Abstract:
A system and method for advertisement sponsored content distribution. It enables a person to experience advertising embedded content free of charge or to experience advertising free content plus an alternative advertising presentation for a consideration. This requires use of a special, system compatible playback device/program which must support alternative presentation capabilities (such as audio, still images, video, messages, etc.).

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
   The Applicants claim the benefit of their Provisional Application, Ser. No. 60/181,101 filed Feb. 8, 2000. 

   BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
   This invention relates to systems and methods for advertisement sponsored efficient distribution of content such as audio, video and other types of multimedia, electronic files etc. It also relates to systems for handling existing and future business and distribution models. 
   As is well known, the presentation of much audio and video programming, and many Internet web sites (content) can only be provided to the public if they are paid for by embedded advertising. This is why radio and TV programs are constantly interrupted by paid advertising and there is constantly changing banner advertising on many web sites. The ways that people are being exposed to advertising is constantly changing as technology progresses. On the other hand, the public would rather experience such content free of the advertising. Many people are extremely annoyed by the advertisements would rather not experience the content than be exposed to the ads. 
   In response to the aggravation of the ads, many inventors have tried to come up with systems to eliminate them from the content. U.S. Pat. No. 5,532,735 discloses a technique for an interactive television (ITV) system wherein viewers are allowed to select a desired level of advertisements with which they are provided. The technique comprises transmitting to a subscriber location a program and a set of advertisements (collectively referred to as a “show”). The set of advertisements is selected based upon an input from a user associated with the subscriber location. The input comprises an indicator of an amount of advertisements in the set of advertisements. Another feature of the ITV system described is that it allows for adjusting an amount of a bill of a subscriber to interactive television services based upon the amount of advertisements viewed in a show. 
   U.S. Pat. No. 5,973,723 discloses a device containing a plurality of pre-stored program clips corresponding to portions of program information for presentation to a user. A comparator compares the program clips with program information and causes selection of an alternate program in response to a match. In one embodiment, the program information corresponds to a television program and a program clip corresponds to a video frame at the beginning of an undesirable commercial, resulting in a television that automatically selects an alternate program in response an original program having an undesirable commercial. After a predetermined time associated with the video clip the television automatically returns to the original program. The invention also enables creation of new program clips based upon received program information. 
   However, such inventions are inimical to the desires of advertisers and have not seen commercial implementation. One method of resolving the tension between the desires of the advertisers (to expose as many people as possible to their advertising) and the desires of the public (to be exposed to as few advertisements as possible in their daily lives) would be to allow users of content to at least select how they will be exposed to advertising. For example, instead of having their favorite TV program interrupted at intervals with commercials, the viewer could, for a fee, choose to see all the advertising at the beginning or the end of the program. Or a listener could, again for a fee, choose to have the advertisements presented in video form while listening so as not interrupt the music. Or a web browser could choose, again for a fee, to hear rather than see banner advertising so as to see more information on screen. 
   Development of a system which can allow users to choose how to experience advertising represents a great improvement in the fields of marketing and advertising and satisfies a long felt need of the public as well as advertisers and marketers. 
   SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
   It is an object of invention to provide a system and method for advertisement sponsored content distribution. Content Owners (COs) provide content and together with Marketing Agencies (MAs) they create business rules for embedding advertising into the content. Those rules can contain technical information (e.g. maximum length of the inserted advertisement, defined position within the content, etc), business information (e.g. CO fees, type of fee etc.), copyright information, cryptography, coding, watermarking information and other types of information. Marketing Agencies embed advertising in the content provided by Content Owners and create content files as specified in this invention. By embedding advertising into content, Marketing Agencies can make the content available to users free of charge. 
   This invention provides that advertising is embedded into content in such a way that the user is always exposed to it. An example of this form is an audio advertisement embedded into a music file, or a video advertisement embedded into movie. The user can use/play/experience such content for free on any playback device/program, since all additional information is placed in data blocks that do not affect the standard content format. This invention permits a standard playback device/program to simply skip this additional information. To remove a nagging advertisement, this invention also involves a special, system compatible playback device/program. 
   If playback is executed on such a system compatible device and if this device supports alternative advertisement presentation capabilities (such as audio, still images, video, messages, etc.) a user can be exposed to the advertisement in alternative format thus enabling content to be used/experienced in it&#39;s original, unchanged form without advertisement. By presenting this alternative advertisement to the user, the playback device will replace the advertisement embedded into content with the original, advertisement free, content. In this way, the user can fully enjoy the content and still be exposed to the advertisement. The system also allows a mechanism for usage monitoring that could be used in reporting of advertisement exposure. 
   An appreciation of the other aims and objectives of the present invention and an understanding of it may be achieved by referring to the accompanying drawings and description of a preferred embodiment. 

