Disclosed are systems and methods for behavioral modeling based on content genre and utilizing results for content recommendation and other network handling and storage of the content. Viewing events with respect to a content item are aggregated. An affinity is calculated based on the viewing events. Additional viewing events occurring during the delivery of the content item and associated with other content items are also selected. A sampling bonus is added to the affinity if these additional viewing events have a duration below a threshold and the other content items share a same genre as the content item.