Modeling page views across multiple websites with an application to Internet reach and frequency prediction

In this study, we develop a multivariate generalization of the negative binomial distribution (NBD). This new model has potential application to situations where separate NBDs are correlated, such as for page views across multiple websites. In turn, our page view model is used to predict the audience for Internet advertising campaigns. For very large Internet advertising schedules, a simple approximation to the multivariate model is also derived. In a test of nearly 3,000 Internet advertising schedules, the two new models are compared with some proprietary and nonproprietary models previously used for Internet advertising and are shown to be significantly more accurate.