ADVERTISEMENT REVENUE SHARING FOR DISTRIBUTED VIDEO

• US 20070130015A1
• Filed: 02/02/2007
• Published: 06/07/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/15/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Steven Starr, William Luckett
• Original Assignee: Steven Starr, William Luckett
• Inventors: Starr, Steven, Luckett, William
• Application Number:
  US11/670,713
• Publication Number:
  US 20070130015A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14.460
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0247 Calculate past, present or future revenues
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2547 Third Party Billing, e.g. billing of advertiser
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44204 Monitoring of content usage, e.g. the number of times a movie has been viewed, copied or the amount which has been watched monitoring of user activities for profile generation for accessing a video database G06F16/739; protecting generic digital content where the protection is independent of the precise nature of the content G06F21/10; arrangements for monitoring the use made of the broadcast services in broadcast systems H04H60/31
• 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 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/858 Linking data to content, e.g. by linking an URL to a video object, by creating a hotspot

Abstract

A video distribution method modifies video to incorporate a tag that associates the video with an advertisement and facilitates payment of a share of advertising revenue to an owner of the video when the video and/or its associated advertisement are displayed at a client device.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

storing a video on a server for distribution over a data network, the video having an owner;

receiving a request from an advertiser to associate the video with an advertisement;

generating a tag for the video in response to the request, the tag identifying an association of the advertisement with the video, and the tag further including data to facilitate an automated payment of a share of revenue for the advertisement to the owner of the video; and

persistently associating the tag with the video such that the tag remains associated with the video after the video is distributed from the server.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

receiving a request for the video from a device connected to the data network; and

transmitting the video and the tag from the server to the device.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising storing a local copy of the video with the tag on the device.

4. The method of claim 2 wherein transmitting the video and the tag includes transmitting an electronic mail containing the video.

5. The method of claim 2 wherein transmitting the video and the tag includes transmitting the video as an instant messaging attachment.

6. The method of claim 2 wherein transmitting the video includes transmitting the video through an affiliate distributor.

7. The method of claim 2 wherein transmitting the video includes transmitting the video through a third party.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the tag identifies an association of a plurality of advertisements with the video, wherein the video can be dynamically associated with one of the plurality of advertisements.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising hosting an online auction for a right to associate an advertisement with a video, receiving a winning bid in the online auction from the advertiser, and permitting the advertiser to send the request to associate the advertisement with the video.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising rendering the video on a device, whereby the tag is accessed to identify the advertisement and display the advertisement on the device.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the tag is accessed to initiate a payment of the share of revenue for the advertisement to the owner of the video.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the payment is initiated only upon viewing at least a substantial portion of the video.

13. The method of claim 11 wherein the payment is initiated only upon viewing at least a substantial portion of the advertisement.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein the tag includes additional data to facilitate an automated payment of a second share of revenue for the advertisement to an operator of the server that stores the video.

15. The method of claim 1 further comprising storing the advertisement for distribution over the data network.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein the advertisement is stored by the advertiser.

17. The method of claim 15 wherein the advertisement is stored by a video distribution server.

18. A computer program product embodied on a computer readable medium that, when executing on one or more computing devices, performs the steps of:

storing a video on a server for distribution over a data network, the video having an owner;

receiving a request from an advertiser to associate the video with an advertisement;

generating a tag for the video in response to the request, the tag identifying an association of the advertisement with the video, and the tag further including data to facilitate an automated payment of a share of revenue for the advertisement to the owner of the video; and

persistently associating the tag with the video such that the tag remains associated with the video after the video is distributed from the server.

19. The computer program product of claim 18 further comprising code that performs the steps of:

receiving a request for the video from a device connected to the data network; and

transmitting the video and the tag from the server to the device.

20. The computer program product of claim 19 further comprising code that performs the step of storing a local copy of the video with the tag on the device.