CELL-ALLOCATION IN LOCATION-SELECTIVE INFORMATION PROVISION SYSTEMS

• US 20120036034A1
• Filed: 08/29/2011
• Published: 02/09/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 03/04/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Moasis Global Corporation
• Original Assignee: Moasis Global Corporation
• Inventors: Golden, Steven, Golden, Ryan, Mullen, Jason
• Granted Patent: US 8,892,460 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/26.3
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0631 Resource planning, allocation, distributing or scheduling for enterprises or organisations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0205 Location or geographical consideration
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0254 based on statistics
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0261 based on user location
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0275 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/08 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/612 for unicast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/53 using third party service providers
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/021 Services related to particular areas, e.g. point of interest [POI] services, venue services or geofences
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/029 Location-based management or tracking services

Abstract

Systems and methods for allocating cells within a virtual grid to content providers according to various priority and selection schemes are used to target content delivery to information playback devices in a geographically and/or application selective manner. The priority schemes, geographical selectivity, and application selectivity of the system and methods of the invention allow a content provider to specifically target a desired demographic with high cost efficiency and flexibility.

Claims

1. A system for communicating content in a location-specific manner to information playback devices, the system comprising:

a location tracking system for determining the geographical location of at least a first information playback device and a second information playback device from signals transmitted from the first and second devices;

a transceiver for receiving positional information from the location tracking system;

at least one server in communication with the transceiver and having installed thereon software capable of dividing a geographical area into a virtual grid comprising a plurality of cells; and

a transmitter in communication with the at least one server and capable of transmitting (a) a first set of content to the first information playback device located in a first cell of the plurality of cells and (b) a second set of content to the second information playback device located in a second cell of the plurality of cells, wherein the first set of content differs from the second set of content and the first cell differs from the second cell.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the information playback devices are assigned to cells by the software based on the received positional information.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the software is capable of (a) accepting bids for a cell within the plurality of cells from at least a first content provider and a second content provider and (b) determining which content provider has submitted a winning bid for the cell.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the server comprises a database comprising files of content provided by at least a first content provider and a second content provider.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the first content provider can modify those files comprising the database that it provided, but not those files comprising the database that have been provided by the second content provider.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the first information playback device comprises a plurality of different applications, and the content provided to the first information playback device from the transmitter varies depending on the particular application running on the first information playback device.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the cells of the plurality of cells each have about the same dimensions.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the cells of the plurality of cells are defined by longitude and latitude.

9. A computer readable medium comprising software for:

dividing a geographical area into a virtual grid comprising a plurality of cells, accepting bids for a cell within the plurality of cells from at least a first content provider and a second content provider, obtaining content submitted from the content provider submitting a winning bid for the cell; and

transmitting at least of portion of the obtained content to an information playback device located in the cell.

10. A method comprising the steps of:

(a) dividing a geographical area into a virtual grid comprising a plurality of cells;

(b) accepting bids for a cell within the plurality of cell from at least a first content provider and a second content provider;

(c) obtaining content submitted from the content provider submitting a winning bid for the cell; and

(d) transmitting at least a portion of the obtained content to an information playback device located in the cell.