Marketplace for presenting advertisements in a scalable data broadcasting system

• US 9,916,601 B2
• Filed: 03/21/2014
• Issued: 03/13/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 03/21/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: Mahadevan, Priya, Scott, Glenn C., Meike, Roger C.
• Primary Examiner(s): Stoltenberg, David
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ezewoko, Michael
• Application Number:
  US14/222,330
• Publication Number:
  US 20150269633A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,453 Days
• Field of Search: 705 1453
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/1235 with control of digital rights management [DRM]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0242 Determining effectiveness of advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0264 based upon schedule
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0269 based on user profile or attribute
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0275 Auctions

Abstract

An ad-marketplace system manages an exchange for advertisement opportunities from a plurality of content brokers. Each advertising opportunity can include one or more attributes that describe advertisement slots during a broadcast of a data stream. The ad-marketplace system can receive one or more bids for an advertising opportunity associated with a media stream, and can select a matching bid from an advertiser for the advertising opportunity. Each bid can specify one or more advertising requirements that are to be satisfied by the advertising opportunity. When the ad-marketplace system selects the matching bid, the ad-marketplace system establishes a contract between the media broker, and places an initial payment from the advertiser in escrow. The ad-marketplace system can provide a payment to the media broker after confirming that a set of consumers have consumed the advertisement.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

receiving, by an ad-marketplace system via a content-centric network (CCN), bid for an advertising opportunity from a media broker that provides access to a CCN media stream, wherein the bid specifies one or more advertising requirements;

confirming that the advertising opportunity has satisfied the advertising requirements,

wherein confirming that the advertising opportunity has satisfied the advertising requirements comprises;

receiving, from a client device, a CCN Interest packet comprising a challenge response packet for an advertisement associated with the advertising opportunity,

wherein the CCN Interest packet comprises a name having a routable prefix and a suffix, wherein the routable prefix is associated with the media broker and the ad-marketplace, and the challenge response packet is encoded as the suffix; and

wherein the challenge response packet includes a challenge-response value based on data extracted from a position in the advertisement by the client device while playing the advertisement; and

determining that the challenge-response value in the challenge response packet agrees with an actual value of the data at the position in the advertisement, wherein agreement indicates that the client device has played the advertisement; and

providing to the media broker a payment for the advertisement.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising establishing a contract, wherein establishing a contract includes:

receiving, from an advertiser, a reference to the advertisement that is to be presented during the advertising opportunity;

providing the reference to the media broker; and

receiving, from the media broker, a challenge question for the advertisement and an expected challenge-response value for the challenge question.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the challenge-response packet further includes one or more of:

a broker identifier for the media broker;

or

a media-stream identifier for the media stream.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

computing a set of proven content-view statistics, wherein the statistics include a number of advertisements indicated, by at least the matching challenge response value, to have been presented in association with the advertising opportunity;

receiving, from the advertiser, a CCN Interest for a statistical report; and

sending, in response, a CCN content object including the proven content-view statistics to the advertiser.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the advertising opportunity further specifies one or more of:

an asking price for providing an advertisement during the advertising opportunity;

an expected number of consumers of the media stream during the advertising opportunity;

demographic information for consumers of the media stream;

or

one or more keywords associated with the media stream.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising terminating a contract in response to determining that the advertising opportunity has expired or determining that the advertising requirements have been satisfied.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the advertising opportunity specifies attributes including at least one of:

a time interval during which the media broker is to provide access to the media stream;

a user demographic for the media stream;

or

keywords for the media stream.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the advertising requirements include at least one of:

a minimum-client-count requirement for a minimum number of clients to which the media broker is to present the advertisement;

a target user demographic for the advertisement;

or

a keyword for the advertisement.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the ad-marketplace system includes a trusted third party to the media broker and the advertiser.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising maintaining a record of a media broker'"'"'s reputation based on one or more of:

historical statistics on whether a number of advertisement consumers during an advertisement campaign matched an expected number of consumers;

historical statistics on whether characteristics for advertisement consumers during an advertising campaign matched an expected consumer demographic;

or

historical statistics on how well advertising opportunity'"'"'s keywords matched a data object during which the advertisement was presented.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising maintaining a record of an advertiser'"'"'s reputation based on one or more of:

a quality of advertisements from the advertiser;

consumer-engagement measurements from consumers of advertisements from the advertiser;

or

historical statistics on how well keywords from an advertisement'"'"'s description matched an advertisement from the advertiser.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

generating an ad-campaign report for the advertiser, wherein the ad-campaign report includes aggregated information that indicates an effectiveness of presenting the advertisement to consumers of the media stream, and wherein the aggregated information includes one or more of;

a number of client devices that have consumed the advertisement for a predetermined time interval;

or

aggregated demographic information for consumers of the advertisement.

13. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that when executed by a computer cause the computer to perform a method, the method comprising:

receiving, via a content-centric network (CCN), bid for an advertising opportunity from a media broker that provides access to a CCN media stream, wherein the bid specifies one or more advertising requirements be satisfied;

confirming that the advertising opportunity has satisfied the advertising requirements,

wherein confirming that the advertising opportunity has satisfied the advertising requirements comprises;

receiving, from a client device, a CCN Interest packet comprising a challenge response packet for an advertisement associated with the advertising opportunity,

wherein the CCN Interest packet comprises a name having a routable prefix and a suffix, wherein the routable prefix is associated with the media broker and the ad-marketplace, and the challenge response packet is encoded as the suffix; and

wherein the challenge response packet includes a challenge-response value based on data extracted from a position in the advertisement by the client device while playing the advertisement; and

determining that the challenge-response value in the challenge response packet agrees with an actual value of the data at the position in the advertisement, wherein agreement indicates that the client device has played the advertisement; and

providing to the media broker a payment for the advertisement.

14. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

generating, by a media broker, an advertising opportunity for a media stream, wherein the advertising opportunity specifies one or more attributes describing the advertising opportunity;

providing the advertising opportunity to an ad-marketplace system via a content-centric network (CCN);

receiving a reference to an advertisement for an advertising bid that was selected for the advertising opportunity, wherein the advertisement is to be presented during the advertising opportunity; and

creating a challenge-query for the advertising opportunity, wherein the challenge query includes instructions for generating a challenge-response based on data extracted from a position in the advertisement, and wherein a valid challenge response indicates that a client device consumed the advertisement during the advertising opportunity.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the attributes include at least one of:

a time interval during which the media stream is accessible by a set of client devices;

a user demographic for the media stream;

or

keywords for the media stream.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

receiving, from a client device, a request to access a segment of the media stream; and

responsive to determining that the client device needs to present an advertisement;

providing an advertisement to the client device; and

verifying that the client device has presented the advertisement during the advertising opportunity prior to allowing the client device to access the media stream segment.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein determining that the client device needs to present an advertisement involves on one or more of:

determining that the client device or a user does not have a sufficient number of credits to consume the media stream;

or

determining that a user of the client device has not paid a fee to consume the media stream.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein providing the advertisement involves:

generating a secret sauce that inserts the advertisement into the media stream, wherein the secret sauce includes at least the reference to the advertisement and the challenge-query for the advertisement, wherein the encoding sauce is encoded using a public key from the client device; and

sending the secret sauce to the client device.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein providing the advertisement involves:

generating an advertisement packet that includes at least the reference to the advertisement, the challenge query for the advertising opportunity, and a public key for the media broker, wherein the advertisement packet is encrypted using a public key from the client device; and

sending the advertisement packet to the client device.