Dynamic zoning for targeted ad insertion

A custom ad selection and delivery system may include an ad selector to select candidate ads for one or more ad avail opportunities, a bandwidth resource manager to provide information about available bandwidth in a content delivery system, and a policy manager to weight ad avail opportunity versus bandwidth costs to delivery customized advertising to subscribers, and to cause allocation of bandwidth and insertion of customized ads into multiple program streams comprising the same program content but different ad content, and to cause different subscriber equipment to map different program frequencies to similar content streams having advertising content inserted therein that is customized to different subscriber demographics.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates to switched digital broadcast networks and advertising delivery.

BACKGROUND

Targeted advertising is the selection of video advertisements for insertion into scheduled television programming in such a manner as to match the advertisement to an individual viewers' interest profile.

Advertising is an important revenue source to offset the cost borne by service providers in delivering increasingly sophisticated on demand and scheduled network programming to their television viewers. Insertion of advertisements into breaks in network programming is the typical means that service providers use to earn such revenue.

However, existing approaches for ad insertion do not provide sufficient granularity for tailoring advertisements to the specific tastes and preferences of viewers. The same ad is inserted over a large population of viewers regardless of detailed geographic, demographic or psychographic information.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

References to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” do not necessarily refer to the same embodiment, although they may.

“Logic” refers to signals and/or information that may be applied to influence the operation of a device. Software, hardware, and firmware are examples of logic. Hardware logic may be embodied in circuits. In general, logic may comprise combinations of software, hardware, and/or firmware.

Those skilled in the art will appreciate that logic may be distributed throughout one or more devices, and/or may be comprised of combinations of instructions in memory, processing capability, circuits, and so on. Therefore, in the interest of clarity and correctness logic may not always be distinctly illustrated in drawings of devices and systems, although it is inherently present therein.

FIG. 1is a block diagram of an embodiment of a switched digital cable television system. The system includes, but may not be limited to, a traffic and billing system102, an ad management system104, a video server106, a splicer108, an edge QAM110, an IP STB112, a STB114, a GSRM116, and an ODMC118. Other elements and/or couplings among the elements have been omitted as they would be apparent to skilled practitioners in the relevant art(s).

The traffic and billing system102provides traffic and billing (e.g. ad placement) scheduling information. The ad scheduling information may be used for ad selection and determination of which streams having ads should be provided with bandwidth. The ad management system104receives ad schedules from the traffic and billing system102, determines which portions of the traffic and billing schedules are relevant to particular sets of video servers and splicers, and controls the video servers accordingly. The ad management system104may also be involved in acts described herein in conjunction with the Ad Selector.

The video server106may delivers audio-video content streams to the splicer108, and may also deliver ads to the splicer108, according to instructions provided in a traffic and billing schedule provided by the traffic and billing system102.

The splicer108receives digital ad content and audio-video content streams from the video server106and inserts the ads into audio-video content streams. The edge QAM110converts digital streams, for example MPEG-2 Transport Streams communicated via IP encapsulation from ODMC118, to QAM-RF signals for HFC distribution. The term ‘MPEG’ refers to the Motion Picture Experts Group and standards and technical specifications promulgated thereby. ‘IP’ refers to Internet Protocol. ‘QAM’ refers to Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. ‘HFC’ refers to Hybrid Fiber Coad.

The IP STB112receives and renders combined content/advertising streams at the subscribers locations via IP communication. Likewise, the STB114receives and renders combined content-advertising streams at the subscribers locations via HFC communication.

The GSRM116, or Global Session and Resource Manager, handles channel change signals from IP STB112and-or STB114, and routes MPEG Transport Streams from video server106accordingly via signaling to splicer108. The ODMC118, or On Demand Management Console, monitors and manages the Switched Digital Video network, including providing reporting information to verify proper function.

The GSRM116may also comprise logic to facilitate acts described herein, such as those acts described in conjunction with the Policy Manager and Bandwidth Resource Manager. In other embodiments, the logic for this purpose may be comprised by other system components in a centralized or distributed fashion.

Other examples and/or embodiments of a traffic and billing system102, an ad management system104, a video server106, a splicer108, an edge QAM110, a IP STB112, a STB114, a GSRM116, and a ODMC118may be apparent to skilled practitioners in the relevant art(s).

The various components of the system may, in some instances, be implemented as one or more computer systems comprising logic consistent with carrying out the acts described herein.

Custom Ad Selection and Delivery

An Ad Selector (“ad selector”) selects candidate ads for one or more ad avail opportunities, where an ad avail as used herein means a viewing of the ad by one or more cable system subscribers. A Bandwidth Resource Manager (“bandwidth resource manager”) may provide information about available bandwidth in the delivery system. These components, which may be implemented as logic in one or more devices (such as computer system devices), may interact with a Policy Manager (“policy manager”) to weight ad avail opportunity versus bandwidth costs to delivery customized advertising to subscribers.

