DEVICE FOR MANAGING THE INSERTION OF COMPLEMENTARY DATA INTO MULTIMEDIA CONTENT STREAMS

• US 20080320073A1
• Filed: 06/12/2008
• Published: 12/25/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/19/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: MOBASSER, Bahman
• Granted Patent: US 8,171,131 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/202
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/103 Transmitter-side switching

Abstract

A device (D) is dedicated to managing multimedia content that is to be transmitted to communication terminals (T). This device (D) comprises management means (MM) tasked, when in the presence of a multimedia content stream to be transmitted, with determining in real time which complementary content should be inserted into selected points of said stream, from among a set of complementary content each associated with a preset profile and which may be at least partially contained within said stream, and depending on at least one criterion dealing with at least one portion of said profiles.

Claims

1. A device (D) for managing multimedia content that is to be transmitted to communication terminals (T), characterized in that it comprises management means (MM) configured, when in the presence of a multimedia content stream to be transmitted, to determine in real time which complementary content should be inserted into selected points of said stream, from among a set of complementary content each associated with a preset profile and which may be at least partially contained within said stream, and depending on at least one criterion dealing with at least one portion of said profiles,

said management means (MM) being configured to determine said complementary content to be inserted based on at least one criterion dealing with at least one portion of said profiles and of information representing “

approximate numbers”

of users who are using certain pieces of multimedia content of said stream at that time.

2. A device according to claim 1, characterized in that said management means (MM) are configured, when choosing a first piece of complementary content to insert in a selected point in a stream already occupied by a second piece of complementary content, to order the replacement of said second piece of complementary content by said first piece of complementary content.

3. A device according to claim 1, characterized in that said management means (MM) are configured to select each piece of complementary content to insert into a given stream from among a subset of complementary content chosen from among multiple subsets respectively associated with queues, depending on at least one selected criterion corresponding to said selected subset.

4. A device according to claim 1, characterized in that said profiles include information selected from a group comprising at least a target geographic location, a pricing plan, programming schedules, at least one target identifier, at least one part of a user profile, one content duration, and an approximate number of target users.

5. A device according to claim 1, characterized in that said criteria are chosen from a group comprising at least one geographic location criterion, one pricing criterion, one schedule criterion, one criterion of being on a list of identifiers, one criterion of matching at least one part of a user profile, one content duration criterion, and one criterion of the number of target users.

6. A device according to claim 1, characterized in that it comprises storage means (SM) configured to store at least some of said complementary content to be inserted due to matching their associated profiles.

7. A device according to claim 1, characterized in that at least some of said complementary content is advertising content.

8. A according to claim 1, characterized in that at least some of said complementary content is messages.

9. A content server (CS), characterized in that it comprises a management device (D) according to claim 1.