WO2011098928A1

WO2011098928A1 - Content delivery

Info

Publication number: WO2011098928A1
Application number: PCT/IB2011/050242
Authority: WO
Inventors: Graham Pitt; Paul Woolley; Christopher Martin; Mark Wynn-Mackenzie; Martin Ahmed
Original assignee: Nds Limited
Priority date: 2010-02-11
Filing date: 2011-01-19
Publication date: 2011-08-18
Also published as: GB2477746A; GB201002251D0

Abstract

A method of content delivery is carried out by storing respective metadata of consumers of content in a memory, maintaining an information store of sub-items having respective valuations, receiving a request for delivery of an item of content to a consumer, identifying an objective that has a relationship to the respective valuations, and making an evaluation of the metadata. Responsively to the evaluation, the method is further carried out by automatically servicing the request by establishing locations in the item of content, and selecting respective sub-items for insertion at the locations until the combined respective valuations of the respective sub-items attain the objective; Servicing the request is thereafter terminated and the locations and the respective sub-items are reported.

Description

CONTENT DELIVERY

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to a method of content delivery and a corresponding data processing system. More particularly, this invention relates to automatically varying the quantity of inserted information in content for delivery to targeted recipients over various media.

BACKGROUND TO THE INVENTION

Targeting advertisements to classes and individuals is a widely understood and valued way of marketing, used in a number of different of modes of communication where personalised communication with a particular individual or household is possible. Targeting is currently used on the Internet, in direct mail, on mobile telephones, and increasingly in the television industry. Targeting is valued by information insertion entities such as commercial advertisers, as it enables them to provide accurately focused messages, which are likely to persuade consumers to purchase the goods or services being advertised. The presentation of targeted advertising near content, such as on a television screen and Internet web pages, is a widely used technique for supporting content distribution.

While advertising has been readily embraced by media content providers, its insertion into the media consumption experience is generally not popular with media consumers, who often view it as intrusive and interruptive, and take steps to avoid it, such as ad-skipping with personal video recording devices, or by the use of ad-blockers within web browsers.

U.S. Patent Nos. 7,356,547 and 7,136,871, both issued to Ozer et al., propose a system that may be configured to schedule display of one or more advertising impressions of available advertising inventory. A planning module enables scheduling a requested quantity of advertising impressions in accordance with target criteria. Further, the planning module enables selecting an advertising impression goal for advertisement, assigning an advertising type and defining a weight for the advertisements. A control module receives the schedule, the advertising type and the defined weights and generates one or more metadata files that contain target criteria, advertising type and weights for the advertisements. The metadata files, with the advertisements, are delivered to a receiver module that is configured to define a display frequency for the advertisements based upon one or more of the metadata files. The receiver module selectively displays advertisement content associated with the advertisements to achieve the advertising impression goal.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Often the amount of consumer information that is utilised for targeted information insertion such as commercial advertising in an item of content, i.e., metadata, is limited or varied. Consumers and other sources of metadata can be reluctant to provide desired information. Indeed, policies such as a consumer's privacy preferences or legal limitations tend to frustrate targeted advertising systems. Legal limitations can be particularly daunting in jurisdictions that impose requirements for opt-in or opt-out mechanisms. If a consumer opts not to allow personal information to be used, the ability to target becomes considerably diminished. In the past, there has been little direct incentive for consumers to allow their data to be used, other than an abstract notion of "more relevant advertisements". Consumers seem not to perceive this as a significant benefit. Content providers have tended to respond to the lack of targeting information by simply increasing the amount of advertisement around the content, an approach that can be ineffective and even counterproductive.

It is possible to target advertisements quite precisely for viewers for whom rich personal data is available, and advertisers are normally prepared to pay more for such targeting. Embodiments of the invention address the problem of deriving appropriate levels of revenue from targeted advertising by automatically reconciling partially aligned and partially conflicting interests among several parties: content providers, advertisers, and consumers. These embodiments dynamically and automatically incorporate a variable number of carefully targeted advertisements in content distribution to optimally accommodate the interests of all three parties. Accurately targeted advertisements typically increase financial return per view for the advertiser and the content provider. Consumers for whom rich targeting metadata is available see fewer advertisements than those for whom less information is available, or those who have restricted the use of their metadata, e.g. personal information. This creates an incentive for consumers to provide and update metadata and to allow personal information to be used in targeting. Implementations of the principles of the present invention thus induce a virtuous cycle that results in ever-greater revenues to the content provider and the advertiser, and ultimately better access to content for the consumer.

There is provided according to an aspect of the invention a method of content delivery, which is carried out by storing respective metadata of consumers of content in a memory, maintaining an information store of sub-items having respective valuations, receiving a request for delivery of an item of content to a consumer, identifying an objective, the objective having a relationship to the respective valuations, making an evaluation of the metadata, and responsively to the evaluation automatically servicing the request by establishing locations in the item of content, and selecting respective sub -items for insertion at the locations until the combined respective valuations of the respective sub-items attain the objective; thereafter terminating performance of the step of servicing the request and reporting the locations and the respective sub-items.

According to one aspect of the invention, the objective is an objective for the item of content.

One aspect of the invention includes linking the respective sub-items to the item of content at the locations, and transmitting the item of content and the sub-items to the consumer.

According to another aspect of the invention, establishing locations comprises creating respective new slots for the sub-items in the item of content.

According to yet another aspect of the invention, establishing locations comprises selecting predefined slots in the item of content.

According to a further aspect of the invention, selecting respective sub-items comprises favouring relatively more valuable sub-items in the information store over less valuable sub-items.

According to still another aspect of the invention, the respective valuations vary as a function of the respective metadata in the memory.

One aspect of the invention includes detecting that the respective metadata of the consumer is sub-optimum, and responsively thereto notifying the consumer to update the respective metadata.

Another aspect of the invention includes interfacing the memory with the consumers to enable adding and updating the respective metadata by the consumers.

