Automatically Inserting Advertisements into Source Video Content Playback Streams

• US 20070204310A1
• Filed: 01/23/2007
• Published: 08/30/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/27/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Ma, Wei-Ying, Hua, Xian-Sheng, Li, Shipeng, Lai, Wei
• Granted Patent: US 9,554,093 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/88
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23424 involving splicing one content stream with another content stream, e.g. for inserting or substituting an advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2387 Stream processing in response to a playback request from an end-user, e.g. for trick-play
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47202 for requesting content on demand, e.g. video on demand
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6587 Control parameters, e.g. trick play commands, viewpoint selection
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8133 specifically related to the content, e.g. biography of the actors in a movie, detailed information about an article seen in a video program
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests

Abstract

Systems and methods for automatically inserting advertisements into source video content playback streams are described. In one aspect, the systems and methods communicate a source video content playback stream to a video player to present source video to a user. During playback of the source video, and in response to receipt of a request from the user to navigate portions of the source video (e.g., a user command to fast forward the source video, rewind the source video, or other action), the systems and methods dynamically define a video advertisement clip insertion point (e.g., and insertion point based on a current playback position). The systems and methods then insert a contextually relevant and/or targeted video advertisement clip into the playback stream for presentation to the user.

Claims

1. A method at least partially implemented by a computer system, the method comprising:

communicating a source video content playback stream to a user to present respective portions of a source video to the user; and

inserting, while communicating the source video, one or more advertisements into the source video content playback stream at respective ones of one or more ad-clip insertion points defined using a timeline of the source video;

at least one of the ad-clip insertion points being a dynamically determined insertion point inserted responsive to receiving a video navigation request from the user during playback of the source video.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the portions comprise one or more of a shot, a scene, and a chapter.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the ad-clip insertion points is a statically determined insertion point based on the timeline.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein at least a subset of the ad-clip insertion points correspond to respective shot or scene boundaries in the source video.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the advertisement is a video advertisement clip.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the video navigation request is a request to fast-forward, skip, seek, or rewind the source video.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one advertisement of the advertisements is one or more of contextually relevant to a segment of the source video adjacent to a respective one of the ad-clip insertion points and targeted to information in a user profile associated with the viewer.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one advertisement of the advertisements has one or more of genre or semantic relevance, visual relevance, and object relevance with respect to a segment of the source video adjacent to a respective one of the ad-clip insertion points.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein communicating further comprises streaming the source video to a remote computing device for presentation to the user.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:

extracting a first set of metadata from the source video;

extracting different respective sets of metadata from a set of video advertisement clips;

evaluating the first and the different respective sets of metadata to identify a set of candidate advertisements that are contextually relevant to source video content adjacent to a video clip insertion point; and

selecting the advertisements from the set of candidate advertisements.

11. A computer-readable data storage medium having computer-executable instructions for performing steps comprising:

extracting respective sets of metadata from a source video and a set of video advertisement clips (video ad-clips), at least a portion of the metadata being text data inserted into the source video by an administrator;

evaluating the respective sets of metadata to identify a set of candidate video ad-clips that are contextually relevant to respective ones of segments in the source video, the candidate video ad-clips being at least a subset of the video ad-clips;

during playback of the source video for presentation to a user, automatically inserting at least one ad-clip of the candidate video ad-clips into a playback stream at an insertion point defined with respect to a timeline of the source video.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the respective sets of metadata comprise low-level content-based features, high-level semantic attributes, and textual information.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the metadata includes text identifying a predetermined video ad-clip insertion point defined with respect a shot or scene boundary of the source video.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the respective sets of metadata comprise data identifying color, motion, genre, location, objects, and text.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the at least one ad-clip is contextually relevant to a segment of the source video being streamed adjacent to the insertion point.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the computer-program instructions further comprise instructions for selecting the at least one ad-clip so that content of the at least one ad-clip is relevant to information in a profile of the user.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the insertion point is a dynamic insertion point defined responsive to receipt of a source video navigation request from the user.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the computer-executable instructions further comprise instructions for performing steps comprising:

collecting information to generate a profile of the user, the information comprising user click-though statistics; and

wherein at least a subject of the respective sets of metadata is generated based on information in the profile.

19. A computing device comprising:

a processor; and

a memory coupled to the processor, the memory comprising computer-program instructions executable by the processor for performing steps comprising;

responsive to a request from a user to stream a source video to the user for presentation, evaluating a profile of the user to locate at least one video advertisement clip (“

video ad-clip”

) that is relevant to information in a profile associated with the user;

during streaming of the source video to the user, automatically inserting the at least one video ad-clip into the source video at one or more of a predetermined insertion point and a dynamically determined insertion point to generate a modified video stream, the dynamically determined insertion point being defined responsive to an action of the user, wherein receipt of respective portions of the modified video stream cause a video player to present the respective portions to the user for viewing; and

responsive to detecting a source video navigation request from the user, ignoring the request if the at least one video ad-clip is currently being streamed to the user for playback, the request being ignored at least until playback completion of one or more ad-clips associated with the at least one video-ad clip.

20. The computing device of claim 19, wherein the computer-program instructions further include instructions for performing steps comprising:

evaluating content of the source video and multiple video ad-clips to identify a set of candidate video ad-clips that are contextually relevant to respective ones of segments adjacent to statically defined ad-clip insertion points; and

wherein the at least one video ad-clip is a candidate video ad-clip.