Methods, apparatus and articles of manufacture to provide secondary content in association with primary broadcast media content

• US 8,666,528 B2
• Filed: 04/30/2010
• Issued: 03/04/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 05/01/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: The Nielsen Company LLC (MOOD Media Corporation)
• Original Assignee: The Nielsen Company LLC (MOOD Media Corporation)
• Inventors: Harkness, David Henry, Ramaswamy, Arun, Samson, Jerome, Besehanic, Jan, Srinivasan, Venugopal, Topchy, Alexander Pavlovich
• Primary Examiner(s): ELBIN, JESSE A
• Application Number:
  US12/771,640
• Publication Number:
  US 20100280641A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,404 Days
• Field of Search: 700/94, 704/E19.009, 725 14- 21
• US Class Current: 700/94
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0251 Targeted advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/018 Audio watermarking, i.e. embedding inaudible data in the audio signal
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/31 using in-band signals, e.g. subsonic or cue signal
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/86 Arrangements characterised by the broadcast information itself
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 2201/40 characterised in that additional data relating to the broadcast data are available via a different channel than the broadcast channel
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/14 Arrangements for conditional access to broadcast information or to broadcast-related services
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/68 Systems specially adapted for using specific information, e.g. geographical or meteorological information
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/25891 being end-user preferences retrieval of video data in a video database based on user preferences G06F16/739; arrangements for recognizing users' preferences H04H60/46; 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 21/4126 The peripheral being portable, e.g. PDAs or mobile phones
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4394 involving operations for analysing the audio stream, e.g. detecting features or characteristics in audio streams arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of audio in broadcast systems H04H60/58
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4398 involving reformatting operations of audio signals details of audio signal transcoding G10L19/173
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/442 Monitoring of processes or resources, e.g. detecting the failure of a recording device, monitoring the downstream bandwidth, the number of times a movie has been viewed, the storage space available from the internal hard disk arrangements for monitoring broadcast services or broadcast-related services H04H60/29; arrangements for identifying or recognising characteristics with a direct linkage to broadcast information H04H60/35; monitoring of user activities for profile generation for accessing a video database G06F16/739; monitoring in wireless networks H04W24/00
• 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 21/6582 Data stored in the client, e.g. viewing habits, hardware capabilities, credit card number arrangements where receivers interact with the broadcast H04H20/38
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17327 with deferred transmission or handling of upstream communications

Abstract

Example methods, apparatus and articles of manufacture to provide media content are disclosed. A disclosed example method includes receiving audio output by a first media presentation device, obtaining at least one of a Nielsen code or an Arbitron® code from the audio, the obtained code being representative of at least one of the first media content or a broadcaster of the first media content, obtaining second media content based on the extracted code, and presenting the second media content on a second media presentation device different from the first media presentation device.

Claims

1. A method of presenting media content comprising:

determining a characteristic of frequencies of a frequency domain representation of audio output by a first media presentation device that may contain a code representative of at least one of first media content or a broadcaster of the first media content;

normalizing, across code bands, the characteristic of the frequencies of the frequency domain representation in a code band that may contain the code, the normalization being carried out against a threshold characteristic of a frequency in that code band;

summing the normalized characteristics of the corresponding frequencies to identify the frequency with the largest sum;

determining that the identified frequency is representative of the code;

obtaining second media content based on the code; and

presenting the second media content on a second media presentation device different from the first media presentation device while the first media content is presented on the first media presentation device.

2. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein obtaining the second media content comprises:

sending a request containing the code to a secondary content server; and

receiving the second media content from the secondary content server.

3. A method as defined in claim 2, wherein the secondary content server comprises a customer-premises media server.

4. A method as defined in claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining a timestamp associated with the code from the audio; and

wherein obtaining the second media content comprises obtaining the second media content based on the code and the timestamp, the second media content comprising a plurality of pieces of secondary content for respective ones of a plurality of timestamps; and

presenting the second media content comprises presenting a first of the plurality of pieces of secondary content when its respective timestamp substantially corresponds to a time value determined from the timestamp.

5. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein the audio includes embedded frequency components representing the code, different sets of the frequency components representing respectively different information, one frequency component from each of the sets of frequency components being located in a code band, the code band being one of a plurality of code bands and spacing between adjacent code bands being equal to or less than the spacing between adjacent frequency components of each of the code bands, amplitudes of the frequency components representing the information and being selected based on a masking ability of the audio.

6. A method as defined in claim 5, wherein the frequency components used to represent the information are in an audible frequency range.

7. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein obtaining the code from the audio comprises:

sampling the audio; and

transforming the sampled audio into the frequency domain representation.

8. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein the second media content does not represent the first media content.

9. A method as defined in claim 1, further comprising synchronizing the second media content on the second media presentation device with the first media content on the first media presentation device.

10. A tangible article of manufacture comprising machine-readable instructions that, when executed, cause a machine to at least:

determine a characteristic of frequencies of a frequency domain representation of audio output by a first media presentation device that may contain a code identifying at least one of first media content or a broadcaster of the first media content;

normalize, across code bands, the characteristic of the frequencies of the frequency domain representation in a code band that may contain the code, the normalization being carried out against a threshold characteristic of a frequency in that code band;

sum the normalized characteristics of the corresponding frequencies to identify the frequency with the largest sum;

determine that the identified frequency is representative of the code;

obtain second media content based on the code; and

present the second media content on a second media presentation device different from the first media presentation device during presentation of the first media content on the first media presentation device.

11. A tangible article of manufacture as defined in claim 10, wherein the machine-readable instructions, when executed, cause the machine to:

obtain a timestamp associated with the code from the audio;

obtain the second media content based on the code and the timestamp, the second media content comprising a plurality of pieces of secondary content for respective ones of a plurality of timestamps; and

present the second media content by presenting a first of the plurality of pieces of secondary content when its respective timestamp substantially corresponds to a time value determined from the timestamp.

12. A tangible article of manufacture as defined in claim 10, wherein the machine-readable instructions, when executed, cause the machine to synchronize the first media content with the second media content.

13. An apparatus to present media content comprising:

a decoder to (1) determine a characteristic of frequencies of a frequency domain representation of audio output by a first media presentation device that may contain a code corresponding to at least one of first media content or a broadcaster of the first media content, (2) normalize, across code bands, the characteristic of the frequencies of the frequency domain representation in a code band that may contain the code, the normalization being carried out against a threshold characteristic of a frequency in that code band, (3) sum the normalized characteristics of the corresponding frequencies to identify the frequency with the largest sum, and (4) determine that the frequency with the largest sum is representative of the code;

a secondary content module to obtain second media content based on the code; and

a user interface module to present the second media content on a second media presentation device different from the first media presentation device substantially concurrently with presentation of the first media content on the first media presentation device.

14. An apparatus as defined in claim 13, wherein the audio includes embedded frequency components representing the code, different sets of the frequency components representing respectively different information, one frequency component from each of the sets of frequency components being located in a code band, the code band being one of a plurality of code bands and spacing between adjacent code bands being equal to or less than the spacing between adjacent frequency components of each of the code bands, amplitudes of the frequency components representing the information and being selected based on a masking ability of the audio.

15. An apparatus as defined in claim 13, wherein the secondary content module is to:

send a request containing the code to a secondary content server; and

receive the secondary content from the secondary content server.

16. An apparatus as defined in claim 15, wherein the secondary content server comprises a customer-premises media server.

17. An apparatus as defined in claim 13, wherein the user interface module is implemented by at least one of a hand-held computer, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a cellular telephone, a smartphone, a laptop computer, a netbook computer, a hand-held media presentation device, or a mobile media presentation device.

18. An apparatus as defined in claim 13, wherein

the decoder is to obtain a timestamp associated with the code from the audio,

the secondary content module is to obtain the second media content based on the code and the timestamp,

the secondary content comprises a plurality of pieces of secondary content for respective ones of a plurality of timestamps, and

the user interface module is to present the second media content by presenting a first of the plurality of pieces of secondary content when its respective timestamp substantially corresponds to a time value determined using the timestamp.

19. An apparatus as defined in claim 13, wherein the audio comprises the code embedded into the audio using a plurality of frequency components residing in a plurality of code bands, and wherein the decoder comprises:

a sampler to sample the audio; and

a time-to-frequency domain converter to transform the sampled audio into a frequency domain representation.