According to a yet another aspect of the invention, the respective valuations comprise one or more properties of the sub-items.

According to a further aspect of the invention, servicing the request is performed subject to a set of governing constraints. The set of governing constraints may include at least one of a maximum number of advertisements, an existence of qualified locations, and an existence of a qualified time interval. There is provided according to an aspect of the invention a data processing system comprising a processor and a memory accessible to the processor storing programs and data objects therein. The programs include an insertion control module, wherein execution of the programs cause the processor to perform the steps of storing respective metadata of consumers of content in the memory, maintaining an inventory of sub-items having respective valuations in the memory, receiving a request for delivery of an item of content to a consumer, and identifying an objective for the item of content, the objective having a relationship to the respective valuations. Execution of the programs further cause the processor to make an evaluation of the metadata, and responsively to the evaluation to automatically service the request by establishing locations in the item of content, selecting respective sub -items for insertion at the locations until the combined respective valuations of the respective sub-items attain the objective, thereafter terminating servicing the request, and reporting the locations and the respective sub-items.

In an aspect of the invention, the processor is operative for linking the respective sub-items to the item of content at the locations and transmitting the item of content and the sub-items to the consumer.

In one aspect of the invention, the processor is operative for detecting that the respective metadata of the consumer is sub-optimum, and responsively thereto notifying the consumer to update the respective metadata.

In another aspect of the invention, the processor is operative for interfacing the memory with the consumers to enable adding and updating the respective metadata by the consumers.

In yet another aspect of the invention, the respective valuations comprise one or more properties of the sub-items. In another aspect of the invention, servicing the request is performed subject to a set of governing constraints.

In another aspect of the invention, the set of governing constraints includes at least one of a maximum number of advertisements, a proximity to a conflicting advertisement, an existence of qualified locations, and an existence of a qualified time interval.

There is provided according to an aspect of the invention a data processing system comprising an insertion control module linked to a decision module and receiving requests for insertion of sub-items in an item of content to be delivered to a consumer. The sub-items have respective valuations. The system includes a consumer metadata storage unit for storing respective metadata of consumers, and an inventory storage unit for maintaining an inventory of locations for the sub-items in the item of content. The insertion control module is operative for identifying an objective for the item of content, the objective having a relationship to the respective valuations; for making an evaluation of the metadata, and automatically servicing the requests according to the evaluation by establishing the locations in the item of content. The insertion control module is operative for transmitting the locations from the inventory storage unit to the decision module and receiving from the decision module combinations of sub-items associated with respective locations, and for selecting a portion of the combinations for insertion in the item of content until the combined respective valuations of the sub-items in the combinations attain the objective, and reporting the selected combinations.

In one aspect of the invention, the insertion control module is operative for linking the sub-items in the combinations to the item of content at the respective locations and transmitting the item of content and the sub-items to the consumer.

In another aspect of the invention, establishing the locations comprises creating respective new slots for the sub-items in the item of content.

In a further aspect of the invention, establishing the locations comprises selecting predefined slots in the item of content.

In still another aspect of the invention, selecting a portion of the combinations comprises favouring relatively more valuable sub-items over less valuable sub-items.

In yet another aspect of the invention, the respective valuations vary as a function of the respective metadata.

Another aspect of the invention includes interfacing the consumer metadata storage unit with the consumers to enable adding and updating the respective metadata by the consumers. In yet a further aspect of the invention, the respective valuations comprise one or more properties of the sub-items.

According to an aspect of the invention, servicing the request is performed subject to a set of governing constraints. The set of governing constraints may include at least one of a maximum number of advertisements, a proximity to a conflicting advertisement, an existence of qualified locations, and an existence of a qualified time interval.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

For a better understanding of the present invention, reference is made to the detailed description of embodiments, by way of example, which is to be read in conjunction with the following drawings, wherein like elements are given like reference numerals, and wherein:

Figure 1 is a schematic pictorial diagram of a system that is suitable for carrying out embodiments of the present invention;

Figure 2 is a functional block diagram of a portion of the system shown in Figure 1, in accordance with embodiments of the present invention;

Figure 3 is a flow chart of a method of selecting advertisements to be associated with an item of content in accordance with embodiments of the present invention; and

Figure 4 is a flow chart of a method of dynamic slot creation for an item of content in accordance with alternate embodiments of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS

In the following description, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the various principles of the present invention. It will be apparent to one skilled in the art, however, that not all these details are necessarily always needed for practicing the present invention. In this instance, well-known circuits, control logic, and the details of computer program instructions for conventional algorithms and processes have not been shown in detail in order not to obscure the general concepts unnecessarily.

Aspects of the present invention may be embodied in software programming code, which is typically maintained in permanent storage, such as a computer readable medium. In a client/server environment, such software programming code may be stored on a client or a server. The software programming code may be embodied on any of a variety of known tangible media for use with a data processing system, such as a diskette, hard drive, or CD-ROM. The code may be distributed on such media, or may be distributed to consumers from the memory or storage of one computer system over a network of some type to storage devices on other computer systems for use by consumers of such other systems.

Although the principles of the invention are often described herein in relation to advertising applications, this is an example selected for convenience of presentation, and is not limiting. The invention can be applied in many communications applications, e.g. educational presentations where information needs to be inserted ad hoc, but where it is expedient to minimize intrusion and distraction of viewers or listeners. Information of this sort that can be associated with or attached to an item of content is sometimes referred to herein as a "sub-item". The ability to dynamically customize the content and choose insertion opportunities or "slots" for placement of sub-items can be particularly effective when consumer-specific information (metadata) is available. For example, in a general presentation, awareness of a special area of interest of a particular consumer (or class of consumers) might influence placement of the sub-items at locations inside (or outside) portions of the presentation most related to that interest.

