Interactive TV audience estimation and program rating in real-time using multi level tracking methods, systems and program products

• US 20020087969A1
• Filed: 12/28/2000
• Published: 07/04/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/2000
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Brunheroto, Jose, Zhang, Liang-Jie, Dettori, Paolo, Seidman, David I., Nogima, Julio, Schaffa, Frank A., Liu, Lurng-Kuo, Chernock, Richard S., Lipscomb, James S.
• Application Number:
  US09/749,670
• Publication Number:
  US 20020087969A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/13
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/38 Arrangements for distribution where lower stations, e.g. receivers, interact with the broadcast
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/93 which locates resources of other pieces of information, e.g. URL [Uniform Resource Locator]
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/33 Arrangements for monitoring the users' behaviour or opinions
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/73 using meta-information
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/25866 Management of end-user data customer care in data networks H04L41/5077
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44224 Monitoring of user activity on external systems, e.g. Internet browsing
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4622 Retrieving content or additional data from different sources, e.g. from a broadcast channel and the Internet web site content organization and management for information retrieval from the Internet G06F16/958; transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82; stock exchange data over packet-switching network H04L12/1804; push services including data channel over packet-switching network H04L12/1859
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8583 by creating hot-spots
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8586 by using a URL processing chained hypermedia data for information retrieval G06F16/94; information retrieval from the Internet by using URLs G06F16/955; URL in broadcast information H04H20/93; Web-based protocols H04L67/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests

Abstract

An interactive TV content creation tool imports video and other assets, including WebPages, Java script, etc., as a series of resources for interactive TV content creation for real time audience estimation and program ratings. A processing system embeds hyperlinks into one or more objects contained in a program frame as desired. Each hotlink has attributes. These attributes include shape, name, description and Z-order. The hotlink can have one of several shapes, including rectangle, ellipse and parallelogram. The hotlink types are included in an object tree which is displayed in a window to a creator. A hotlink type is selected in the hotlink tree, and a window displays a linked properties tab available for the selected object. There are several link types available; linking to a URL, another interactive TV content file, a video clip, an audio clip, an image, or a tracking action and transaction action. There are different parameters for different actions. One parameter is a tracking script. Another parameter is a tracking flag. The tracking flag can be set to follow different tracking modes. If the “enable global tracking” is chosen, a name/value pair “global=true” will be appended to the tracking script transmitted to the global tracking server through network. If the “enable local tracking” is chosen, a name/value pair “local=true” will be appended to the tracking script. The embedded tracking information can follow three multi-level tracking patterns (MTP): regular program viewing tracking, enhanced program viewing tracking, and per object granularity tracking. The viewer returns the script to a server which calculates audience estimation and program ratings for the interactive TV program.

Claims