Patent ID: 8645190

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by one or more data processing apparatus, from a requestor a plurality of features of a particular content item to be published in a particular physical publication, each feature affecting a price of publishing the particular content item in the particular physical publication, the plurality of features including physical features of the particular content item; identifying, by the one or more data processing apparatus, physical features of a plurality of content items previously received from a plurality of requestors and previously published in a plurality of physical publications by a plurality of publishers, wherein each of the plurality of previously published content items is associated with an actual price previously accepted by a corresponding publisher for publishing the previously published content item in a corresponding physical publication; comparing, by the one or more data processing apparatus, the physical features of the particular content item with physical features of the plurality of previously published content items to identify one or more previously published content items of the plurality of previously published content items that have at least one physical feature that is substantially similar to at least one physical feature of the particular content item, wherein the comparing includes dividing the plurality of physical publications into groups; based on the comparing, determining, by the one or more data processing apparatus, a predicted price to publish the particular content item in the particular physical publication, the determining including performing support vector regression analysis based on radial basis function kernels on the groups and minimizing an error between the predicted price and actual prices previously accepted by one or more of the plurality of publishers for publishing the one or more previously published content items that have at least one physical feature that is substantially similar to at least one physical feature of the particular content item, wherein one or more arguments of the support vector regression analysis correspond to one or more of the physical features of the particular content item and the physical features of the one or more previously published content items of the plurality of previously published content items, and an output of the support vector regression analysis comprises the predicted price; and providing, by the one or more data processing apparatus, the predicted price to the requestor.