Patent ID: 7136906

Claim:
A system to schedule a distribution and play of advertising content on remote display devices utilizing a network, comprising: (a) a database for storing the advertising content; (b) a server coupled to the database, the server being capable of receiving input preferences relating to play of scheduling parameters including frequency, interval, time of play, trigger events, and category filtering, said server including a set of specialized software components adapted to work with each other to complete the server's tasks; (c) a plurality of remote display devices to dynamically display the advertising content: (d) a scheduling algorithm executed on the server to generate scheduling data utilizing the input preferences, the scheduling algorithm being based on predetermined methods of processing the input preferences in order to vary the advertising content after the advertising content is deployed for each of the plurality of display devices individually; (e) a centralized network supported by high speed data links to distribute the advertising content and the scheduling data to the plurality of remote display devices, said scheduling data indicating when and how often the advertising content is to be displayed in each of the plurality of remote display devices individually without restricting all the display devices to present the advertising content simultaneously; and (f) at least one remote communicative device coupled to the network to receive and respond to the scheduling data to communicate the advertising content to at least one of the plurality of remote display devices, said remote communicative device including a set of specialized software components that mirror said set of software components and said scheduling algorithm, said remote communicative device being capable of storing the advertising content and scheduling data so that said remote communicative device can continue to function in the event of a loss of network communication with the server.