Virtual insertion of advertisements

• US 9,171,318 B2
• Filed: 11/15/2010
• Issued: 10/27/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 11/15/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Verizon Patent and Licensing Incorporated (Verizon Communications Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Verizon Patent and Licensing Incorporated (Verizon Communications Inc.)
• Inventors: Ruiz-Velasco, Enrique, Asarikuniyil, Binny
• Primary Examiner(s): Goodarzi, Nasser
• Assistant Examiner(s): PIERORAZIO, MICHAEL
• Application Number:
  US12/946,207
• Publication Number:
  US 20120124618A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,807 Days
• Field of Search: 725/32
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0241 Advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0276 Advertisement creation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0277 Online advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/26258 for generating a list of items to be played back in a given order, e.g. playlist, or scheduling item distribution according to such list retrieval of multimedia data based on playlists G06F16/40
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4825 using a list of items to be played back in a given order, e.g. playlists
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8456 by decomposing the content in the time domain, e.g. in time segments

Abstract

A device includes a communication interface and one or more processors. The communication interface may receive a playlist that lists segments of a content stream in an order the segments are to be recombined, receive advertisement information that describes an advertisement, receive a breakpoint, and send a revised playlist to a remote server. The one or more processors may generate the revised playlist based on the playlist, the advertisement information, and the breakpoint. The revised playlist may include references to the segments and the advertisements.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a device to;

receive a playlist that lists segments of a content stream in an order the segments must be recombined to generate a copy of the content stream;

receive advertisement information for advertisements, wherein the advertisement information does not include the advertisements;

receive timing information, which identifies an advertisement breakpoint in the content stream, from a breakpoint detector that obtains the timing information, which is carried by a signal provided in the content stream, from the signal;

without sending the playlist over a network to a client and without sending the playlist over the network to a remote device,

revise the playlist to generate a revised playlist that lists the segments and the advertisements based on the advertisement information and the timing information that identifies the advertisement breakpoint in the content stream; and

send, over the network, the revised playlist to at least one of;

the remote device or the client.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the remote device includes at least one of:

an application server;

or a web server.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a segmenter that splits the content stream into the segments.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the segmenter is configured to:

split the content stream into the segments, the segments being files of an equal size.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a content source that sends the content stream to the device.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the playlist includes:

one or more M3U8 files.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein when the device generates the revised playlist, the device is further configured to:

select the advertisements based on information pertaining to the content stream.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the breakpoint detector includes:

a Digital Program Insertion (DPI) monitor that generates the timing information based on the signal provided in the content stream, wherein the signal includes digital cue tones.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

an advertisement server that sends the advertisement information to the device and provides the advertisements to the client.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the client includes one or more of:

a tablet computer;

personal computer;

laptop computer;

smart phone;

cell phone;

personal digital assistant;

gaming console;

or a browser.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the revised playlist includes:

a list of identifiers of the segments, the identifiers interleaved with identifiers of the advertisements.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the identifiers of the segments include:

a universal resource locator (URL) or a universal resource identifier (URI) associated with each of the segments.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the content stream comprises a stream formatted in accordance with:

H.264;

MPEG-4 Advanced Video Encoding (AVC);

or

high efficiency advanced audio coding (HE-AAC).

14. The system of claim 1, further comprising one or more of:

a content source that generates the content stream and provides the content stream to the device and a segmenter;

the segmenter, which splits the content stream into the segments and outputs the segments and the playlist;

the remote device;

a content server that stores the segments received from the segmenter;

or

an advertisement server that stores the advertisements and sends the advertisement information to the device.

20. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a segmenter that splits the content stream into the segments, wherein the device receives the playlist from the segmenter and wherein the segmenter is configured to;

receive the timing information from the breakpoint detector; and

use the timing information to set a length of one segment, among the segments, such that the one segment ends at the advertisement breakpoint.

21. The system of claim 1, wherein one of the segments ends at the advertisement breakpoint.

22. The system of claim 1, wherein the advertisement information includes a network address of one of the advertisements and a duration of the one of the advertisements.

15. A method comprising:

receiving a playlist that lists segments of a content stream in an order the segments must be recombined to generate a copy of the content stream;

receiving advertisement information for advertisements, wherein the advertisement information does not include the advertisements;

receiving timing information, which identifies an advertisement breakpoint in the content stream, from a breakpoint detector that obtains the timing information, which is carried by a signal provided in the content stream, from the signal;

without sending the playlist over a network to any client and without sending the playlist over the network to a remote server,

revising the playlist to generate a revised playlist that lists the segments and the advertisements based on the advertisement information and the timing information that identifies the advertisement breakpoint in the content stream; and

sending, over the network, the revised playlist to the remote server.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

receiving the content stream from an encoder device.

17. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

obtaining the timing information that identifies the advertisement breakpoint in the content stream by analyzing digital cue tones embedded in the content stream.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

partitioning the content stream into files of an equal size.

19. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

repeating, until the content stream terminates, the receiving a playlist, receiving advertisement information, receiving timing information that identifies an advertisement breakpoint, generating a revised playlist, and sending the revised playlist to the remote server.

23. The method of claim 15, wherein one of the segments ends at the advertisement breakpoint.

24. The method of claim 15, wherein the advertisement information includes a network address of one of the advertisements and a resolution of the one of the advertisements.

25. A method comprising:

obtaining a first playlist that lists segments of a content stream in an order the segments must be recombined to generate a copy of the content stream;

obtaining advertisement information for an advertisement, wherein the advertisement information does not include the advertisement;

obtaining timing information, which identifies an advertisement breakpoint in the content stream, from a breakpoint detector that obtains the timing information, which is carried by a signal provided in the content stream, from the signal;

without sending the playlist over a network to any client and without sending the playlist over the network to a remote device,

revising the first playlist to generate a revised playlist that lists the segments and the advertisement based on the advertisement information and the timing information that identifies the advertisement breakpoint in the content stream; and

sending, over the network, the revised playlist to the remote device.

26. The method of claim 25, wherein one of the segments ends at the advertisement breakpoint.

27. The method of claim 25, wherein the advertisement information includes a network address of the advertisement, and identifies a target demographics of the advertisement.

28. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media, comprising computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to:

obtain a first playlist that lists segments of a content stream in an order the segments must be recombined to generate a copy of the content stream;

obtain advertisement information for an advertisement, wherein the advertisement information does not include the advertisement;

obtain timing information, which identifies an advertisement breakpoint in the content stream, from a breakpoint detector that obtains the timing information, which is carried by a signal provided in the content stream, from the signal;

without sending the playlist over a network to any client and without sending the playlist over the network to a remote device,

revise the first playlist to generate a revised playlist that lists the segments and the advertisement based on the advertisement information and the timing information that identifies the advertisement breakpoint in the content stream; and

sending, over the network, the revised playlist to the remote device.

29. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 28, wherein one of the segments ends at the advertisement breakpoint.

30. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 28, wherein the advertisement information includes a network address of the advertisement and identifies types of content into which the advertisement is to be inserted.