Advertising methods for advertising time slots and embedded objects

• US 8,522,273 B2
• Filed: 07/01/2011
• Issued: 08/27/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 12/23/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Roku, Inc.
• Original Assignee: OpenTV, Inc. (Kudelski SA)
• Inventors: Zenoni, Ian, Lemmons, Thomas, Huber, Thomas
• Primary Examiner(s): Bui, Kieu Oanh T
• Application Number:
  US13/175,663
• Publication Number:
  US 20110321087A1
• Time in Patent Office: 788 Days
• Field of Search: 725/32, 725 34- 36, 725/42
• US Class Current: 725/34
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0275 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/08 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02

Abstract

Disclosed is a process for an advertising bidding system in which advertisers can bid on advertising time slots or enhanced ads that can be inserted in either prerecorded or live television programming. A high degree of flexibility is provided by allowing embedded ads to be purchased and displayed in a very short time period. This allows TV broadcasters to increase revenues and allows advertisers to have more flexibility in advertising. Objects can be inserted in the display video broadcast using enhancements such as by using mark-up language overlay pages or by video combination techniques. The effect of these ads can be evaluated for advertising campaigns.

Claims

1. A method for inserting an advertisement in a video for display, the method comprising:

identifying at least one object in a video using a recognition software, the object associated with an advertising opportunity within the video;

selecting an advertisement for the advertising opportunity associated with the object;

graphically embedding, using at least one processor, the advertisement into a display area associated with the identified object based on placement and contour data for the identified object generated using the recognition software; and

transmitting the video through a media distribution network to a client device of a viewer.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising identifying a plurality of objects within a single scene of the video, the method comprising selecting and embedding an associated advertisement for each object identified from the plurality of objects.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying of the at least one object occurs at a transmission site from which the video is transmitted.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying of the at least one object occurs at the client device of the viewer.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the selecting of the advertisement further comprises:

selecting an advertiser having attribute data matching an attribute of the identified object; and

notifying the selected advertiser of the advertising opportunity.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the selecting of the advertisement further comprises using user preferences or demographics of the viewer to select the advertisement.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the selecting of the advertisement and graphically embedding the advertisement further comprises using a presentation description including commands for selecting and combining the advertisement and the video.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the presentation description comprises markup language defining a manner in with the advertisement and video is to be combined.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

selecting a number of advertising opportunities in the video for auctioning; and

auctioning the selected number of advertising opportunities to a plurality of advertisers in an auction.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the graphically embedding of the advertisement comprises using a markup language overlay page.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one object is associated with the advertising opportunity using tags and markers inserted into a stream of the video.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

counting a number of frames of the video in which the advertisement is embedded; and

determining an advertising cost for the embedded advertisement based on the number of frames in which the embedded advertisement appears.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the embedded advertisement is an interactive advertisement, the method further comprising:

receiving a selection of the interactive advertisement; and

providing additional information related to the interactive advertisement in an appended portion to a scene of the video.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the graphically embedding of the advertisement comprises coding the advertisement to change on a per-scene basis to account for changes in viewing angle.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the change in the viewing angle is based on a change in a camera angle.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the identified object is a blank space within a scene of the video, the selected advertisement to be embedded into a display area associated with the blank space.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein the media distribution network is a broadcast network.

18. The method of claim 1, wherein the media distribution network is the Internet.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein the recognition software is an image recognition software.

20. The method of claim 1, wherein the embedded advertisement includes audio.

21. The method of claim 1, wherein the video comprises a live video and the selection of the advertisement comprises selecting the advertisement based on an event occurring in the live video, the selected advertisement being embedded into the live event.

22. A system comprising:

a computing device having at least one processor, the computing device configured to

identify at least one object in a video using a recognition software, the object indicating an advertising opportunity within the video;

select an advertisement for the advertising opportunity associated with the object;

graphically embed, using at least one processor, the advertisement into a display area associated with the identified object based on placement and contour data for the identified object generated using the recognition software; and

transmit the video through a media distribution network to a client device of a viewer.