Method and apparatus for transmission receipt and display of advertisements

• US 7,552,458 B1
• Filed: 03/22/2000
• Issued: 06/23/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/29/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: The DIRECTV Group, Inc. (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: The DIRECTV Group, Inc. (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Arsenault, Robert G., Leminh, Tam T., Brown, Jeffrey A., Finseth, Craig A., Hsiao, Philip E.
• Primary Examiner(s): SHELEHEDA, JAMES R
• Application Number:
  US09/532,755
• Time in Patent Office: 3,380 Days
• Field of Search: 725/42, 725110-112, 725/142, 705/14
• US Class Current: 725/34
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0225 Avoiding frauds
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0241 Advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4316 for displaying supplemental content in a region of the screen, e.g. an advertisement in a separate window
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44222 Analytics of user selections, e.g. selection of programs or purchase activity monitoring of user selections in data processing systems G06F11/34; arrangements for monitoring the user's behaviour or opinions in broadcast systems H04H60/33
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4532 involving end-user characteristics, e.g. viewer profile, preferences monitoring of user activities for profile generation for accessing a video database G06F16/739; user profiles in network data switching protocols H04L67/306; processing of user preferences or user profiles in wireless networks H04W8/18
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47 End-user applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/478 Supplemental services, e.g. displaying phone caller identification, shopping application
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/162 Authorising the user terminal, e.g. by paying; Registering the use of a subscription channel, e.g. billing

Abstract

An apparatus for the intelligent display of advertisements to a television services user includes a transmitter, a receiver and a display on which an electronic television program guide, television programs, and advertisements are displayed. Advertising and electronic program guide data are transmitted to a receiver used by one or more television service users. The electronic program guide data includes information characterizing television programs listed in an electronic program guide. Similarly, the advertising data includes advertisements and information characterizing the transmitted advertisements. A selection history contains information characterizing those programs selected by a user for viewing. Received advertisements are displayed to the user based upon a comparison between the information characterizing each of the plurality of advertisements and the information in the selection history.

Claims

1. A method for broadcasting and displaying advertisements comprising:

receiving program guide data including program attribute information identifying content of each of a plurality of television programs;

receiving advertising data including a plurality of advertisement objects and advertisement attribute information identifying content of each of the plurality of advertisement objects, wherein the advertisement objects comprise a plurality of different versions of an advertisement, and wherein the plurality of different versions of the advertisement comprise advertisements of different display sizes;

maintaining a selection history comprising a user viewing profile that includes program attribute information identifying content of television programs selected by a user;

calculating similarity scores for the plurality of advertisement objects based on one or more comparisons between the advertisement attribute information and the program attribute information of the user viewing profile;

selecting at least one of the advertisement objects to display to the user based on a comparison of the similarity scores to a first threshold similarity score;

selecting a version of an advertisement associated with the selected advertisement object based on a comparison of the similarity score of the selected advertisement object to a second threshold similarity score; and

displaying the selected version of the advertisement associated with the selected advertisement object.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein displaying the selected version of the advertisement associated with the selected advertisement object includes repeating the display of the advertisement associated with the selected advertisement object at a frequency based on a similarity score associated with the advertisement object.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein displaying the selected version of the advertisement associated with the selected advertisement object includes prioritizing advertisement objects based on the similarity scores of the advertisement objects within the plurality of advertisement objects and displaying the advertisements associated with the advertisement objects in order of priority.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing the advertising data by determining if each of the plurality of advertisement objects received has a similarity score greater than an advertisement object from the plurality of advertisement objects.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing the advertising data in a memory if the memory has sufficient space to store each of the plurality of advertisement objects.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing the advertising data beyond a display lifetime associated with an advertisement object when the advertisement object has a similarity score greater than a third threshold similarity score.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein selecting the version of the advertisement associated with the selected advertisement object comprises selecting a larger display version of the advertisement.