Definitions and Terminology

The term "content distribution" in this disclosure, unless otherwise specified, is intended to encompass communication of information by various techniques, including but not limited to printed publications, various audiovisual media, television, radio, communication via data networks such as the Internet, e-ink devices, and more traditional forms of communication such as mail, handbills, and the like. All of these media offer the possibility of associating a predetermined quantity of targeted inserted information with content. The content may be displayed to the consumer via a diverse set of devices and modalities. Some examples include a video-on-demand service, which may involve a set-top box, a web site displayed on a computer monitor using a browser, a digital video recorder, a podcast service, or an MP3 player, as well as traditional broadcast radio and television sets, magazines and specialised periodicals intended for trades and professions.

"Pre-rolls", "mid-rolls" and "post-rolls", are advertising content, typically video advertisements that are respectively inserted prior, during, or following the presentation of other content (viewed on demand), such as a video-on-demand content item or textual content on a web page. "Advertisement insertion points", also known as "advertising opportunities" are associated with content, and indicate all the places where advertisements could be placed. For example, video-on-demand content may specify advertisement insertion points of two 30 second pre -rolls, one 30 second post-roll, and two banner overlays at specified times.

"Advertising inventory" refers to a collection of advertising insertion points in an item of content that are available for the insertion or attachment of advertising material.

A "slot" is an advertising insertion point that has been selected for linkage with an advertisement. It should be noted that an advertising insertion point may accommodate more than one slot.

System Architecture

Turning now to the drawings, reference is initially made to Figure 1, which is a pictorial diagram of a system 10 that is suitable for carrying out embodiments of the present invention. The system 10 automatically facilitates the insertion of targeted information into content for delivery to consumers. The system 10 typically comprises a general purpose or embedded computer processor 12, which is programmed with suitable programs 14 for carrying out the functions described hereinbelow. Thus, although portions of the system 10 are shown in subsequent drawing figures as comprising a number of separate functional blocks, these blocks are not necessarily separate physical entities, but rather represent different computing tasks or data objects stored in a memory such as a memory 16 that is accessible to the programs 14. These tasks may be carried out in software running on a single processor, or on multiple processors. The programs 14 may be embodied on any of a variety of known tangible storage media for use with a computer system, such as a diskette, hard drive, or CD-ROM. Alternatively or additionally, the system 10 may comprise a digital signal processor or hard-wired logic. Typically, the system 10 comprises data storage 18 for a database, whose purposes are described below. The storage 18 is shown as a single unit, but may be any type of storage, including a distributed database.

The system 10 is linked by a data network 20, which may be the Internet, to any number of content providers, shown representatively as content provider 22. The content provider 22 issues content via a server 24. Additionally or alternatively, the content provider 22 may transmit content, for example video-on-demand, using any suitable transmission facility 26, to consumers, which are shown in Figure 1 as consumers 28, 30, 32. In this example, consumers 28, 30 receive content from content provider 22 via the network 20, using computing devices 34. They typically view the content using a rendering program 36 executing in a memory. For example, in the case of textual and graphical material delivered over the Internet, the rendering program 36 could be realized as a browser as shown in Figure 1. Consumer 32 receives a transmission from the transmission facility 26 via a display device, e.g. a television set or set-top box, which may allow the consumer 32 to interact with the content provider 22. Such transmissions are not limited to terrestrial transmissions, but may include satellite or cable transmissions and combinations thereof.

Information insertion entities desirous of inserting information (sub-items) into delivered content are sometimes referred to herein for convenience as "advertisers". They are referenced in Figure 1 as advertisers 38, 40, 42, which arrange with the content provider 22 for sub-items to be inserted into items of content. When the sub-items are commercial advertisements, fees paid to the content provider can subvent at least a portion of the costs of the content distribution operation. It will be understood, however that the advertisers 38, 40, 42 are not limited to commercial advertisers, but include any entities desirous of publishing many kinds of sub-items for any purpose. They may be connected to the content provider 22 via the network 20 to facilitate the arrangement.

The system 10 is shown in Figure 1 as a separate entity, which is not necessarily the case. The system 10 may be operated by an independent service provider. Alternatively, it may be controlled or operated by any or all of the content provider 22 and the advertisers 38, 40, 42. Moreover, the network 20 is not essential to communications among the entities. For example, the content provider 22 could distribute content on physical media to the consumers 28, 30, 32 and communicate with the system 10 and the advertisers 38, 40, 42 by many alternative communication modalities. Indeed, in some embodiments, the system 10 may be co-located or integral with the consumer's equipment. For example, the functions of the system 10 may be fully or partially incorporated in a set- top box.

In order to generate revenue, it is generally considered beneficial to target the information insertion, i.e., select appropriate information insertion content based on the expected characteristics of the audience or readership. In the case of the system 10, targeting exploits metadata available for the consumer to identify the characteristics. Each information insertion unit or impression is paid for by the advertiser based on the likely demographic of a consumer class and the value of that consumer class to the advertiser. For instance, an advertiser promoting a brand of beer may place a much higher value per impression on those considered likely to be persuaded to buy that product, perhaps a male between the ages of 18 and 30, than someone who is unlikely or unable to buy the product, such as a child. In a fully advertisement-funded system, an item of content shown to a consumer is typically paid for by attaching sufficient inserted information to cover the cost of production, distribution, etc., and to generate a profit for the content provider 22.

For example, in the context of a video on demand title, the total required revenue from advertising for a piece of content may be calculated. In order to pay for that content, video advertising is selected by the system 10 in a manner described below, and inserted into or around the content as one or several advertisements. Where the profile of the consumer to whom selected advertisements are to be shown is available, more informed choices can be made about advertisement selection, taking into account different valuations applicable to different consumer profiles. Suppose all advertisements to be shown to a consumer without specific targeting is billed at 10 monetary units per impression. However, under an agreement with the marketing company of a beer producer, when an advertisement is specifically targeted at an 18-30 year old male they will pay 40 units per impression.

