Chegg 2015 Annual Report Download - page 45

Table of Contents
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Textbook Buyback. We offer students, on behalf of our fulfillment partner Ingram, the ability to sell us their textbooks,
even if they were not originally purchased from us, and in turn those textbooks are offered to other students for purchase or
rent, or sold to wholesalers. Students provide us with the ISBN of each textbook they are willing to sell, and we let them know
how much we are willing to pay based on our real-time market driven algorithms. Ingram reimburses us the amounts we pay to
students for these purchases. If our offer is accepted, we provide a pre-printed label and shipping instructions.
Career
Internships. Internships are a highly effective way for students to gain work experience before graduation. In a recent
survey, 65% of companies that responded offered full-time jobs to interns. As of December 31, 2015, our internships
marketplace connects students to over 320,000 internships with more than 94,000 employers across the country. Students
search and apply for internships directly through our website. Students can upload their resume to be matched by us to
internship opportunities. Employers can post their internships and manage the process with our applicant tracking system. We
currently offer internships as a free service.
Brand Partnerships
We offer unique and compelling ways for brands with relevant products and services to reach and engage high school
and college students at important and memorable transition points in their lives, such as preparing for college, preparing for
back-to-school or as they approach graduation and prepare for a career or graduate school. We work closely with brands to
integrate their services and products with ours. Our brand advertising services include digital advertising on our platform,
product samples, white label integrations, discounts and other promotions shipped directly to students in our distinctive orange
Chegg boxes and experiential offerings that may include, for example, on-campus events, sponsorships and other brand
ambassador work. For the year ended December 31, 2015, we had advertising contracts with approximately 60 consumer
brands.
Technology and Platform Integration
Our technology is designed to create a connected learning platform that is built to enable our future growth at scale.
We employ technological innovations whenever possible to increase efficiency and scale in our business. Our products rely
upon and leverage the information underlying the Student Graph discussed in more detail below. We will continue to invest in
building technologies around our data, search and solutions. The key elements of our technology platform are:
Personalization and Merchandising Technology. We create a personalized experience for each student throughout
our connected learning platform, building awareness of our multiple services and also connecting them with
opportunities through third-party partners and brands. We are able to accomplish this personalization and
customization as a result of the Student Graph and our search technology.
Student Graph. Our Student Graph is the accumulation of the collective activity of students in our network.
Students provide us information each time they engage with our platform. The Student Graph also includes
information we access from public and private sources to integrate into our platform such as textbook
information, information about colleges and scholarship data. We are able to collect, organize and process
this information to algorithmically create a personalized experience for each student on our network.
Search. Search is an easy on-ramp for students to discover all of our services. Students can search by book,
ISBN, author’s name or course. Most students come to us for textbook rentals, and in our search results we
not only provide the relevant textbook, but also begin to build awareness of our other services. For instance,
when a student searches for a textbook, we can also expose that student to tutors, Expert Answers, and
Textbook Solutions that are relevant to that textbook. We may also display a free Chegg Study offer where
we have Textbook Solutions for that textbook. We also provide personalized search results based on
information in the Student Graph.
Data Sourcing and Graph Technology. Not all information relevant to students on our platform is made available
by service, product, list or user-input. Therefore, we have developed proprietary technologies to collect disparate,
distributed sets of data. For example, we access data from public and private sources to integrate into our platform
to inform our decisions about our textbook catalog and pricing.