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Here’s another one of those headlines that captures attention for all the wrong reasons: “Japanese scientists have devised a mathematical formula that can predict the box office performance of a movie based on the level of related activity on social networks and other websites before and during its release.”
I’ve had the opportunity to read the paper, and while the headline isn’t wrong, it’s really just one part of what could be a very important formula for determining and measuring success (or failure) of integrated advertising campaign efforts. Here’s what scientists, led by Professor Akira Ishii from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Physics at Tottori University, really put together:
A mathematical model for the ‘hit’ phenomenon in entertainment within a society is presented as a stochastic process of human dynamics interactions. The model uses only the advertisement budget time distribution as an input, and word-of-mouth (WOM), represented by posts on social network systems, is used as data to make a comparison with the calculated results. The unit of time is days. TheWOM distribution in time is found to be very close to the revenue distribution in time. Calculations for the Japanese motion picture market based on the mathematical model agree well with the actual revenue distribution in time.
Associate Creative Director at bloomfield knoble