In some embodiments, each content consumption item is assigned a quantifiable objective that can be represented by a single quantity, e.g. a revenue objective, or a communication-related objective such as exposure of the consumer to a defined quantity of information, a defined time or space limit in the content, and the like. In other embodiments, the objective is defined as a function of multiple properties of the advertisement itself and the slot to which it is assigned. The following factors are illustrative:

(1) The duration of the slot, e.g. how long a pre-roll advertisement is, or how long an overlaid banner is displayed. Assuming that users generally do not want to be bothered by advertising, the system could be configured to prefer to meet its objective by minimising the duration of advertising to which the user is exposed.

(2) The 'annoyance' qualities of the slot. Typically, this would be quantified by a content provider, for example based on market research. For example, a large overlay may be assumed to be more intrusive and annoying than a smaller one. A pre-roll advertisement is less annoying than a mid-roll as it intrudes less on the viewing experience. In a web context, a static banner on the screen is less annoying than a pop-up advertisement that obscures the content for some period of time. The system may be configured to minimise the annoyance and inconvenience to the end user. This may be done selectively so that users who have paid a premium or who have made available favourable metadata experience less intrusive advertising.

(3) The technical costs associated with showing a selected advertisement in a slot. For example, the system may know that some slots, i.e., those having relatively long durations, or some advertisements are more costly to deliver to the consumer. For instance, a video advertisement may well be more costly to deliver than a static image. This cost would be factored into the valuation, according to predefined priorities.

Many other such factors will occur to those skilled in the art. A simple example of a valuation function of multiple properties is:

value = revenue - annoyance factor.

The system 10 may be flexibly configured to accommodate and exploit many valuation functions to not only achieve the objective, but achieve it in at least a near-optimum manner, for example by selecting the highest earning slots that minimise user annoyance and content delivery costs.

In any case, the objective is known to the system 10 and is generally established by the content provider 22. In some cases, the objective may be established jointly by the content provider and an advertiser. The system 10 is typically operative to select an amount of inserted content to meet the objective.

From time to time, the system 10 may survey the metadata of known consumers to detect those having sub-optimum metadata, and as an incentive to consumers, may notify such consumers that a re-evaluation of the mix/amount of advertisements in their content will occur upon submission of better metadata. In any case, the valuations of individual advertisements relate to the advertising objective, and are credited toward the objective when advertisements are successively selected for incorporation into the content.

Further, alternatively, the valuations may be decided by an auction among information insertion entities or among different weighting algorithms incorporated in the system 10, which take consumer metadata into consideration. Auction techniques of this sort are disclosed in U.S. Patent No. 6,324,519 to Eldering.

For example, assume a beer company is filling an advertising slot to sponsor a particular content item, and a revenue objective of 50 monetary units pays for the slot. Where a consumer having metadata matching the beer company's target profile requests the content from the content provider 22, the system 10 is made aware of the request, and may select a beer advertisement that is specialised for the target consumer, which generates 40 units of revenue, and one other non-specific/general advert, which generates 10 units of revenue, thereby achieving the objective of 50 units. For consumers that do not match the targeted profile, or when consumer metadata is unavailable or restricted, five non- specific/general advertisements may be selected, each of which generates 10 units of revenue, thereby achieving the objective of 50 units. Alternatively, criteria other than an item-oriented revenue objective can be established for advertisement selection. For example, the amount of advertising may be varied to meet an objective that relates to exposure over a time interval, rather than accumulated per item of content. In embodiments in which portions of the system 10 are at the consumer site, knowledge of a particular consumer's metadata may avoid the storage of irrelevant advertisements by the consumer, thereby sparing bandwidth and the resources of the consumer hardware.

Because targeted advertisements are usually assigned a relatively high value, typically consumers for whom more and/or better (or more desirable) targeting information is available see a smaller number of advertisements than other consumers. Once the revenue objective has been met, the content provider's needs are fulfilled, and no more (unsolicited) advertisements are presented to the consumer with respect to the particular content being viewed. In the case of consumers for whom metadata is available, because typically fewer advertisements have been seen, the consumer's experience is better. This creates an incentive for the consumer to provide and maintain targeting information metadata and to authorise its use. The system 10 provides the necessary enabling mechanisms.

Conversely, those consumers who fail to cooperate with the system 10, and do not make available rich targeting metadata, are penalised, in that they are exposed to increased advertising, whose quality cannot be guaranteed to be fully responsive to their particular needs.

Reference is now made to Figure 2, which is a functional block diagram describing an embodiment of the system 10 (Figure 1). The components of block 44 interact with the consumers 28, 30, 32. A display device 46 corresponds to the television of the consumer 32, and the rendering program 36 and its associated hardware in the case of the consumers 28, 30. Content services 48 are delivered to the consumers 28, 30, 32 using any of the above-mentioned modalities by the content provider 22 and can be selected by the consumers 28, 30, 32. The content services 48 may include catalogues or indices to content, and pricing data regarding information insertion slots or opportunities relating to the content. In addition, the content services 48 provide item-specific information 50 to be associated with consumer-designated items. The specific information may include constraints imposed by the content provider on information insertions, and the objective being sought, e.g. a revenue target. In some cases, the content provider may specify slots that can be occupied by sub- items.

The consumer uses the display device to navigate through the content made available by the content provider 22 (Figure 1). Referring again to the application of the principles of embodiments of the present invention to advertising, when a consumer selects a content item to view, the content services 48 interacts with an advertising insertion control module 52 to determine the advertising to be shown with the content. The content services 48 then sends the content and advertising to the display device 46, which then displays both the content and the advertising for the consumer to view. The advertising can be transmitted as computer files. Additionally or alternatively, the advertising can be transmitted as links or references to the advertising information.

