Conde Nast creates a new user experience using the AWS Cloud and Artificial Intelligence

Marco Viganò, CTO of Condé Nast Italy, and his team look after all things digital. The team takes care of everything from an infrastructure and development perspective that determines the delivery of content to its users. They develop tools intended to help Condé Nast brands and to provide innovative and quality services and content to its readers. They follow all the developments of the Condé Nast brands and take care of the technical implementation of websites and applications. As a digital team, they bridge the gap between production and marketing, and more broadly, between all parts of the business. Together, they decide on publishing strategies and tools that can help their brands.

Improve your time to market and reduce costs, thanks to the AWS cloud

Condé Nast had been using on-premises infrastructure for several years and decided to migrate to the public cloud. Their goal was to reach 30 million visitors and 250 million page views each month, and to offer innovative and quality content to its users. The company chose AWS primarily because as a system it has infinite possibilities. 

AWS Cloud not only allows us to accelerate our time to market, but also to achieve very important economic optimisation. In fact, AWS Cloud reduces infrastructure costs while allowing us to always be at the forefront of innovation and new technologies."

Marco Vigano, Chief Technology Officer, Conde Nast.

AI and Machine Learning to create an exceptional user experience

Condé Nast also wanted to offer its customers a personalised experience when using the different sites. The individual user’s browsing style and history would determine the content they encounter.

Condé Nast therefore set up Genius, its Artificial Intelligence system. Genius is a machine learning engine that analyses user navigation and delivers content in a different way. It offers content that is not only the results of the user's current browsing, but which is also calibrated on the basis of their past browsing.

Genius is built around 3 components:

• The first is a machine learning engine that analyses navigation and makes it possible to offer content, not just based on that user’s past navigation, but on the basis of similar navigation carried out by other users.
• The second component of Genius analyses images from Condé Nast's catalogue. This includes more than 10 million images that were not "tagged" correctly. Thanks to Genius, Condé Nast can recognise objects and people in images and offer images and galleries in a personalised and even more precise way, according to the habits and preferences of users.
• The third component of Genius is that which analyses the semantic content of the text and offers similar content based on the "mood".

Thus, Genius offered increasingly personalised and targeted content for the end user. Genius is constantly evolving and has made it possible to develop an even more effective and targeted advertising model.

Now, Marco Vigano’s team have become Machine Learning evangelists within the company. They provide marketing and product teams with important information on how to develop the site, and provide new browsing opportunities to their users.

Why AWS?

With Genius, Condé Nast uses the best of new technologies made available by the cloud. The idea for Genius was born with the possibility of constantly monitoring the evolution of the cloud infrastructure.

The more the Digital IT team deepened their knowledge, the more they went into detail, and the closer they got to meeting their needs. 

We chose AWS because it allowed us to change our infrastructure quickly and always be on the cutting edge. With AWS and its services, we can quickly implement our ideas."

Marco Vigano, Chief Technology Officer, Conde Nast.

Claranet, innovation partner on the AWS cloud

Condé Nast wanted to be supported in its migration project to AWS cloud by Claranet. The publisher was looking for a partner who had demonstrated its operational excellence. Claranet experts ensure that its operations deliver and comply with processes and workflows in accordance with AWS best practices. Condé Nast also wanted its partner's teams to be as technical as theirs, speak the same language as them and be able to bridge the gap with the development teams.

Claranet knows AWS well and helps us develop and experiment with the new services we want to implement on our sites. Its experts also suggest innovative ways to implement AWS services."

Marco Vigano, Chief Technology Officer, Conde Nast.