The policy manager may cause allocation of bandwidth and insertion of customized ads into multiple program streams including the same program content but different ad content. Content streams may be duplicated (i.e. replicated, cloned) at one or more locations in the network, and custom advertising suitable for a particular subscriber demographic “zone” inserted therein.

Different subscriber equipment, corresponding to the different demographic “zones”, may map different program frequencies to duplicate content streams having advertising content that is custom the demographic zone of the subscriber inserted therein. The custom mapping of program channels to frequencies may be carried out be way of cable television switched digital broadcast technology, known to those skilled in the art. The mapping may change dynamically, including at or near ad avail time, or sooner, or at any point during program content delivery.

When weighing ad avail opportunity for custom ads versus the bandwidth costs of one or more duplicated streams to carry that content to different demographic zones, the policy manager may apply one or more of ad bit rate, ad format, ad encoding, the number of subscribers having demographic attributes compatible with the ad (i.e. the number in the demographic zone of the ad), the number of subscribers that will actually view the ad (e.g. those in the zone and presently using or likely to use their subscriber equipment to view the program content), and a value to advertisers of one or more ad views by the compatible subscribers.

The policy manager may perform the opportunity versus cost weighting at a local content delivery area level. In other words, the policy manager may weigh the bandwidth costs and available bandwidth, number of subscribers having demographic attributes compatible with the ad, the number of subscribers that will actually view the ad, the value to advertisers of one or more ad views by the compatible subscribers, and other factors within specific local delivery areas (sometimes know as local coax runs or local subscriber loops).

The policy manager may weight ad avail opportunity versus the bandwidth cost of cloning the content stream into which the ad will be inserted, either at a central level (e.g. video server level) or closer to the edge (e.g. at the splicer or edgeQAM).

As previously noted, the policy manager may weigh ad opportunity versus bandwidth costs for demographic subscriber groups for which subscriber equipment is presently active, as opposed to all such subscribers in the group(s).

The policy manager may cause multiple subscriber equipment on a same local content delivery area to switch to a single program frequency once custom advertising for the program has been delivered, so that duplicate program streams that carried custom advertising to multiple subscribers on the same local content area may be discontinued to save bandwidth.

The content streams to carry the custom advertising may be replicated at a splicer, edgeQAM, video server, or at some other point in the network.

FIG. 2is a flow chart of an embodiment of a process of customized ad selection and delivery.

An ad selector identifies addressable ad break opportunities in one or more content streams that are presently, or will soon, be streamed, see202. Suitable ads for the program streams are then identified, for example from ad schedules and other information, see204. Once a pool of suitable candidate ads to avail are identified, the policy manager may be invoked to determine if multiple streams of the same content may be provided to deliver customized advertising from among the pool of candidate ads, for the same program content.

At206the policy manager may obtain available bandwidth from the bandwidth resource manager. The policy manager may weight ad avail opportunity for delivering custom ads, versus the bandwidth costs of doing so, see208. If there are more candidate ads for this and other co-incident ad breaks, the policy manager weights the cost/benefit for those ads as well, see210. Once a set of ads is identified as both suitable for the ad breaks, and beneficial overall despite the bandwidth costs associated with delivery of custom streams comprising the ads, bandwidth is allocated in the system for streams to carry those custom ads, see212. The process concludes at214.

Those having skill in the art will appreciate that there are various vehicles by which processes and/or systems described herein can be effected (e.g., hardware, software, and/or firmware), and that the preferred vehicle will vary with the context in which the processes are deployed. For example, if an implementer determines that speed and accuracy are paramount, the implementer may opt for a hardware and/or firmware vehicle; alternatively, if flexibility is paramount, the implementer may opt for a solely software implementation; or, yet again alternatively, the implementer may opt for some combination of hardware, software, and/or firmware. Hence, there are several possible vehicles by which the processes described herein may be effected, none of which is inherently superior to the other in that any vehicle to be utilized is a choice dependent upon the context in which the vehicle will be deployed and the specific concerns (e.g., speed, flexibility, or predictability) of the implementer, any of which may vary. Those skilled in the art will recognize that optical aspects of implementations may involve optically-oriented hardware, software, and or firmware.

Those skilled in the art will recognize that it is common within the art to describe devices and/or processes in the fashion set forth herein, and thereafter use standard engineering practices to integrate such described devices and/or processes into larger systems. That is, at least a portion of the devices and/or processes described herein can be integrated into a network processing system via a reasonable amount of experimentation.