The advertising insertion control module 52 is aware of the constraints and objective in the item-specific information 50. In a first variant, the constraints include slots that are predefined by the content provider 22 (Figure 1). The advertising insertion control module 52 determines the number of slots that need to be populated in order to meet the objective. Additionally, the advertising insertion control module 52 may determine the distribution of the slots.

In a second variant, in which slots are not predefined, the advertising insertion control module 52 dynamically creates slots in the content and populates them with a portion of the advertisements obtained from an advertising decision module 54 that is sufficient to achieve the objective.

The advertising insertion control module 52 has access to a consumer metadata store 56 and selects one or more advertisements by matching metadata stored in an advertising inventory store 60 and the consumer metadata store 56 as follows:

The advertising insertion control module 52 retrieves consumer metadata from the consumer metadata store 56, and applies any privacy rules that may be included in the metadata. In some cases, it is necessary to filter the retrieved metadata to eliminate portions of the metadata in order to comply with privacy restrictions.

The advertising insertion control module 52 then passes the filtered metadata to the advertising decision module 54 and, optionally, a specification of the slots to be filled, the latter obtained from the advertising inventory store 60. The specification may take the form of a list of one or more slots and any applicable properties, e.g. duration, space limitations.

The advertising decision module 54 can access the details of the advertisements in an advertising information store 58, including information such as their assigned revenues or valuations, target consumer, and number of desired impressions. The advertising decision module 54 is responsible to apply this information to choose the most appropriate advertisements in accordance with a governing policy, which may include optimization criteria. Techniques for performing this function are well known in the art. The advertising decision module 54 returns the selected advertisements to the advertising insertion control module 52, each paired with one of the previously received slots. Communication of the advertisements may be implemented by a transmission of actual content or a reference to the actual content. Many such techniques will occur to those skilled in the art. For example, when the advertising decision module 54 and advertising insertion control module 52 are implemented as concurrent processes, conventional interprocess communication methods are suitable.

Upon receipt of the advertisements-slot pairs selected by the advertising decision module 54, the advertising insertion control module 52 chooses selected pairs for inclusion in the content by evaluating the respective merits of each possibility until the objective, e.g. revenue objective, has been met. Once the objective has been met, no further advertisements are inserted, even if available advertising opportunities remain unfilled.

It will be recalled from the foregoing discussion that a valuation is placed on an advertisement by the advertiser. This valuation is taken into account by the advertising insertion control module 52. Optionally, other attributes of the advertisements and the slots may also be taken into consideration in order to arrive at an optimum or near-optimum selection of advertisements in accordance with some predetermined optimization criteria. Examples of such value-modifying attributes include bandwidth requirement and an evaluation of the annoyance factor of the advertisements. There may be interdependence between the advertisement and slots when taking value-modifying attributes into consideration. Some attributes of a particular advertisement may depend on the slot with which the advertisement is paired. For instance, a particular pre -roll advertisement may be more acceptable to a consumer than a presentation of the same advertisement as a mid-roll.

The advertising insertion control module 52 cooperates with other system functions to register the resulting transaction for fiscal and administrative purposes, e.g. production of statistical reports, revenue analyses, consumer surveys, and the like. These system functions are not discussed further herein, as they are conventional, and are outside the scope of this disclosure.

The consumer metadata store 56 typically holds personal information of consumers who benefit from the system 10 (Figure 1). Types of such data include, but are not limited to: age, gender, home address, income, interests, purchasing intentions, and control information specifying whether these data elements can be used for purposes of targeted advertisements. The metadata may include characteristics of the consumer's client device, e.g. storage capacity, bandwidth of the network path, etc. These data may be gathered from various sources, e.g. information provided by the consumer on registration with a content delivery service, marketing databases, and a historical database of advertisements previously provided. The consumer metadata store 56 may also hold data derived by behavioural analysis of the consumer activities. The above-noted control information may specify whether such behavioural analyses are permitted, and whether information derived by such analysis may be used in targeting.

The consumer metadata store 56 and the advertising information store 58 are typically physically maintained in the storage 18 (Figure 1). Additionally or alternatively, the consumer metadata store 56 and the advertising information store 58 could be obtained from external data sources made available under contractual or service arrangements from other entities.

The advertising information store 58 holds information about the various advertisements and campaigns available for showing to consumers, including information about how they should be targeted such as the type of content, consumer profiles etc. It also holds information, which can be used to determine the financial value to the system owner or operator of each ad shown to a consumer. This information will typically be specified in the contractual relationship between the advertiser and the system owner/operator. For each content item, the advertising inventory store 60 contains data describing available advertising insertion points or opportunities, which are needed to attach advertisements to the underlying content. For example, video content advertisements may be in the form of pre, mid and post roll advertisements, specifications of which are described in the advertising inventory store 60. Alternatively, video content advertisements may be expressed as banners overlying or alongside the video. For web pages, the inventory store may hold information about the spatial areas of the pages of the site into which advertisements can be placed and also whether rich-media ad overlays may be placed over or around the content.

In the consumer metadata store 56 and the advertising information store 58 interfaces 62, 64, are provided for creation and maintenance of information and targeting permissions. The interface 62 may in some circumstances be exposed to the consumers 28, 30, 32 (Figure 1), for example, as a self-service web page. Consumers can use the interface 62 to edit their personal metadata and privacy settings and thereby influence the numbers and relevance of advertisements that they see. The interfaces 62, 64 may also be made available to customer service operatives of a service provider, and by other external systems that hold or can determine information about consumers. For each selected advertisement, the advertising insertion control module 52 receives an associated valuation or weight, e.g. a financial value. The weights or valuations are added until the desired objective is reached or exceeded, at which point the insertion of advertisements is stopped.

The selected set of advertisements is sent to the display device 46. This may be accomplished in various ways, according to the capabilities of the display device 46. For example:

(A) In a video-on-demand (VOD) system, the VOD server may be provided with a playlist containing the selected advertisements and the content, which are sent to the display device 46 in an appropriate sequence.

