Abstract:
A system may confirm that advertising was played as originally intended. For example, in one embodiment, a system may determine that an advertisement was played as originally intended and in return, a credit may be provided to the user. This credit may be the ability to play content that the user wishes to play or the credit may be in the form of rewards that are provided to the user, as another example. Thus, the system determines whether the advertisements are played correctly, for example, by detecting watermarks encoded within the advertising, and in return, provides indications that reward the user for playing the advertisement as intended.

Description:
BACKGROUND 
     This invention relates generally to advertising insertion in audio, video, game, or software content distribution systems. 
     Systems are available for distributing a wide variety of content to users. In some cases, the users may select a particular content they wish to play. In many cases, it is desirable to insert commercials or advertisements into the content as the content is selected. 
     In one model, in return for a given number of advertisement viewings, the user may be entitled to play a certain amount of content. Thus, it is important to ensure that the user actually plays the advertising material. 
     A variety of stripping programs, fast forwarding functions, muting and masking functions are available in digital playback devices. The risk arises for advertisers that the users may avoid actually playing the advertising material in a human understandable way. If the advertising material is never played, it will have no effect. 
     The net effect of such circumvention may be that free or low cost content may not be made available. In other words, if advertisers cannot be assured that the advertising will actually be played (as opposed to being circumvented), they may be unwilling to subsidize the electronic distribution of content. 
     Therefore, there is a need for a way to ensure that advertising material inserted in content is actually played as originally designed and intended by the advertiser. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  is a block diagram of one embodiment of the present invention; and 
         FIG. 2  is a flow chart for software, in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     Referring to  FIG. 1 , a processor-based system  10  may include a media player  64  that plays electronic content. Electronic content may include video such as television, audio, games, software, or other media. The media player  64  may be, for example, a compact disk player, a magnetic card reader, an MP-3 player, or a digital video disk player, as examples. 
     The processor-based system  10  may be a conventional desktop computer system, a set-top box, or a processor-based appliance, as examples. The processor-based system  10  may include the media player  64 , a display system  54  for displaying visual material and a sound system  56  for playing audio material. 
     The processor-based system  10  includes a processor  40  coupled to a host bus  42 . The host bus  42  couples a north bridge  44 , a system memory  48 , and a level two or L2 cache  46 . 
     The north bridge  44  is in turn coupled to a bus  50  that couples to the display  54  through the display controller  52 . The display  54  may be a conventional computer monitor or it may be a television receiver, as examples. Also coupled to the bus  50  is an audio accelerator  58   b . The audio accelerator  58   b  is coupled to a digital-to-analog converter  26  that in turn is coupled to the sound system  56 . The sound system  56  may include speakers  16 ′ and  16 ″. 
     Also, coupled to the bus  50  is a south bridge  62 . The south bridge  62  is coupled to hubs that in turn couple to the media player  64  and a storage  66  such as a hard disk drive. Software  90  for implementing certain features of one embodiment of the present invention may be stored on the storage  66 . 
     Also coupled to the south bridge  62 , is an additional bus  76 . The bus  76  is in turn coupled to a serial input/output (SIO) device  78  and a basic input/output system (BIOS) storage  88 . The bus  78  may be coupled to a keyboard  80 , a modem  84 , and other peripheral devices  82 , for example, for allowing games to be played. 
     The modem  84  may allow the processor-based system  10  to be coupled to a content distribution system such as the Internet. In addition, content may be received through airwave broadcasts, satellite systems, or cable television systems, as additional examples. In each case, the content may be provided to the system  10  over any available transport. 
     Coupled to the digital-to-analog converter  26  is a watermark detector  60 . The watermark detector  60  detects whether watermarks present in the content received from a content provider are actually played as intended. For example, the watermark detector  60  may detect whether the watermarked material is played in full at the predetermined play speed and is not otherwise muted, masked, fast-forwarded or stripped from the content. The watermark detector  64  may be coupled to the media player  60  to control the play of content on the media player  64 . Thus, content may not be played through the system  10  unless certain advertising material containing a watermark is played as originally intended. 
     The watermark may be a faint signal that is embedded in the advertising content, that is unstrippable and may not be degraded without degrading the desired content to an unacceptable extent. The faint signal may be designed to be undetectable by users. Watermarks are commonly used with content to protect them from being digitized or re-sampled in the output/analog domain for resubmission to players as “copy always” material. Thus, watermarks are traditionally used to prevent or reveal theft of proprietary material. 
