Airtime Demand Forecasting
Raycom Media is one of the largest privately-owned local media companies in the United States. It owns and operates 65 television stations across the country, covering 16% of US households.
With a perishable inventory of advertising timeslots, Raycom Media has a slim and unforgiving window to maximize advertising revenue. It is necessary to predict demand and accurately set pricing for programming months in advance. Historically, however, pricing has been established solely by human intuition.
Challenges:
• Highly perishable inventory
• Demand and pricing needing to be established months in advance
• Need to automate a traditionally 100% manual process
Solutions:
• Incorporates feedback from experienced traffic and sales managers
• Identifies dozens of data points
• Utilizes Azure Machine Learning Studio and Azure SQL Databases.
Results:
• Calculates pricing based upon type of programming, market conditions, and the current state of inventory
• Integrates with other applications
• Calculates pricing 3-months in advance based upon type of programming, market conditions, and the current state of inventory