Patent ID: 7039931
Filing Date: 2006-05-02
Classification: G06Q,H04H,H04N

Abstract:
1. A method of analyzing multi-market broadcasts of commercial advertisements, comprising: assigning unique identifiers to a plurality of expected commercial advertisements; recording information regarding said plurality of expected commercial advertisements and said respective unique identifiers in a computer database; comparing published broadcast schedules from a plurality of broadcast markets including a base market each broadcast schedule comprising a plurality of broadcast items; determining time adjustments between (a) broadcast times of program items from said plurality of said broadcast schedules and (b) a broadcast time of an associated broadcast item in said broadcast schedule of said base market; recording said time adjustment for each of said broadcast items from said plurality of broadcast schedules in said broadcast schedules associated with a related broadcast item; receiving electronic detections of a plurality of actual market-broadcast instances of a commercial advertisement, said plurality of actual market-broadcast instances comprising a plurality of broadcast markets; recording information regarding said detections in a computer database; said step of recording information regarding detections of actual market-broadcast instances of said commercial advertisement comprises: associating related ones of said plurality of actual market-broadcast instances of said commercial advertisement in a computer database, said related ones of said actual market-broadcast instances comprising a plurality of broadcast markets; said step of associating related ones of said plurality of actual market-broadcast instances of commercial advertisements comprises comparing said plurality of actual market-broadcast instances of commercial advertisements to one another using said recorded time adjustments; recording information regarding a plurality of multi-market broadcast orders of commercial advertisements in a computer database; comparing detections from broadcast markets in a time zone of said base market to anchor detection records of said base market using an associated time adjustment; associating said detections from broadcast markets in said time zone of said base market to related anchor detection records of said base market; after comparing detections from broadcast markets in said time zone of said base market to said anchor detection records of said base market: associating related ones of said actual market-broadcast instances of said commercial advertisement with a related multi-market broadcast order for said commercial advertisement in a computer database, said multi-market broadcast order comprising said plurality of broadcast markets.