System for direct placement of commercial advertising, public service announcements and other content on electronic billboard displays
DC CAFCFirst Claim
Patent Images
1. A system permitting commercial advertisers to directly place video or still image advertisements at selected times and locations on a network of multiple electronic displays, said system comprising:
- a network including a plurality of electronic displays located in high traffic areas such as areas of high vehicular traffic, indoor and outdoor areas with high pedestrian traffic, movie theaters, restaurants, sports arenas and casinos;
at least one central information processing station including;
means permitting commercial advertising customers of the system to review a schedule of times and electronic display locations that are available for placement of advertisements and permitting customers to purchase available times at desired electronic display locations for placement of their advertising content;
means for receiving customer transmitted video or still image advertising content;
means for transmitting the advertising content received from the customer to the customer-selected electronic display location; and
means for driving each selected electronic display to display the customer'"'"'s advertising content at the customer-selected time.
11 Assignments
Litigations
2 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Commercial advertisers, such as consumer product companies and the advertising agents that represent them, directly access a network of thousands of large, high resolution electronic displays located in high traffic areas and directly send their own advertisements electronically to the network to be displayed at locations and times selected by the advertisers.
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Citations
74 Claims
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1. A system permitting commercial advertisers to directly place video or still image advertisements at selected times and locations on a network of multiple electronic displays, said system comprising:
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a network including a plurality of electronic displays located in high traffic areas such as areas of high vehicular traffic, indoor and outdoor areas with high pedestrian traffic, movie theaters, restaurants, sports arenas and casinos;
at least one central information processing station including;
means permitting commercial advertising customers of the system to review a schedule of times and electronic display locations that are available for placement of advertisements and permitting customers to purchase available times at desired electronic display locations for placement of their advertising content;
means for receiving customer transmitted video or still image advertising content;
means for transmitting the advertising content received from the customer to the customer-selected electronic display location; and
means for driving each selected electronic display to display the customer'"'"'s advertising content at the customer-selected time. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A system providing video or still image advertisements at selected times and locations on a network of multiple electronic displays, said system comprising:
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a network including a plurality of electronic displays located in high traffic areas such as areas of high vehicular traffic, indoor and outdoor areas with high pedestrian traffic, movie theaters, restaurants, sports arenas and casinos;
at least one central information processing station including;
means permitting advertising customers of the system to purchase time slots at selected electronic display locations for display of their advertising content;
means for transmitting customer advertising content to the selected electronic display locations; and
means for driving the electronic display at each selected location to display the customer'"'"'s advertising content at the selected time.
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12. A method of providing video or still image advertisements at selected times and locations on a network of multiple electronic displays that are located in high traffic areas such as areas of high vehicular traffic, indoor and outdoor areas with high pedestrian traffic, movie theaters, restaurants, sports arenas and casinos;
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permitting advertising customers of the system to purchase time slots at selected electronic display locations for display of their advertising content;
transmitting customer advertising content to the selected electronic display locations; and
driving the electronic display at each selected location to display the customer'"'"'s advertising content at the selected time.
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13. A system for presenting video or still-image content at selected times and locations on a networked connection of multiple electronic displays, said system comprising:
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a network interconnecting a plurality of electronic displays provided at various geographic locations;
means for scheduling the presentation of video or still-image content at selected time slots on selected electronic displays of said network and receiving said video or still-image content from a content provider;
transmission means in communication with said receiving means for communicating scheduled content to respective server devices associated with corresponding selected electronic displays of said network, each said associated device initiating display of said video or still-image content at selected times on a corresponding selected electronic display of said network. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47)
means linked to each electronic display at each location for verifying that scheduled content for display is presented at the intended time at the intended display and generating verification information pertaining thereto; and
,means for receiving and storing said verification information generated by each said verification means.
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29. The system of claim 28, wherein said verifying means includes a digital camera for recording the content appearing at its respective display.
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30. The system of claim 28, wherein a location of said electronic display includes a location having vehicular traffic, said system further including a traffic count recorder means linked to each electronic display for counting amount of traffic passing that electronic display during a particular time slot and generating traffic count information for receipt and storage by said storage means.
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31. The system of claim 30, further including a means for receiving said stored verification and traffic count information, analyzing said information and generating demographic information for reports to be sent to content providers after their content is displayed.
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32. The system of claim 31, wherein said video or still-image content includes an advertisement, said demographic information for reports comprising information including:
- a time of the advertisement, the content of the advertisement, the traffic count, and residence/median income information about those who may have viewed the advertisement.
