Patent ID: 9363557
Filing Date: 2016-06-07
CPC Classification: H04N

Claim Text:
1. A computer-readable memory storing one or more programs, the one or more programs comprising instructions, which when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform steps, comprising: receiving from a plurality of heterogeneous data sources, inhomogeneous data sets of differing data types and obtaining from the data sets viewership information for a designated item, wherein the inhomogeneous data sets include viewership information obtained from media ratings and measurement companies; for each data set, converting the obtained viewership information to a time series using a common time axis across the data sets, comparing each time series representation of each data set to one another to identify pattern discrepancies in the data sets, and for any of the data sets which appear to include untrustworthy data as determined from the comparison, normalizing said data sets which appear to include untrustworthy data to generate normalized data sets through comparisons with historical data sets concerning viewership information for data sources represented in said data sets which appear to include untrustworthy data, and using the time series as an alignment to combine data from two or more of the data sets to generate a fused data set; for those of the data sets deemed to include trustworthy viewership information and the normalized data sets, factoring each respective data set to determine a relationship between the respective data set and historical measures of the viewership information; and forecasting future viewership of the designated item using a forecasting model that includes coefficients identified by the factoring, the coefficients allowing one data set to be substituted for another data set.