Data fusion from the media sellers perspective

Data fusion became the hot media topic of 2001. In a three month span the escalation in the discourse was remarkable. A December 2000 conference asked, “Will Fusion come to America?� By March 2001 conferences were devoted to evaluating the merits of the various techniques. What was driving this urgency? As in most cases, economics were a major impetus, and the same may now also be the major impediment. Prior to the recent downturn, strong advertiser demand inflated television CPM’s and increased clutter. The fractionalization of audiences across many new options only added to the problem. Advertisers demanded that agencies fine tune the television buying process, improve vehicle and program selection and manage costs. This situation led in part to the introduction of TV optimizers. Their utilization was an attempt to put all TV entities on a level playing field and, at least in theory, result in a broadcast neutral selection process.

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