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33. The system of claim 28, further including means for generating bills capable of being transmitted by phone lines to a content provider.
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34. The system of claim 13, wherein said electronic display is high resolution, full color images utilizing light emitting diodes (LED'"'"'s), said LEDs including an ultraviolet LED utilized for exciting a phosphor coating that produces light of a desired color spectrum.
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35. The system of claim 34, wherein said phosphor coating is selected to produce white light, said white light being passing through a band pass filter to produce said desired color spectrum.
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36. The system of claim 35, further including means for performing diagnostics and calibration of said electronic displays.
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37. The system of claim 36, wherein said diagnostics and calibration means includes one or more digital camera devices aimed at portions of said display, a portion of each digital camera'"'"'s image corresponding to a single pixel in the display, wherein said digital camera'"'"'s image is capable of detecting non-functioning or degraded LED'"'"'s.
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38. The system of claim 36, wherein said diagnostics and calibration means includes:
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means for iteratively causing the display of a color at each color LED at various power levels; and
,means for sensing the optical power output of each color LED for each power level, said calibrating including determining that each color LED has the same optical power output at each power level as other LED'"'"'s of the same color.
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39. The system of claim 36, wherein said diagnostics and calibration means includes a diode recalibration scaler mechanism for receiving information from the diagnostic information indicating the optical power output of each LED at the various power levels, and, including an associated automatic calibration LED look-up table for adjusting a power curve by which the LED will be driven in accordance with detected variances in LED output.
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40. The system of claim 36, wherein said diagnostics and calibration means includes utilizing one or more photodetector means located in close proximity to each LED in the display for measuring LED light output during diagnostic/calibration operations.
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41. The system of claim 36, wherein each pixel of said electronic display includes three colored LED'"'"'s, said diagnostics and calibration means operating with an all white display, the display LEDs at each pixel being evaluated individually and collectively to assure that the pixel is contributing the proper spectrum and amount of white light.
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42. The system of claim 13, further including means for enabling split screen images to be displayed at the electronic display.
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43. The system of claim 42, wherein said split screen capability is utilized to present a still image portion of the image in one display area, and one of real time video, near real time video, or still frame in a second display area.
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44. The system of claim 22, wherein said high speed still image or video transfer is facilitated by JPEG and MPEG data compression techniques.
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45. The system of claim 16, further including auction sub-system for enabling available time slots to be auctioned.
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46. The system of claim 45, wherein said auction sub-system enables the purchase of time slots for a set price, and all time not purchased at the set price becomes available through said auction sub-system at a fixed time before the run time.
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47. The system of claim 16, further including means for preselecting time slots for display of the content provider'"'"'s content at a “
- best available rate”
pricing for those high volume content providers having establish a monthly budget to purchase a portion of the available time slots.
- best available rate”
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48. A method for presenting video or still-image content at selected times and locations on a networked connection of multiple electronic displays, said method comprising:
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a) providing a network interconnecting a plurality of electronic displays at various geographic locations;
b) enabling a content provider to schedule presentation of video or still-image content at selected time slots on selected electronic displays of said network and receiving said video or still-image content from a content provider;
c) providing a plurality of server devices, each server device associated with a corresponding electronic display;
d) communicating received video or still-image content to the associated server devices of corresponding selected electronic displays of said network; and
,e) said server device initiating display of said video or still-image content at selected times on an associated electronic display of said network. - View Dependent Claims (49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74)
enabling content providers to view a schedule of times and electronic display locations that are available for placement of said content; and
,enabling content providers to purchase one or more available time slots at selected electronic display locations for placement of their content.
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50. The method of claim 48, wherein prior to step d) of communicating scheduled video or still-image content, the steps of:
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providing an appropriateness review of transmitted video or still image content; and
,transmitting said content to said selected electronic display upon approval of said content.
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51. The method of claim 49, further comprising the step of providing said content provider with Internet access to said system for enabling viewing, scheduling and purchasing of available time slots and electronic display locations from remote locations.
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52. The method of claim 51, wherein prior to enabling access to said schedule of times and available electronic display locations, the step of providing security code and billing code information for identifying said content provider and authorizing content provider access to said system.
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53. The method of claim 49, further including providing dedicated high-speed connection to a security device for enabling high-usage content providers to access the schedule of times and available electronic display locations.
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54. The method of claim 51, wherein said communicating step d) further includes the step of:
- enabling a content provider to transmit said content to a central processing server according to a mechanism selected from the group comprising;
on-line through the Internet, a direct phone line, and, a high speed information transfer line.