     These same watermarks may also be detected by the watermark detector  60  to ensure that watermarked advertising material is played as originally intended. Thus, advertising material that includes a watermark with an appropriate security code may be detected by the watermark detector  60 . The watermark detector  60  may determine the fidelity of the watermark and the time when the watermark is activated. The detector  60  may ensure that the advertising material is not fast forwarded or otherwise altered. 
     The watermark detector  60  may directly monitor the video or audio input/output channels to ensure that the channels correctly extract the advertising watermark if, and only if, the advertising is played by the digital output channel at the proper rate and for the duration of the advertising, with no extraneous masking. The extracted advertising security code or watermark is then returned to a media player application to allow decryption of the remaining content by the media player  64 . 
     Alternatively, the watermark may be utilized to accrue digital coupons in return for playing the advertising. That is, instead of only controlling the play of content, the detection of the watermarks in the advertising may also be used to accrue rewards or benefits to users who actually play the advertisements as originally designed. 
     As still another example, the watermark may be extracted and a security code may be parsed from the watermark. This information may be combined by the processor-based system  10  with an identifier for a particular user. Thus, the advertisement together with the user identifier may be collected for market research purposes. 
     The watermark detector  60  may be utilized with content that is recorded on a medium such as a magnetic disk as well as content that is received with the watermark over an appropriate distribution network, such as the Internet, or even a television distribution network such as an airwave, cable or satellite network. 
     Turning to  FIG. 2 , the software  90  stored on the storage  66 , in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, may initially determine whether the time for a commercial has arrived, as indicated in diamond  92 . In one embodiment, commercials may be inserted at predetermined times. In such case, the software  90  may begin by determining if a commercial insertion time has arrived. In other embodiments in which the commercials are provided automatically, for example, before the content is actually played, the act illustrated by the diamond  92  may be unnecessary. 
     Once it has been determined that there is reason to monitor the play of a commercial, a check at diamond  94  determines whether the detector flag has been set. The detector flag may be set by the watermark detector  60  when the watermark detector  60  determines that a commercial has been played appropriately. This may include determining whether the commercial is played for the desired amount of time and at the desired speed. 
     This determination that the commercial was played correctly may be based on stored, predetermined characterizing information for all or a variety of commercials. For example, it may be known that all commercials have a predetermined speed and a predetermined duration. Alternatively, the watermark detector  60  may access a database either on the system  10  or externally thereof to determine the characteristics of a given commercial, for example, in a given piece of content, or at a given time. The watermark detector  60  may then compare that information to what is actually detected through the digital-to-analog converter  26 . 
     In any case, if the detector  60  determines that the advertisement has been correctly played, in one embodiment of the present invention, it may set a flag for the software  90  to detect. When the flag setting is detected, the software  90  reports a play validation as indicated at block  96 . In other words, the software  90  may report to external sources that the advertisement was actually played by a given processor-based system  10  as intended. This feedback to the advertiser may provide confirmation that in fact the advertising program is being executed as intended. It may also be utilized to develop statistics in some embodiments. 
     Next, in some embodiments, the advertisement identifier may be added to a particular user&#39;s profile as indicated in block  98 . A user profile may be developed for everyone who uses a given processor-based system  10 . This profile may be developed by requiring a password to begin using the system  10 . As a result, a profile may be developed indicating which commercials are viewed by particular users. 
     This user profile information may be utilized to award credits, points, or rewards to particular users based on their commercial viewing practices. In addition, the profile may be provided to marketing operations for targeted advertisements for particular users. 
     Next, the media player  64  may be unlocked as indicated in block  100 . In one embodiment, this may mean that a key is provided for decrypting encrypted content and allowing the play of that content in return for having watched a commercial. As another example, the media player  64  may be allowed to actually operate to play the rest of the content. In still another embodiment, the system  10  either decrypts or allows the play of content received from an external source. 
     While the present invention has been described with respect to a limited number of embodiments, those skilled in the art will appreciate numerous modifications and variations therefrom. It is intended that the appended claims cover all such modifications and variations as fall within the true spirit and scope of this present invention.