(B) In a personal video recorder, when playing back from disk, the display device 46 may be provided with a playlist containing the selected advertisements and the content, which are loaded from disk and displayed in the appropriate sequence.

(C) When browsing a web site, the page layout may contain only the selected advertisements. This can be accomplished in various ways, e.g. by creating the page dynamically, or by causing areas of the page having no advertisements to collapse.

The system 10 (Figure 1) may include analysis modules (not shown) that prepare analyses of the amount of advertisements shown to consumers against the quantity and quality of consumer metadata. Such analyses may be presented to consumers to emphasise the benefits of providing personal information for use in targeted advertising.

Operation

Reference is now made to Figure 3, which is a flow chart of a method of selecting advertisements to be associated with delivered content in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. The method provides optimal control of the mix of content that is transmitted from a content provider to a consumer. Each of the process steps shown may itself be complex. For example, advertisement placement typically involves taking in to account conflicts with other advertisements, rotation policies, etc. The process steps are shown in a particular linear sequence in Figure 2 for clarity of presentation and again refer to the example of advertising. However, it will be evident that some of them can be performed in parallel, asynchronously, or in different orders. The process begins at initial step 66, where a request for content delivery by a consumer is received.

Control transfers to step 68. An objective, or target value for the content is loaded; this is typically a revenue objective, but may be implemented as a function that returns a figure of merit taking into consideration one or more additional factors, for example an annoyance factor, total advertising duration, screen size, and delivery factors such as bandwidth and storage. Then, at step 70, the consumer's profile, i.e. metadata, is loaded. Defaults may be substituted in the absence of any consumer metadata.

Next, at step 72 constraints are loaded. The process operates within a set of governing constraints and policies, such as advertising opportunities existing only in qualified locations or time intervals, the maximum number of advertisements, proximity to conflicting advertisements, and the nature of the content itself. For example, placement policies would likely prohibit advertisements in association with content expressing an antagonistic point of view, in proximity to a competitor's advertisements, etc.

Next, at step 74, an advertisement slot is automatically created for the content, taking into consideration the above-noted constraints and target values. Automatic slot creation is a departure from traditional systems, in which the advertisement inventory (slots) needs to be predefined using some kind of external editorial system. Such conventional advertisement targeting systems simply populate the advertisement slots, with the result that all consumers experience the same number of advertisements. In contrast, step 74 is performed, usually but not necessarily by iteration as shown in Figure 2, using an algorithm that determines what advertising slots to create, subject to given constraints, and the consumer metadata. In step 74, inventory is created incrementally for the items of content, and tailored for each individual viewer. In cases where advertising insertion points for the content have been predefined, step 74 reduces to making a selection from the available advertising insertion points.

Then, at step 76, an advertisement is assigned to the current slot to form an advertisement-slot combination. The advertisement selection in step 76 is subject to the constraints provided in step 72. The selection of advertisement-slot combinations may be biased so as to most rapidly converge toward the objective, for example by favouring the most valuable advertisement-slot combinations, e.g. the greatest value per time exposure, or space exposure. In some embodiments, more sophisticated optimizations may be employed in order to maximize benefit form available advertising opportunities in terms of the desired objective. It should be noted that in the case of live broadcasts, the stream generally cannot be altered for particular consumers. Nevertheless, much of the functionality realised by the process can be achieved using banner or overlay advertisements around the content.

Next, at step 78 the value of the current advertisement-slot combination is accumulated. In some embodiments, the value of each advertisement-slot combination may be determined by an auction within the advertising insertion control module 52. This valuation may involve value-modifying attributes and complex interdependencies among advertisements and slots, as noted above. In other embodiments, only the pre-determined valuation of the currently selected advertisement is accumulated.

Control now proceeds to decision step 80, where it is determined if the target value loaded in step 68 has been reached in the accumulation of step 78. As explained above, it is advantageous to all parties that advertisement selection ceases once the specified target value has been attained. If the determination at decision step 80 is affirmative, then control proceeds to final step 82 where the procedure ends successfully. Final step 82 may comprise reporting the slots and their respective advertisements for assembly and transmission by another process or entity. Alternatively, the advertisements and content may be actually assembled or packaged and transmitted to a consumer.

If the determination at decision step 80 is negative, then at decision step 84, it is determined whether constraint limits have been reached, e.g. the maximum number of slots has been filled. If not, control returns to step 74 to begin another iteration.

If constraint limits have been reached without attaining the target, failure is reported at final step 86. Solution of the constraint satisfaction problem posed by the current content and consumer profile may require redesign of the advertisements, or a re-evaluation of revenue that can be feasibly obtained in association with the content.

Example

This example could be carried out by the system 10 (Figure 1). Assume the following advertisement contracts exist:

Advertiser A will pay 10 monetary units for advertisements shown to males. Advertiser B will pay 20 units for people working in Information Technology (IT).

Advertiser C will pay 7.5 units for advertisements shown to males. Advertiser D, an ad broker, has a large number of low value advertisements, targeted at anyone, each paying 2 units. There are three individuals with personal information as follows. All three happen to be are male, and are IT workers. However, they have each allowed different aspects of their personal information to be used for advertisement targeting purposes as shown in Table 1.

Table 1

Assume further that a revenue objective has been established at 17.5 units for a page of content, with no limit on the number of advertisements to be introduced by the system 10 (Figure 1). However, in a comparative conventional scheme a content provider has imposed a limit of two advertisements on the page. Table 2 compares the results of the two techniques.

Table 2

Although this is a specific example, it illustrates a key functional benefit of the inventive method. Consumers providing rich targeting information available are likely to see fewer advertisements than those with less targeting information, as best seen in the cases of Consumer 3 who has an unfavourable metadata profile and Consumer 1, whose metadata profile is especially favourable.