   
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       FIG. 1  is a flowchart providing a system overview. 
       FIG. 2  is a flowchart illustrating device initalization. 
       FIG. 3  is a flowchart illustrating the master file creation process. 
       FIG. 4  is a flowchart illustrating file creation. 
       FIG. 5  is a flowchart illustrating playback. 
       FIG. 6  is a flowchart illustrating a protected playback event. 
       FIG. 7  is a flowchart illustrating an unprotected playback event. 
       FIG. 8  is a flowchart illustrating data structures used in this invention. 
   

   DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT 
     FIG. 8  defines the various data structures used in this invention. The data structures 
                                       34   MASTER — FILE   template for creating files - contains no               advertising       35   FILE   contains content and advertising       36   BLOCK — HDR   contains general information about the               complete file, content and associated               advertising       37   DEVICE — INFO   information about the playback device       38   ADV — GROUP   the group into which advertisements               may be classified       39   ADV — REF   location where each advertisement               is identified and referenced       40   REQ — LEVEL   defines rendering of selected               advertisements       41   DEFAULT — DEVICE   the default device type       42   PROTECTED — BLOCK   contains alternative advertisments and,               at the option of the creator, the original,               unchanged portion of the content       43   ADVERTISEMENT   advertising       44   ADV — INFO   contains advertisement and associated               information       45   ORG — CLIP   the original, unchanged portion of the               content       46   ORG — CLIP — INFO   defines key data about the original,               unchanged portion of the content       47   UNPROTECTED — BLOCK   contains major content                    
Further definition will be provided by  FIGS. 1–7  and the description presented below.
 