- enabling a content provider to transmit said content to a central processing server according to a mechanism selected from the group comprising;
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55. The method of claim 54, further comprising the step of formatting said still image or video content according to a format selected from the group comprising:
- NTSC, PAL, SECAM, YUV, YC, and VGA.
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56. The method of claim 50, wherein a server device comprises one or more high speed server devices associated with each electronic display for driving said electronic displays, said method including transmitting said content to a server device associated with a selected display upon approval of said content to be displayed.
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57. The method of claim 56, wherein said step d) of communicating scheduled content to the associated server devices further includes the step of:
- implementing a transmission mechanism selected from the group comprising;
high speed cable, a satellite link, a dedicated phone connection, a high-speed communications line, a cellular or PCS data transmission device, the Internet, a radio or radio pulse transmission device, a high speed optical fiber, and physical delivery of a medium storing said content.
- implementing a transmission mechanism selected from the group comprising;
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58. The method of claim 52, further including the steps of:
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verifying that scheduled content for display is presented at the intended time at the intended display and generating verification information pertaining thereto; and
,receiving and storing in a storage device said verification information generated by each said verification means.
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59. The method of claim 58, wherein said verifying step includes implementing a digital camera for recording the content appearing at its respective display.
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60. The method of claim 58, wherein a location of said electronic display includes a location having vehicular traffic, said method further including the steps of:
- linking a traffic count recorder means to each electronic display for counting amount of traffic passing an electronic display during a particular time slot; and
generating traffic count information for receipt and storage by said storage device.
- linking a traffic count recorder means to each electronic display for counting amount of traffic passing an electronic display during a particular time slot; and
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61. The method of claim 60, further including the steps of:
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receiving said stored verification and traffic count information;
analyzing said information; and
,generating demographic information for reports to be sent to content providers agents after their content is displayed.
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62. The method of claim 61, wherein said demographic information for reports comprises information including:
- a time of the advertisement, the content of the advertisement, the traffic count, and residence/median income information about those who may have viewed the content.
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63. The method of claim 58, further including the steps of:
- generating bills associated with purchased time slots; and
, transmitting said bills via phone lines to a content provider.
- generating bills associated with purchased time slots; and
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64. The method of claim 49, further including the step of performing diagnostics and calibration of said electronic displays.
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65. The method of claim 64, wherein said diagnostics and calibration steps includes:
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utilizing one or more digital camera devices aimed at portions of said display, a portion of each digital camera'"'"'s image corresponding to a single pixel in the display; and
,detecting non-functioning or degraded LED'"'"'s from said digital camera'"'"'s image.
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66. The method of claim 64, wherein said diagnostics and calibration step includes:
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iteratively causing the display of a color at each color LED at various power levels; and
,sensing the optical power output of each color LED for each power level, said calibrating including determining that each color LED has the same optical power output at each power level as other LED'"'"'s of the same color.
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67. The method of claim 64, wherein said diagnostics and calibration step includes:
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implementing a diode recalibration scaler device for receiving information from the diagnostic information indicating the optical power output of each LED at the various power levels; and
,implementing an associated automatic calibration LED look-up table for adjusting a power curve by which the LED will be driven in accordance with detected variances in LED output.
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68. The method of claim 64, wherein said diagnostics and calibration step includes the step of utilizing one or more photodetector means located in close proximity to each LED in the display for measuring LED light output during diagnostic/calibration operations.
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69. The method of claim 64, wherein each pixel of said electronic display includes three colored LED'"'"'s, wherein said diagnostics and calibration step includes:
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generating an all white display;
evaluating the display LEDs at each pixel individually and collectively to assure that the pixel is contributing the proper spectrum and amount of white light.
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70. The method of claim 49, further including the step of:
- generating split screen images for display at the electronic display.
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71. The method of claim 70, wherein said split screen capability is utilized for:
presenting a still image portion of the image in one display area, and presenting one of real time video, near real time video, or still frame in a second display area.
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72. The method of claim 54, further including the step of auctioning auctioning available time slots.
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73. The system of claim 72, wherein said auctioning step includes:
enabling the purchase of time slots for a set price, and enabling all time slots not purchased at the set price to become available through said auction sub-system at a fixed time before a scheduled display time.
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74. The method of claim 72, further including the step of:
- preselecting time slots for display of the agent'"'"'s content at a “
best available rate”
pricing for those high volume content providers having establish a monthly budget to purchase a portion of the available time slots.
- preselecting time slots for display of the agent'"'"'s content at a “
Specification