System and method for targeted distribution of advertising without disclosure of personally identifiable informantion

• US 20050060742A1
• Filed: 07/23/2004
• Published: 03/17/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 09/15/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Time Warner Cable Enterprises LLC (Charter Communications Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Time Warner Cable Enterprises LLC (Charter Communications Incorporated)
• Inventors: Santangelo, Bryan, Gonder, Tom, Jordan, Brad, Riedl, Steve, Urdang, Erik
• Granted Patent: US 8,571,931 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/34
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0255 based on user history
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0258 Registration
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0264 based upon schedule
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0272 Period of advertisement exposure
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0276 Advertisement creation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0277 Online advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2407 Monitoring of transmitted content, e.g. distribution time, number of downloads arrangements for monitoring programmes for broadcast or for distribution combined with broadcast H04H20/14
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/25883 being end-user demographical data, e.g. age, family status or address arrangements for identifying locations of users in broadcast systems H04H60/52
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/26258 for generating a list of items to be played back in a given order, e.g. playlist, or scheduling item distribution according to such list retrieval of multimedia data based on playlists G06F16/40
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2668 Creating a channel for a dedicated end-user group, e.g. insertion of targeted commercials based on end-user profiles information retrieval from the Internet by querying with filtering and personalisation G06F16/9535; arrangements for replacing or switching information during the broadcast H04H20/10; push services over packet-switching network H04L12/1859; adaptation of message content in packet-switching networks H04L51/063
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2747 Remote storage of video programs received via the downstream path, e.g. from the server
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44222 Analytics of user selections, e.g. selection of programs or purchase activity monitoring of user selections in data processing systems G06F11/34; arrangements for monitoring the user's behaviour or opinions in broadcast systems H04H60/33
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4532 involving end-user characteristics, e.g. viewer profile, preferences monitoring of user activities for profile generation for accessing a video database G06F16/739; user profiles in network data switching protocols H04L67/306; processing of user preferences or user profiles in wireless networks H04W8/18
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6582 Data stored in the client, e.g. viewing habits, hardware capabilities, credit card number arrangements where receivers interact with the broadcast H04H20/38
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6587 Control parameters, e.g. trick play commands, viewpoint selection
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/84 Generation or processing of descriptive data, e.g. content descriptors systems specially adapted for using meta-information in broadcast systems H04H60/73
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/854 Content authoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8543 using a description language, e.g. Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding Expert Group [MHEG], eXtensible Markup Language [XML] information retrieval of semistructured data, the underlying structure being taken into account, e.g. mark-up language structure data G06F16/80
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 : Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests

Abstract

The present invention discloses a system and method for providing targeted advertising in a television distribution system, without the disclosure of personally identifiable information. The system of the present invention comprises an advertisement management system (AMS) operative to monitor the state of one or more clients in the television distribution system and determine when a advertisement is required. The AMS is operative to select one or more features that do not comprise personally identifiable information from a feature repository. The system also comprises an advertisement selection system (ADS) operative to receive the one or more features from the AMS and select an advertisement targeted according to the one or more features.

Claims

1. A system for providing targeted advertising in a television distribution system, the system comprising:

an advertisement management system (AMS) operative to monitor the state of one or more clients in the television distribution system and determine when a advertisement is required, the AMS operative to select one or more features that do not comprise personally identifiable information from a feature repository; and

an advertisement selection system (ADS) operative to receive the one or more features from the AMS and select an advertisement targeted according to the one or more features.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the feature repository comprises one or more features for each subscriber.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein the feature repository is a relational database.

4. The system of claim 2 wherein each of the one or more features comprises a fact about a subscriber.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the AMS determines the identity of a given client from the one or more clients on the basis of an address for the given client'"'"'s set top terminal.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein the address is a MAC address.

7. The system of claim 6 wherein the address is an IP address.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the AMS transmits a feature set comprising the one or more features.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the ADS selects an advertisement identifier and the ADM selects an advertisement from an advertisement repository for presentation to a subscriber on the basis of the advertisement identifier.

10. The system of claim 9 wherein the advertisement repository is a relational database.

11. The system of claim 1 wherein the television distribution system is selected from a group comprising a cable television system and a DBS system.

12. The system of claim 1 wherein the feature repository is selected from a group comprising a tab delimited data structure, a flat file data structure, an XML schema, a relational database, an object-oriented database and a hybrid object relational database.

13. A system for providing targeted advertising in a television distribution system, the system comprising:

a feature repository operative to maintain one or more features for each subscriber wherein each feature comprises a fact about a given subscriber;

an advertisement management system (AMS) operative to determine when a client requires an advertisement, the AMS operative to select one or more features that do not comprise personally identifiable information from the feature repository; and

an advertisement selection system (ADS) operative to receive the one or more features from the AMS and select an advertisement targeted according to the one or more features.

14. The system of claim 13 wherein the ADS transmits data identifying the selected advertisement to the ADM and wherein the ADM selects the advertisement from a content store according to the identifying data.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein the identifying data is canonical metadata.

16. The system of claim 13 wherein the feature repository comprises data from third party data sources.

17. A method for providing targeted advertising in a television distribution system, the method comprising:

receiving a request for an advertisement;

selecting one or more features that do not comprise personally identifiable information; and

selecting an advertisement according to the one or more selected features.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein receiving is performed by an advertisement management system (AMS).

19. The method of claim 17 comprising querying a feature repository to select one or more features that do not comprise personally identifiable information.

20. The method of claim 19 wherein querying comprises querying a relational database.

21. The method of claim 17 wherein selecting is performed by an advertisement selection system (ADS).

22. The method of claim 17 comprising selecting one or more features for each subscriber in the television distribution system.

23. The method of claim 22 wherein selecting comprises selecting one or more facts about a subscriber.

24. The method of claim 17 comprising determining the identity of a client in the television distribution system on the basis of an address for the client'"'"'s set top terminal.

25. The method of claim 24 wherein determining is conducted on the basis of a MAC address.

26. The method of claim 24 wherein determining is conducted on the basis of an IP address.

27. The method of claim 17 comprising transmitting a feature set comprising the one or more features.

28. The method of claim 17 comprising selecting an advertisement identifier and selecting an advertisement from an advertisement repository for presentation to a client on the basis of the advertisement identifier.

29. The method of claim 28 wherein selecting an advertisement comprises selecting from a relational database.

30. The method of claim 28 wherein selecting the advertisement identifier comprises selecting canonical metadata.

31. A method for providing targeting advertising in a television distribution system, the method comprising:

receiving a request for an advertisement by an advertisement management system (AMS);

querying a feature repository to select one or more features that do not comprise personally identifiable information; and

selecting an advertisement by an advertisement selection system (ADS) according to the one or more selected features.

32. A method for providing targeted advertising in a television distribution system, the method comprising:

receiving a request for a targeted advertisement from a client by an advertisement management system (AMS);

querying a feature repository and selecting a feature set comprising one or more features regarding the client that do not comprise personally identifiable information;

transmitting the feature set to an advertisement selection system (ADS);

selecting an advertisement identifier by the ADS according to the one or more features comprising the feature set;

transmitting the advertisement identifier to the ADM; and

selecting an advertisement by the ADM that corresponds to the advertisement identifier for display to the client.