Patent ID: 8473977
Filing Date: 2013-06-25
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. A method of facilitating dynamic insertion of non-staged advertisements during play of a media program transported to an output device from a headend, the non-staged advertisements being an unbound plurality of advertisements stored remotely from the output device and the headend and previously unassigned as candidates for insertion during certain avails of the media program, the method comprising: assigning advertisement metadata to each non-staged advertisement; defining a non-staged advertisement request comprised of advertisement metadata; determining at least one non-staged advertisement avail within the media program; after the output device begins play of the media program and prior to occurrence of the at least one non-staged avail, selecting one or more of the non-staged advertisements based on the advertisement metadata in the non-staged advertisement request, the selected one of the non-staged advertisements being selected from the plurality of non-staged advertisements correlating with the advertisement metadata; facilitating transport of the selected one of the non-staged advertisements from a remote location to the headend, and thereafter, transmitting the selected one of the non-staged advertisements from the headend to the output device for insertion during the at least one non-staged avail; facilitating dynamic insertion of staged advertisements during playback of the media program, the staged advertisements being a bound number of advertisements previously assigned as candidates for insertion during certain avails in the media program; storing the staged advertisements at the headend prior to beginning playback of the media program at the output device; determining least one staged avail within the media program; after the output device begins playback of the media program and prior to occurrence of the at least one staged avail, determining selection of one of the staged advertisements for insertion during the at least one staged avail; transmitting the selected one of the staged advertisements from the storing one of the headend to the output device for insertion during the at least one staged avail; and transmitting the at least one staged advertisement and the at least one non-stage advertisement to the output device such that the output device inserts each of the staged and non-stage advertisements over advertisements embedded within the media program for the corresponding staged and non-staged avails.