplift model predicts how much a treatment changes that action for a person. The difference decides who a campaign should actually spend on.
- A/B testing vs personalization vs bandits
A/B testing, personalization, and bandits all choose among variants, but they answer different questions: the best single variant for everyone, the best variant per person, or how to learn while serving. The distinction decides what you can conclude and what you can deliver.
- Real-time serving vs real-time decisioning
Real-time serving and real-time decisioning sound alike but differ in when the decision is computed. Serving is how fast a stored decision reaches the page; decisioning is whether the choice uses what the person is doing right now.
- CDP vs personalization engine vs marketing cloud
A customer data platform is the data foundation, a personalization engine is the decision layer, and a marketing cloud is a suite that bundles messaging and journeys with both. The three are sold together and converging, so most products now span several layers at once.