     FIG. 1  is a system overview. The Content Owner  48  provides content to the system. Examples of content are music, a video program and an electronic file. A Certificate Authority  49  issues certificates to all other parties in the system. Certificates are used to ensure security and can be implemented using some known standard or a proprietary scheme. A Business Rules Database (BRDB)  50  stores business rules associated with each particular MASTER — FILE  34 . The Marketing Agency  52  merges the MASTER — FILE  34  with advertisements according to the rules defined in the BRDB  50 . Web sites  53  can serve as one source that makes the content publicly available. A search engine  54  can be used for easy, and user friendly search of the content available in the system. All parties on the system are connected via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and the Internet. As technology evolves other methods of networking will be utilized. 
     FIG. 2  shows the basic initialization steps required to initialize system compatible devices as defined by the current invention. The preferred embodiment allows devices to be either hardware or software implementation. In the first step  2 , the device is assigned a device type (DEVICE — TYPE  37   a ). In the next steps ( 3 , 4 , 5 ), information about all advertisement types (ADV — TYPE  38   a  e.g. MP3 files, JPEG video files, text, etc.) that device is capable of playing is stored in the device. 
     FIG. 3  presents the three basic steps in creation of system compatible content files. The Content Owner may choose to encode the content in some appropriate form  7  (e.g. using compression algorithms) and may attach some data to it. This invention defines how such data should be encoded  8  in the MASTER — FILE  34 . This file is used as template for later sponsored content file creation  9 . The MASTER — FILE  34  structure and the FILE  35  structure are equivalent with the exception that MASTER — FILE  34  does not contain any actual advertisement, and that MASTER — FILE  34  has associated business rules in the BRDB  50 . Each advertisement is stored in the structure ADV — INFO  44 . This structure contains advertisement content and associated information for this advertisement. 
     FIG. 4  shows that system compatible files should contain three basic data blocks ( 10 , 11 , 12 ). BLOCK — HDR  36  contains general information about the complete file, content and associated advertisement. PROTECTED — BLOCK  42  contains ADVERTISEMENT(s)  43  and the original unchanged content ORG — CLIP  45 , segregated from each other. UNPROTECTED — BLOCK  47  contains advertisement(s) seamlessly embedded in the content. 
   An overview of playback operation is given in  FIG. 5 . Playback  13  on a system compatible playback device represents the most important part of the current invention. After the playback of the advertisement sponsored FILE  35  is started, the playback device/program will extract  14  BLOCK — HDR from the FILE  35 , and verify it&#39;s signature  15 . If the verification  15  fails, playback will not start  16 . If the verification  15  is successful, the device/program will determine if FILE  35  includes special rules for that particular device. This is verified by comparing  17  DEVICE — TYPE  37   a  of the device to DEVICE — TYPEs  37   a  listed in the BLOCK — HDR  36 . If the DEVICE — TYPE  37   a  matches the program selects  18  that DEVICE — TYPE  37   a . If the DEVICE — TYPE  37   a  does not match, the program selects  19  a DEFAULT — DEVICE  41 . After the DEVICE — TYPE  37   a  is matched, the application verifies  20  if the device/program supports presentation of any TYPE  38   a  of ADVERTISEMENT  43  that is included in the FILE  35 . If there is at least one TYPE  38   a  supported, the playback device initiates Protected Playback Events  22  or Unprotected Playback  23  as desired by the user. If no TYPEs  38   a  are supported, the playback device only allows Unprotected Playback  23 . 
     FIG. 6  illustrates Protected Playback  22 . At the moment defined in ORG — CLIP — INFO  46  (TIME  46   a ), the playback device will attempt to present the alternative ADVERTISEMENT  43  included in the FILE  35 . As a first step in this process, extraction and verification of ADVERTISEMENT  43  and protected content is performed  24 ,  25 . If this verification fails, the system will not perform any action and standard (unprotected) playback will continue. If this verification is successful, the device will verify that the alternative ADVERTISEMENT  43  has been rendered and presented in the defined manner  26 . If the user cancels the alternative ADVERTISEMENT  43  (e.g. by minimizing a window showing a video advertisement), or in any other way this alternative ADVERTISEMENT  43  has not been adequately presented, the system will not perform any action and standard playback will continue. If such alternative ADVERTISEMENT  43  has been correctly presented, the original content, PROTECTED — BLOCK  42  will be decrypted and played  27  instead of the one containing embedded ADVERTISEMENT  43  as described in ORG — CLIP — INFO  46 . Also, usage information will be updated at this time  28 . 
     FIG. 7  illustrates Unprotected Playback  23 . Unprotected Playback  23  is playback of the basic content that includes embedded ADVERTISEMENT  43 . It is the equivalent of playback on any device including devices that are not compatible with presented invention. The system verifies that the information is unprotected  29  and then allows play of the UNPROTECTED — BLOCK  47  content  33 . This invention optionally adds verification of the UNPROTECTED — BLOCK  47  signature  30 ,  31 . This verification process is based on the preferences set in the BLOCK — HDR  36 . If the signature cannot be verified, play will not commence. 
   Advertisements are embedded into the file and organized to ensure efficient implementation of the decoder and controlled set of priorities. One example of such organization could be the one described in BLOCK — HDR  36 . For each system compatible playback device a DEVICE — TYPE ( 37   a ) is assigned (see  FIG. 2 , step  2 ). In the process of embedding an advertisement in the file, the Marketing Agency can include rules that apply for presenting advertisements for a set of predefined device types (defined by DEVICE — INFO  37 ) and rules that apply for any other devices not directly listed earlier (DEFAULT — LDEVICE  41 ). For each of the above device types (either defined or default) further levels of hierarchy can be defined. 
   One possible example of such hierarchical organization is defined using advertisement groups (ADV — GROUP  38 ). Since each device could be able to render one or a few types of advertisements (e.g. JPEG2000 still image, MP3 audio, or text message, etc.) those are listed hierarchically using advertisement type (ADV — TYPE  38   a ). Within the defined type there can be several advertisements. Each advertisement is identified and referenced in ADV — REF  39 . Optionally, the system does not require rendering of selected advertisements, which can be defined using REQ — LEVEL  40 . Other types of hierarchical organizations could also be defined. 
   An example of one simple file organization is: Sport store “X-SPORTS” provides ads to be embedded into a music file. “X-SPORTS” provides ads in three different types (formats), a short MPEG video clip, three GIF images and two text messages. The music file is created for all devices on the market and hence all advertisements are embedded into the file. Within the BLOCK — HDR  36  structure, the Marketing Agency can create rules for GSM phones only (preferably GIF format), for PDAs (either GIF or text), for PCs only (MPEG or GIF) and for other devices. The order of priority is MPEG then GIF and then text. Additionally, the order of individual ads of the same type (e.g. GIF) can also be defined. 
   The system and method for advertisement sponsored content distribution has been described with reference to a particular embodiment. While the preferred embodiment involves distribution over networks (e.g. the Internet), it should be clear to those who are familiar with the field to which this invention pertains that other forms of distribution, such as by wireless broadcasting and on distributed magnetic (e.g. audio and video tape) and as by wireless broadcasting and on distributed magnetic (e.g. audio and video tape) and optical (e.g. CD and DVD) media will work equally well. Other modifications and enhancements can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the claims that follow.