Alternative Embodiments

Referring again to Figure 2, the variants described below are directed to optimisation of the selected advertising by the advertising insertion control module 52. Using predetermined optimisation criteria, an optimal advertisement selection may be made by solving a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), for example, by incorporating well-known CSP solvers into the advertising insertion control module 52, instead of employing the simpler algorithm described above. The advantage of such optimisations will be appreciated by recalling that advertising forms a source of income for content publishers. In theory, these publishers could increase revenue by simply attaching more advertising to content, but in practice, there is no simple correlation between the amount of advertising and revenue, because excessive advertising is unpopular with viewers and may result in fewer people viewing the content. Moreover, injudiciously placed advertisements can "crowd each other out", thereby reducing the impact and value of each advertisement.

The advertising insertion control module 52 may be configured to automatically restrict the number of advertisements shown. Where and how many advertisements are to be attached to the content may be specified, e.g. by limiting the number of preroll advertisements for a video, the times of advertising spots in a broadcast schedule or the size and layout of advertising zones on a web page. The advertising decision module 54 then chooses which advertisements to show in each slot.

In one variant of the advertising insertion control module 52, the optimisation criteria may bias the optimising algorithm toward selection of the minimum number of advertisements, which in combination meet the revenue objective. This is generally equivalent to choosing the most valuable advertisements available in the advertising information store 58.

In another variant of the advertising insertion control module 52, the optimisation criteria may be concerned with the quality of the interruptions experienced by the consumer. For example, the algorithm may prefer a solution that minimises the number of advertisement breaks, or prohibits midroll advertisements.

In yet another variant of the advertising insertion control module 52, the advertising insertion control module 52 may be configured to deal with trick mode navigation of content, wherein the consumer views or listens to the content using navigation controls, e.g. fast-forward, rewind, pause, jump, forward skip, reverse skip. When this occurs, the advertising insertion control module 52 cannot determine the number of available advertisement slots, but must opportunistically place advertisements until the revenue objective is reached.

Under some circumstances, the advertising insertion control module 52 may elect to exclude parts of the advertising inventory store 60 from targeted selection. These are ignored by the advertising insertion control module 52 and handled separately. For example, the excluded elements may be shown to all consumers. A related consideration is the possibility of swamping consumers with advertising having low valuations. The advertising insertion control module 52 can be programmed to limit the exposure to a maximum number of advertisements.

In certain cases, e.g. a direct mail service, there is no requested content. The principles of the invention can be applied using revenue objectives for revenue during a chosen time interval. The advertising insertion control module 52 restricts the amount of advertising sent to addressees in the chosen period of time to meet the desired revenue objective.

In still another variant, the consumer may pay an amount of money to cover at least a portion of the revenue objective. The system 10 (Figure 1) supports this by including a record of the consumer's payment in the consumer metadata store 56 and crediting it toward the revenue objective.

Reference is now made to Figure 4, which is a flow chart of a method of dynamic slot creation for an item of content in accordance with an alternate embodiment of the present invention. In the discussion of Figure 3, an algorithm was described in which slots were created and filled individually, one -by-one (although parallel implementations of the process shown in Figure 3 are feasible). The algorithm of Figure 3, however, does not guarantee that the target value will be achieved with an optimal set of slots, as once the objective has been achieved, no further attempts are made to improve the result. This leaves open the possibility that a better solution has been ignored.

The embodiment of Figure 4 can be characterized as a "brute-force" algorithm. It may operate with either a simple objective, or with a more complex functional objective, as described above with reference to step 68 (Figure 3). The objective is set in initial step 90. In steps 92, 94 consumer metadata and constraints are loaded. These steps are identical to steps 70, 72 (Figure 3), respectively. The details are not repeated in the interest of brevity.

Next, at step 96, all advertising insertion points for a current item of content are identified. In the embodiment of Figure 2, this information is usually obtained from the content services 48.

Next, at step 98, each of the advertising insertion points is designated as a

"potential slot", meaning that, when associated with an advertisement, the resulting advertisement-slot combination is a candidate to be chosen for insertion into the item of content. Next, at step 100 all of the potential slots are associated with all available advertisements. In the embodiment of Figure 2, this step is generally performed by the advertising decision module 54, which returns the resulting advertisement- slot combinations to the advertising insertion control module 52. The advertisement- slot combinations are now candidates for attachment to the item of content.

In one embodiment, the advertisement- slot combinations produced represent combinations, which can be appreciated by a simplified case, shown in Table 3, which involves three advertising insertion points and three advertisements. Three advertisement- slot combinations are generated. In this variant the advertising decision module 54 (Figure 2) makes a determination of appropriateness.

Table 3

Where the numbers of advertising insertion points and advertisements are relatively small, it may be feasible to consider permutations as shown in Table 4.

Table 4

In either case, at step 102, valuations are calculated for each of the advertisement-slot combinations, using one of the functions described above.

Next, at step 104, the candidate advertisement- slot combination having the highest valuation is selected, and at step 106, the selected combination is committed to be inserted in the item of content. It is removed from consideration as a candidate in subsequent iterations. Then, decision steps 110 108 and final steps 112, 114 are performed. They correspond to decision steps 80, 84 and final step 82, 86 (Figure 3), with a return to step 104 in the event additional iterations are required. If constraints could not be satisfied, optionally, in the case where only combinations, rather than permutations, are returned in step 100, other combinations may be considered by returning to step 100 after decision step 110, as shown by a broken line in Figure 4.

It will be appreciated by persons skilled in the art that the present invention is not limited to what has been particularly shown and described hereinabove. Rather, the scope of the present invention includes both combinations and sub-combinations of the various features described hereinabove, as well as variations and modifications thereof that are not in the prior art, which would occur to persons skilled in the art upon reading the foregoing description.

