Scheme for determining the locations and timing of advertisements and other insertions in media

• US 9,237,258 B2
• Filed: 01/09/2014
• Issued: 01/12/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 03/22/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Zalewski, Gary M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Mehrmanesh, Amir
• Application Number:
  US14/151,536
• Publication Number:
  US 20140130084A1
• Time in Patent Office: 733 Days
• Field of Search: 348/578, 348586-588, 725 32- 36, 725135-136, 375/240.01
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/43072 of multiple content streams on the same device
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4312 involving specific graphical features, e.g. screen layout, special fonts or colors, blinking icons, highlights or animations
• 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 21/44008 involving operations for analysing video streams, e.g. detecting features or characteristics in the video stream arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of video in broadcast systems H04H60/59
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44012 involving rendering scenes according to scene graphs, e.g. MPEG-4 scene graphs
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8583 by creating hot-spots
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8586 by using a URL processing chained hypermedia data for information retrieval G06F16/94; information retrieval from the Internet by using URLs G06F16/955; URL in broadcast information H04H20/93; Web-based protocols H04L67/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/147 Scene change detection

Abstract

A method for use with content includes analyzing a sequence of frames of the content, determining whether an area exists in a scene depicted by the sequence of frames where additional content such as advertising can be inserted without obstructing activity in the scene, for any such area, determining an amount of time that the area is available when the sequence of frames is being played, and for any such area, determining a size of the area. A storage medium storing a computer program for causing a processor based system to execute these steps and an apparatus for use with content are also disclosed.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

analyzing a sequence of frames of content;

based on the analyzing, determining information about objects moving in the frames;

creating metadata comprising the information about objects moving in the frames that can be used to determine whether an area exists in a scene depicted by the sequence of frames where additional content can be inserted without obstructing an activity in the scene;

using the metadata to determine whether an area exists in the scene where additional content can be inserted without obstructing the activity in the scene;

for any such area, determining a size of the area;

selecting the additional content based at least in part on an analysis of the size of the area to determine between displaying only one advertisement and displaying a plurality of advertisements together in the area; and

in response to determining to display a plurality of advertisements, causing the plurality of advertisements to be displayed together in the area in the scene.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

encoding the content with the metadata.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

configuring the metadata and the content to be provided to a playback system for insertion of content.

4. A non-transitory storage medium storing a computer program executable by a processor based system, the computer program causing the processor based system to execute steps comprising:

analyzing a sequence of frames of content;

based on the analyzing, determining information objects moving in the frames;

creating metadata comprising the information about objects moving in the frames that can be used to determine whether an area exists in a scene depicted by the sequence of frames where additional content can be inserted without obstructing an activity in the scene;

using the metadata to determine whether an area exists in the scene where additional content can be inserted without obstructing the activity in the scene;

for any such area, determining a size of the area;

selecting the additional content based at least in part on an analysis of the size of the area to determine between displaying only one advertisement and displaying a plurality of advertisements together in the area; and

in response to determining to display a plurality of advertisements, causing the plurality of advertisements to be displayed together in the area in the scene.

5. The non-transitory storage medium in accordance with claim 4, wherein the computer program further causes the processor based system to execute steps comprising:

encoding the content with the metadata.

6. The non-transitory storage medium in accordance with 4, wherein the computer program further causes the processor based system to execute steps comprising:

configuring the metadata and the content to be provided to a playback system for insertion of content.

7. An apparatus for use with content, comprising:

a processor based system that is configured to analyze a sequence of frames of content and, based on the analyzing, determine information about objects moving in the frames;

wherein the processor based system is further configured to create metadata comprising the information about objects moving in the frames that can be used to determine whether an area exists in a scene depicted by the sequence of frames where additional content can be inserted without obstructing an activity in the scene; and

wherein the metadata is used to determine whether an area exists in the scene where additional content can be inserted without obstructing the activity in the scene, and for any such area, a size of the area is determined; and

wherein the additional content is selected based at least in part on an analysis of the size of the area to determine between displaying only one advertisement and displaying a plurality of advertisements together in the area, and in response to determining to display a plurality of advertisements, the plurality of advertisements is caused to be displayed together in the area in the scene.