Inventory and revenue maximization method and system
View Patent ↗A method is provided for enterprise management and bundling of radio, outdoor and entertainment inventory to achieve maximum revenue on perishable products. An electronic data-mart 110 or central information storage and data processing system is established to collect influencing factors for the probability and price sensitivity of a particular advertising buyer 120 . The data-mart 110 also collects business rules for inventory scaling, available inventory to sell, budget (goal) information, advertiser payment history, and station performance data to feed to a scenario planner 130 . Once three or more variables exist, inventory and pricing fuzzy logic algorithms create scenario plans to present the most profitable bundle of offerings. The scenarios are typically pre-approved although presented to the local business units 150 for an abnormality failsafe. Once processed by the local business units 150 , the scenarios are presented to the advertising buyer 120 . Negotiations typically take place which cause for the process to restart. The main systems that interact to build these scenarios are: an enterprise data-mart 110 , a scenario planner 130 , a performance measure system 170 , a rate or yield management subsystem 160 , a traffic and accounts receivable system 180 and a similarly configured local inventory booking system 190 . A business rules engine provides the local rule definitions for scaling inventory and price to provide for the most profitable combination.
1. A computer-implemented process for inventory management comprising:
identifying existing advertising units, that are unsold inventory and available to offer for sale
obtaining a history of a buyer with respect to purchases of like advertising units if any;
assigning a probability that the buyer will make a purchase from the unsold inventory;
receiving from the buyer criteria about the buyer's purchase requirements;
obtaining available advertising inventory information;
obtaining prices for said advertising units from a revenue maximization system based on at least the probability and available inventory; and
generating at least two packaged advertising offers by executing program instructions in a computer system, the packaged advertising offers comprising a plurality of advertising units based on said criteria obtained from said buyer, wherein the buyer's criteria includes a target number of people and target frequency of exposure to the advertisement units, and wherein said at least two offers meet the buyer's criteria and reflect said available inventory and said prices.
2. The process according to claim 1 , wherein said buyer's purchase requirements further includes at least one requirement selected from the group consisting of marketplace, population of the marketplace, performance measurements, price, demographics, psycho graphics, number of available advertising units and day parts.
3. The process according to claim 1 , wherein said obtaining said prices includes using inventory scaling, available inventory of advertising units to sell, budgetary goal information, and buyer payment history.
4. A computer-implemented process for advertisement inventory management comprising:
identifying an opportunity to purchase advertisement units;
obtaining a history of a buyer with respect to purchases of like advertisement units, if any;
receiving from the buyer criteria about purchase requirements of the buyer;
obtaining available advertisement inventory information;
obtaining prices for said advertisement units from a revenue maximization system using a probability that the buyer will accept an offer from available inventory; and
generating at least one scenario by executing program instructions in a computer system, the scenario comprising a plurality of advertisement units based on said criteria obtained from said buyer, wherein the buyer's criteria includes a target number of people and target frequency people that will be exposed to the advertisement units, and wherein said at least one scenario meets the buyer's criteria and reflects said available inventory and said prices.
5. The process according to claim 4 , wherein said buyer's purchase requirements includes at least one requirement of the selected from the group consisting of marketplace, population, target number and frequency of people exposed to said advertisement units, performance measurements, price, demographics, psycho graphics, number of available units and day parts.
6. The process according to claim 4 , wherein said obtaining prices further includes advertisement inventory scaling, available inventory of advertisement units to sell, budgetary goal information, and purchaser payment history.