Claims

1. A method of content delivery, comprising the steps of:

storing respective metadata of consumers of content in a memory; maintaining an information store of sub-items having respective valuations; receiving a request for delivery of an item of content to a consumer;

identifying an objective, the objective having a relationship to the respective valuations;

making an evaluation of the metadata;

responsively to the evaluation automatically servicing the request by establishing locations in the item of content, and selecting respective sub -items for insertion at the locations until the combined respective valuations of the respective sub-items attain the objective;

thereafter terminating performance of the step of servicing the request; and reporting the locations and the respective sub-items.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the objective is an objective for the item of content. 3. The method according to any of claims 1 - 2, further comprising the steps of:

linking the respective sub-items to the item of content at the locations; and transmitting the item of content and the sub-items to the consumer.

4. The method according to any of claims 1 - 3, wherein establishing locations comprises creating respective new slots for the sub-items in the item of content.

5. The method according to any of claims 1 - 4, wherein establishing locations comprises selecting predefined slots in the item of content. 6. The method according to any of claims 1 - 5, wherein selecting respective sub- items comprises favouring relatively more valuable sub-items in the information store over less valuable sub-items.

7. The method according to any of claims 1 - 6, wherein the respective valuations vary as a function of the respective metadata in the memory.

8. The method according to any of claims 1 - 7, further comprising the steps of detecting that the respective metadata of the consumer is sub-optimum, and responsively thereto notifying the consumer to update the respective metadata.

9. The method according to any of claims 1 - 8, further comprising interfacing the memory with the consumers to enable adding and updating the respective metadata by the consumers.

10. The method according to any of claims 1 - 9, wherein the respective valuations comprise one or more properties of the sub-items. 11. The method according to any of claims 1 - 10, wherein servicing the request is performed subject to a set of governing constraints.

12. The method according to claim 11, wherein the set of governing constraints includes at least one of a maximum number of advertisements, an existence of qualified locations, and an existence of a qualified time interval.

13. A data processing system comprising:

a processor;

a memory accessible to the processor storing programs and data objects therein, the programs including an insertion control module, wherein execution of the programs cause the processor to perform the steps of:

storing respective metadata of consumers of content in the memory;

maintaining an inventory of sub-items having respective valuations in the memory;

receiving a request for delivery of an item of content to a consumer;

identifying an objective for the item of content, the objective having a relationship to the respective valuations; and

making an evaluation of the metadata;

responsively to the evaluation and automatically servicing the request by establishing locations in the item of content, and selecting respective sub-items for insertion at the locations until the combined respective valuations of the respective sub-items attain the objective;

14. The data processing system according to claim

13, wherein the processor is operative to perform the additional steps of:

linking the respective sub-items to the item of content at the locations and transmitting the item of content and the sub-items to the consumer.

15. The data processing system according to any of claims

13 -

14, wherein establishing locations comprises creating respective new slots for the sub-items in the item of content.

16. The data processing system according to any of claims

13 -

15, wherein establishing locations comprises selecting predefined slots in the item of content. 17. The data processing system according to any of claims

is le, wherein selecting respective sub-items comprises favouring relatively more valuable sub- items in the inventory over less valuable sub-items. 18. The data processing system according to any of claims

13 - 17, wherein the respective valuations vary as a function of the respective metadata in the memory.

19. The data processing system according to any of claims

13 - 18, further comprising the steps of detecting that the respective metadata of the consumer is sub-optimum, and responsively thereto notifying the consumer to update the respective metadata.

20. The data processing system according to any of claims 13 - 19, further comprising interfacing the memory with the consumers to enable adding and updating the respective metadata by the consumers.

21. The data processing system according to any of claims

13 - 20, wherein the respective valuations comprise one or more properties of the sub-items.

22. The data processing system according to any of claims

13 - 21, wherein servicing the request is performed subject to a set of governing constraints.

23. The data processing system according to claim

22, wherein the set of governing constraints includes at least one of a maximum number of advertisements, a proximity to a conflicting advertisement, an existence of qualified locations, and an existence of a qualified time interval. 24. A data processing system comprising:

an insertion control module linked to a decision module and receiving requests for insertion of sub-items in an item of content to be delivered to a consumer, the sub-items having respective valuations;

a consumer metadata storage unit for storing respective metadata of consumers; an inventory storage unit for maintaining an inventory of locations for the sub- items in the item of content;

the insertion control module operative for identifying an objective for the item of content, the objective having a relationship to the respective valuations; for making an evaluation of the metadata, and automatically servicing the requests according to the evaluation by establishing the locations in the item of content, the insertion control module operative for transmitting the locations from the inventory storage unit to the decision module and receiving from the decision module combinations of sub-items associated with respective locations, and for selecting a portion of the combinations for insertion in the item of content until the combined respective valuations of the sub-items in the combinations attain the objective; and

reporting the selected combinations.

The data processing system according to claim 24, wherein the insertion module is operative to perform the additional steps of: linking the sub-items in the combinations to the item of content at the respective locations and

transmitting the item of content and the sub-items to the consumer. 26. The data processing system according to any of claims 24 -

25, wherein establishing the locations comprises creating respective new slots for the sub- items in the item of content.

27. The data processing system according to any of claims 24 - 26, wherein establishing the locations comprises selecting predefined slots in the item of content.

28. The data processing system according to any of claims 24 -

27, wherein selecting a portion of the combinations comprises favouring relatively more valuable sub-items over less valuable sub-items.

29. The data processing system according to any of claims 24 - 28, wherein the respective valuations vary as a function of the respective metadata. 30. The data processing system according to any of claims 24 -

29, further comprising interfacing the consumer metadata storage unit with the consumers to enable adding and updating the respective metadata by the consumers.

31. The data processing system according to any of claims 24 - 30, wherein the respective valuations comprise one or more properties of the sub-items.

32. The data processing system according to any of claims 24 - 31, wherein servicing the request is performed subject to a set of governing constraints. 33. The data processing system according to claim 32, wherein the set of governing constraints includes at least one of a maximum number of advertisements, a proximity to a conflicting advertisement, an existence of qualified locations, and an existence of a qualified time interval.