What if Wall Street traders ran Madison Avenue? I find myself asking this question because superior data is rendering Nielsen demographic ratings less and less relevant.
TheStreet.com's financial glossary defines 'Arbitage' in part as: "the technique of simultaneously buying at a lower price in one market and selling at a higher price in another market to make a profit on the spread between the prices." http://is.gd/sSzl.
Conceptually, marketers and their agencies have been doing this through the use of any number of syndicated or proprietary qualitative data. A program "skews" female or indexes at 120 for "professional/managerial" audience. This type of analysis wouldn't cut it in a Wall Street training manual. Financial "quants", as they're known (Get it? "Quant"), work with hard, cold facts. If your chances of exploiting a market inefficiency are >50% place the bet.
The television marketplace is naturally inefficient due to supply/demand and an imperfect currency. Considering today's data capabilities the arbitrage opportunities are enormous. On Wall Street your dollar and my dollar are equal. Commercial inventory is never worth the same to all advertisers. It is sold based on entirely generic, increasingly less relevant demos.
I think a good quant could slay 'em during the network upfront season.
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