Patent ID: 8453173
Filing Date: 2013-05-28
Classification: G06N,G06Q,H04H,H04N

Abstract:
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.