Estimating demographic compositions of television audiences from audience similarities
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A system, comprising:
- a data processing apparatus; and
software stored on a computer storage apparatus and comprising instructions executable by the data processing apparatus and upon such execution cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising;
accessing ratings data describing, for each of a plurality of first channel time blocks, demographic characteristics of a viewing audience of the channel time block;
generating for the first channel time blocks, a demographic data structure from the ratings data, the demographic data structure specifying, for each demographic characteristic and first channel time block, a value proportional to a number of viewers having the demographic characteristic that are determined to have viewed the first channel time block;
accessing segment data describing, for each of the plurality of first channel time blocks and a plurality of second channel time blocks for which demographic characteristics are not described by the ratings data, segment characteristics of a viewing audience of the channel time blocks, the segment data being data determined independently from the ratings data;
generating, for the first and second channel time blocks, a segment data structure from the segment data, the segment data structure specifying, for each segment characteristic and channel time block, a value proportional to a number of viewers having the segment characteristic that are determined to have viewed the channel time block;
for each of the second channel time blocks;
determining, from the segment data, respective similarity measures that measure the similarity of the second channel time block to each of the first channel time blocks;
determining, for each of the demographic characteristics, a respective central tendency value of the values that correspond to the demographic characteristic that are stored in the demographic data structure;
for each of the demographic characteristics, identifying first and second subsets of first channel time blocks, the first subset of first channel time blocks having values that meet a threshold with respect to the respective central tendency value of the demographic characteristic, and the second subset of the first channel time blocks having values that do not meet the threshold with respect to the respective central tendency value of the demographic characteristic;
for each of the demographic characteristics, selecting respective first channel time blocks from the second subset of first channel time blocks; and
determining estimated ratings data describing demographic characteristics of a viewing audience of the second channel time block from the respective similarity measures and the demographic characteristics of the selected first channel time blocks.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for estimating demographic compositions of television audiences from audience similarities. In an aspect, pairwise cosine similarities of segment of viewers of rated and unrated television programs are determined, demographic information of rated programs is attributed to the unrated programs from the cosine similarity measures and demographic information for the rated programs.
129 Citations
21 Claims
-
1. A system, comprising:
-
a data processing apparatus; and software stored on a computer storage apparatus and comprising instructions executable by the data processing apparatus and upon such execution cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising; accessing ratings data describing, for each of a plurality of first channel time blocks, demographic characteristics of a viewing audience of the channel time block; generating for the first channel time blocks, a demographic data structure from the ratings data, the demographic data structure specifying, for each demographic characteristic and first channel time block, a value proportional to a number of viewers having the demographic characteristic that are determined to have viewed the first channel time block; accessing segment data describing, for each of the plurality of first channel time blocks and a plurality of second channel time blocks for which demographic characteristics are not described by the ratings data, segment characteristics of a viewing audience of the channel time blocks, the segment data being data determined independently from the ratings data; generating, for the first and second channel time blocks, a segment data structure from the segment data, the segment data structure specifying, for each segment characteristic and channel time block, a value proportional to a number of viewers having the segment characteristic that are determined to have viewed the channel time block; for each of the second channel time blocks; determining, from the segment data, respective similarity measures that measure the similarity of the second channel time block to each of the first channel time blocks; determining, for each of the demographic characteristics, a respective central tendency value of the values that correspond to the demographic characteristic that are stored in the demographic data structure; for each of the demographic characteristics, identifying first and second subsets of first channel time blocks, the first subset of first channel time blocks having values that meet a threshold with respect to the respective central tendency value of the demographic characteristic, and the second subset of the first channel time blocks having values that do not meet the threshold with respect to the respective central tendency value of the demographic characteristic; for each of the demographic characteristics, selecting respective first channel time blocks from the second subset of first channel time blocks; and determining estimated ratings data describing demographic characteristics of a viewing audience of the second channel time block from the respective similarity measures and the demographic characteristics of the selected first channel time blocks. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
-
-
14. A computer implemented method performed by a data processing apparatus, comprising:
-
accessing, by the data processing apparatus ratings, data describing, for each of a plurality of first channel time blocks, demographic characteristics of a viewing audience of the channel time block; generating, by the data processing apparatus and for the first channel time blocks, a demographic data structure from the ratings data, the demographic data structure specifying, for each demographic characteristic and first channel time block, a value proportional to a number of viewers having the demographic characteristic that are determined to have viewed the first channel time block; accessing, by the data processing apparatus ratings, segment data describing, for each of the plurality of first channel time blocks and a plurality of second channel time blocks for which demographic characteristics are not described by the ratings data, segment characteristics of a viewing audience of the channel time blocks; generating, for the first and second channel time blocks, a segment data structure from the segment data, the segment data structure specifying, for each segment characteristic and channel time block, a value proportional to a number of viewers having the segment characteristic that are determined to have viewed the channel time block; for each of the second channel time blocks; determining, by the data processing apparatus and from the segment data structure, respective similarity measures that measure the similarity of the second channel time block to each of the first channel time blocks; determining, by the data processing apparatus and for each of the demographic characteristics, a respective central tendency value of the values that correspond to the demographic characteristic that are stored in the demographic data structure; for each of the demographic characteristics, identifying first and second subsets of first channel time blocks, the first subset of first channel time blocks having values that meet a threshold with respect to the respective central tendency value of the demographic characteristic, and the second subset of the first channel time blocks having values that do not meet the threshold with respect to the respective central tendency value of the demographic characteristic; for each of the demographic characteristics, selecting, by the data processing apparatus, respective first channel time blocks from the second subset of first channel time blocks; and determining, by the data processing apparatus ratings, estimated ratings data describing demographic characteristics of a viewing audience of the second channel time block from the respective similarity measures and the demographic characteristics of the selected first channel time blocks. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
-
-
21. A non transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed by a data processing apparatus, cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations, comprising:
-
accessing ratings data describing, for each of a plurality of first channel time blocks, demographic characteristics of a viewing audience of the channel time block; generating for the first channel time blocks, a demographic data structure from the ratings data, the demographic data structure specifying, for each demographic characteristic and first channel time block, a value proportional to a number of viewers having the demographic characteristic that are determined to have viewed the first channel time block; accessing segment data describing, for each of the plurality of first channel time blocks and a plurality of second channel time blocks for which demographic characteristics are not described by the ratings data, segment characteristics of a viewing audience of the channel time blocks, the segment data being data determined independently from the ratings data; generating, for the first and second channel time blocks, a segment data structure from the segment data, the segment data structure specifying, for each segment characteristic and channel time block, a value proportional to a number of viewers having the segment characteristic that are determined to have viewed the channel time block; for each of the second channel time blocks; determining, from the segment data, respective similarity measures that measure the similarity of the second channel time block to each of the first channel time blocks; determining, for each of the demographic characteristics, a respective central tendency value of the values that correspond to the demographic characteristic that are stored in the demographic data structure; for each of the demographic characteristics, identifying first and second subsets of first channel time blocks, the first subset of first channel time blocks having values that meet a threshold with respect to the respective central tendency value of the demographic characteristic, and the second subset of the first channel time blocks having values that do not meet the threshold with respect to the respective central tendency value of the demographic characteristic; for each of the demographic characteristics, selecting respective first channel time blocks from the second subset of first channel time blocks; and determining estimated ratings data describing demographic characteristics of a viewing audience of the second channel time block from the respective similarity measures and the demographic characteristics of the selected first channel time blocks.
-
Specification