DATA MINING TO DETERMINE ONLINE USER RESPONSES TO BROADCAST MESSAGES

• US 20120123854A1
• Filed: 11/11/2011
• Published: 05/17/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 11/16/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Disney Enterprises Incorporated (The Walt Disney Company)
• Original Assignee: Disney Enterprises Incorporated (The Walt Disney Company)
• Inventors: Witkin, Andrew P., Anderson, John, Witkin, Sharon, Davies, Cameron, Dange, Anjali, Campo-Rembado, Miguel
• Granted Patent: US 10,248,960 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14.43
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0244 Optimization
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0246 Traffic

Abstract

In a networked system, a method and apparatus for measuring advertising effectiveness involves broadcasting an advertisement at a broadcast time, monitoring at least one social network or other online forum following the broadcast time, filtering social network traffic to identify messages, search engine queries to identify queries, or other traffic entries, that appear to be responsive to the broadcast advertisement, determining a time of initiation for at least a plurality of entries that appear to be responsive to the broadcast advertisement, and determining at least one demographic for at least the plurality of the entries that appear to be responsive to the broadcast advertisement.

Claims

1. In a system wherein computing devices are used by users at a plurality of nodes at least to initiate messages that flow between nodes of the plurality of nodes, a method of measuring advertising effectiveness comprising:

monitoring at least one aggregate activity stream following a broadcast time of a broadcast advertisement, wherein an aggregate activity stream represents one or more messages sent by an aggregation of users that form a statistical group over which advertising effectiveness is to be measured;

filtering the at least one aggregate activity stream to identify messages that appear to be responsive to the broadcast advertisement; and

determining at least one demographic for at least the plurality of messages that appear to be responsive to the broadcast advertisement, thereby assessing advertising effectiveness for the at least one demographic.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one aggregate activity stream comprises messages that are social network traffic and monitoring comprises monitoring at least one social network following the broadcast time.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one aggregate activity stream comprises messages that are search queries and monitoring comprises monitoring at least one search engine query stream following the broadcast time.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein filtering the at least one aggregate activity stream to identify messages that appear to be responsive to the broadcast advertisement comprises:

determining a time of initiation for a message of the plurality of messages; and

filtering out such message if it has a time of initiation earlier than the broadcast time.

5. An advertising management system, comprising:

a server for monitoring user messages;

a data mining module for extracting user activity, from the monitored user messages, that is user activity determined to be reactions to a previously broadcast advertisement;

storage for the extracted user activity; and

a selector for selecting one of a plurality of possible broadcast advertisements, based on the extracted user activity.

6. The advertising management system of claim 5, wherein the user messages comprise messages in a social network system.

7. The advertising management system of claim 5, wherein the user messages comprise search queries submitted to a search engine.

8. The advertising management system of claim 5, wherein the user messages comprise one or more of social media messages, search queries, and/or requests for one or more web assets.

9. The advertising management system of claim 8, wherein the requests for one or more web assets comprise requests for web assets identified by URLs stored in a list of monitored URLs, wherein at least one of the monitored URLs is associated with at least one previously broadcast advertisement.

10. The advertising management system of claim 9, wherein the previously broadcast advertisement is an advertisement for movie and the list of monitored URLs includes URLs for web pages containing informational materials, promotional materials, or a trailer related to the advertised movie.

11. The advertising management system of claim 5, wherein the previously broadcast advertisement is an advertisement conveyed over one or more of television, radio, a billboard, and/or Internet advertising media, and wherein the selected one of the plurality of possible broadcast advertisements is an advertisement to be conveyed over one or more of television, radio, a billboard, and/or Internet advertising media, such that the media for the previously broadcast advertisement and the selected one of the plurality of possible broadcast advertisements can be conveyed using distinct media.

12. The advertising management system of claim 5, further comprising a message type analyzer to analyze messages and at least estimate or determine which messages are from mechanical sources and which messages are from non-mechanical sources, a non-mechanical source being a source that includes a human response or reaction to the previously broadcast advertisement following in time and that the advertising management system determines is in response to the user having actually observed the previously broadcast advertisement.

13. The advertising management system of claim 12, further comprising logic for taking an action based on statistical measures of aggregates of messages, wherein an action taken for messages from mechanical sources is distinct from an action taken for messages from non-mechanical sources.

14. The advertising management system of claim 5, further comprising a message demographics analyzer to analyze messages and at least estimate or determine a demographic for a message based on message content.

15. The advertising management system of claim 5, further comprising a message type analyzer to analyze messages and at least estimate or determine which messages are from which class of a plurality of classes of sources, wherein a source class for a message is determined from the message content and/or the message header.

16. The advertising management system of claim 5, wherein a plurality of broadcast advertisements are usable as prior actions for subsequent data mining.

17. The advertising management system of claim 5, wherein the selector operates within a response time that users who send messages would consider a real-time response time.

18. An advertising management system, comprising:

a server for monitoring user messages;

a data mining module for extracting user activity, from the monitored user messages, that is determined to be reactions to a prior action;

a message type analyzer for analyzing the monitored user messages and determine a message type between mechanical source messages and non-mechanical source messages, a non-mechanical source message being from a source that includes a human response to the prior action;

storage for extracted user activity that comprise data about the monitored user messages; and

a selector for one of a plurality of possible broadcast advertisements, based on the extracted user activity, adjusted based on message types.

19. The advertising management system of claim 18, wherein the prior action is a broadcasting of a message.

20. The advertising management system of claim 18, wherein the user messages comprise one or more of social media messages, search queries, and/or requests for one or more web assets.

21. The advertising management system of claim 20, wherein the requests for one or more web assets comprise requests for web assets identified by URLs stored in a list of monitored URLs, wherein at least one of the monitored URLs is associated with at least one previously broadcast message.

22. The advertising management system of claim 21, wherein the previously broadcast message is an advertisement for movie and the list of monitored URLs includes URLs for web pages containing informational materials, promotional materials, or a trailer related to the advertised movie.

23. The advertising management system of claim 18, further comprising a message demographics analyzer to analyze messages and at least estimate or determine a demographic for a message based on message content.

24. The advertising management system of claim 18, further comprising a message type analyzer to analyze messages and at least estimate or determine which messages are from which class of a plurality of classes of sources, wherein a source class for a message is determined from the message content and/or the message header.

25. An advertising management system, comprising:

a server for monitoring user messages;

a data mining module for extracting user activity, from the monitored user messages, that is determined to be reactions to a previously broadcast advertisement; and

storage for extracted user activity that comprise data about the monitored user messages; and

logic for altering one or more of a direction of broadcast content, a creative direction of a show, and/or a camera angle based on results of extracted user activity.