Method for adaptive ad insertion in streaming multimedia content

• US 6,505,169 B1
• Filed: 01/26/2000
• Issued: 01/07/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 01/26/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: AT&T Corporation (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Corporation (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Bhagavath, Vijay K, OʼNeil, Joseph Thomas
• Primary Examiner(s): Carlson, Jeffrey D.
• Application Number:
  US09/490,807
• Time in Patent Office: 1,077 Days
• Field of Search: 705/1, 705/14, 709/219, 709/227
• US Class Current: 705/14.66
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0269 based on user profile or attribute
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0277 Online advertisement

Abstract

In a multimedia presentation transmitted by streaming media, advertising/announcements are dynamically inserted into the stream in response to a realization of conditions preselected by the source of the advertising/announcements. In a particular embodiment providers of the streaming media content define metadata for the programming. Advertising/announcement sources define metadata for their ads to be presented. The requirements of both metadata files are compared to both program data and ad data to specify conditions that determine when an Advertisement/announcement is inserted into a media stream.

Claims

1. A method of maintaining and updating an advertisement/announcement cache at a local point-of-presence in an IP network for inserting appropriate advertisements/announcements in streaming media transmitted through the IP network to a recipient, the method comprising the steps of:

maintaining and updating a cache of frequently-requested media and associated content metadata for each maintained media stream;

maintaining and updating a cache of advertisements/announcements and associated ad metadata for each advertisement/announcement;

colleting measurements, on a periodic basis, of the identity of each media stream requested, the number of times each stream was requested during the period, and the identity of each recipient of each stream and storing as content metadata;

collecting demographic information for each identified recipient and storing as ad metadata; and

storing and updating, in a measurement server at the point-of-presence, the collected measurements and demographic information; and

comparing the ad metadata to the content metadata for determining which advertisements/announcements to insert into a stream of media.

2. The method as defined in claim 1 wherein in the step of collecting measurements includes the steps of

counting the number of requests for each media stream during a predetermined time interval; and

determining the IP address of each recipient of each media stream.

3. The method as defined in claim 2 wherein the method comprises the further step of

querying a directory server with each determined IP address to retrieve demographic information for each recipient of each media stream.

4. The method as defined in claim 1 wherein the step of maintaining and updating the content metadata includes maintaining and updating a set of defined demographics for a target audience of each media stream.

5. The method as defined in claim 1 wherein the step of maintaining and updating the content metadata includes maintaining and updating a set of defined positions for and durations of advertisements/announcements in each media stream.

6. The method as defined in claim 1 wherein the step of maintaining and updating the ad metadata includes maintaining and updating demographics associated with a target audience for each advertisement/announcement.

7. The method as defined in claim 1 wherein the ad metadata includes information defining a willingness to pay by an ad supplier.