Content Recommendations API Beta
Release dates
Sandbox: May 04, 2026
Production: May 04, 2026
Summary
We are excited to announce the Open Beta of the Content Recommendations API, Arc XP's new personalization platform for media companies. Participating customers will receive six months of free access to the API (and an IFX integration used to ingest content) and can use it to power personalized site, app, and email experiences that drive deeper engagement with their audience.
This doc summarizes what's available today, what it takes to get started, and what's on the roadmap.
What's available in the initial release
The Content Recommendations API is a personalization service that learns from your content catalog and audience behavior to return ranked content recommendations on demand. Each customer operates with their own fully isolated recommendation model: content, audience data, and the trained model are never shared across tenants.
The initial release supports two core recommendation types:
Personalized recommendations for a user overall — given a user identifier, the API returns a ranked list of content items tailored to that user's interaction history. Ideal for a “For You” module on a home page or a personalized section in a newsletter.
“More like this” recommendations in the context of a specific piece of content — given both a user and an anchor article, the API returns items similar to the anchor but still personalized to the reader. Ideal for an end-of-article or in-article recirculation module.
Cold-start behavior is handled automatically. New or anonymous users receive popularity-weighted results until they accumulate interaction history, and newly published content is eligible for recommendations immediately based on its metadata, no special handling required on the customer's side.
What participating customers need to do
The API is the personalization backend only. To put recommendations in front of readers, each participating customer is responsible for two integration workstreams:
Connecting their Customer Data Platform (CDP) to send behavioral events (page views, clicks, shares, engaged reads, scroll depth, and similar signals) to the Collector API. A richer event stream produces stronger personalization. More information about the Collector API can be found here.
Building the front-end UI that surfaces recommendations to readers — for example, a “For You” module on the home page, a recirculation rail on article pages, or a personalized section in an email template. The API returns ranked content IDs; the customer hydrates them from their CMS and renders the experience. More information about the recommendations API can be found here.
Arc XP CMS customers can use an IFX recipe to wire up the content webhook end-to-end without custom code. Non-Arc XP CMS customers will need to build a direct integration from their CMS to the Collector API's content endpoint.
A full onboarding checklist is available on the Arc XP for Developer site.
What's coming next
This initial release is only the foundation and we have significant functionality slated for release over the coming weeks and months. Planned updates include additional filtering and personalization controls, stronger editorial controls, and deeper integration hooks. Customers who join the beta now will benefit from those additions as they ship, within their six-month free access window.
Getting Started
Talk with your Technical Account Manager about enrolling in this beta. The free access beta is limited to customers who begin their beta engagement in May 2026.