Advertising management system for digital video streams
First Claim
1. A method of managing advertisements in a digital program stream, the method comprising:
- (a) obtaining a characterization of one or more advertisements based on characterization data supplied by an advertiser, wherein the characterization data comprises minimum bandwidth requirements for the advertisement and facilitates targeting each of the advertisements to a subscriber;
(b) recognizing one or more avails in the digital program stream for insertion of one of the advertisements, the digital program stream having a program stream bandwidth;
(c) requesting a selection of the one or more advertisements for insertion into at least one of the avails;
(d) identifying at least one of the advertisements for insertion into the at least one avail prior to the inserting of the advertisement into the digital program stream based in part on the characterization data from step (a) and a characterization of the at least one avail, the characterization of the at least one avail comprising the program stream bandwidth;
(e) returning the selection of the at least one advertisement for insertion into the at least one avail;
(f) receiving the at least one advertisement from a storage medium; and
(g) compressing the received at least one advertisement to a compressed bandwidth identical to the program stream bandwidth such that the minimum bandwidth requirements are satisfied.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A method and apparatus for the managing advertisements in a digital environment, including methods for selecting suitable advertising based on subscriber profiles, and substituting advertisements in a program stream with targeted advertisements. The Ad Management System (AMS) 100 of the present invention manages the sales and insertion of digital video advertisements in cable television, switched digital video, and streaming video (Internet) based environments. The AMS 100 provides advertisers an ability to describe their advertisements (ads) in terms of target market demographics, required ad bandwidth, ad duration, and other ad specific parameters. The AMS 100 receives the ad descriptions that include some or all of the aforementioned parameters, and matches the ads to the advertising opportunities (“avails”) available in the programming stream. The AMS 100 tracks different avails including duration and bandwidth of the avail, and uses a number of schemes to determine if the ad can be placed in the avail. The advertisements may be transported over an in-band advertising channel or over an out-of-band advertisement channel. At the multiplexing end, the ads may be multiplexed in one or more program streams synchronously, plesiochronously, or asynchronously. In either case, a dynamic linking process is used to insert the selected advertisements in the program streams.
117 Citations
33 Claims
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1. A method of managing advertisements in a digital program stream, the method comprising:
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(a) obtaining a characterization of one or more advertisements based on characterization data supplied by an advertiser, wherein the characterization data comprises minimum bandwidth requirements for the advertisement and facilitates targeting each of the advertisements to a subscriber; (b) recognizing one or more avails in the digital program stream for insertion of one of the advertisements, the digital program stream having a program stream bandwidth; (c) requesting a selection of the one or more advertisements for insertion into at least one of the avails; (d) identifying at least one of the advertisements for insertion into the at least one avail prior to the inserting of the advertisement into the digital program stream based in part on the characterization data from step (a) and a characterization of the at least one avail, the characterization of the at least one avail comprising the program stream bandwidth; (e) returning the selection of the at least one advertisement for insertion into the at least one avail; (f) receiving the at least one advertisement from a storage medium; and (g) compressing the received at least one advertisement to a compressed bandwidth identical to the program stream bandwidth such that the minimum bandwidth requirements are satisfied. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
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19. A method of managing advertisements in a digital program stream, the method comprising:
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(a) obtaining a characterization of one or more advertisements based on characterization data supplied by an advertiser, wherein the characterization data comprises minimum bandwidth requirements for the advertisement; (b) requesting a selection of one or more advertisements for insertion into at least one avail available in the digital program stream for insertion of one of the advertisements, the digital program stream having a program stream bandwidth; (c) identifying at least one of the advertisements for insertion into the at least one avail prior to the inserting of the at least one advertisement into the digital program stream by comparing the minimum bandwidth requirements and the program stream bandwidth; (d) returning the selection of the at least one advertisement for the insertion into the at least one avail; (e) receiving the at least one advertisement from a storage medium; and (f) compressing the received at least one advertisement to a compressed bandwidth identical to the program stream bandwidth such that the minimum bandwidth requirements are satisfied. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25)
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26. A system for managing the insertion of advertisements in a digital program stream, the digital program stream having a program stream bandwidth, the system comprising:
one or more processors associated with one or more servers for implementing; an ad characterization module for obtaining a characterization of one or more advertisements based on characterization data supplied by an advertiser, wherein the characterization data comprises minimum bandwidth requirements for the advertisement and facilitates targeting each advertisement to a subscriber; a correlation module for computing a correlation value between the advertisements and an avail by comparing ad characterizations of the advertisements with a characterization of the avail; a sales/auctioning module for identifying at least one of the advertisements for insertion into at least one of the avails prior to the inserting of the at least one advertisement in the digital program stream based in part on the ad characterization data and a characterization of the at least one avail, the characterization of the at least one avail comprising the program stream bandwidth, and returning the selection of the at least one advertisement for the insertion into the at least one avail; and an ad insertion module for receiving the at least one advertisement from a storage medium and compressing the received at least one advertisement to a compressed bandwidth identical to the program stream bandwidth such that the minimum bandwidth requirements are satisfied. - View Dependent Claims (27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33)
Specification