Patent ID: 8295363

Claim:
A method comprising: identifying, by a computer, a clip available on an online clip sharing system, the clip containing at least a portion of a broadcast program; obtaining, by the computer, a digital fingerprint for the clip; matching, by the computer, the digital fingerprint of the clip against a plurality of reference fingerprints to identify the broadcast program in the clip, the reference fingerprints corresponding to a plurality of known broadcast programs; obtaining, by the computer, program information associated with the identified broadcast program based at least in part on the matching of the digital fingerprint of the clip against the plurality of reference fingerprints; associating, by the computer, the program information with the clip; storing, by the computer, the program information in association with the clip in a computer-readable storage medium; receiving, by the computer, a request for the clip from a user system; receiving, by the computer, targeting criteria for each of a set of advertisements; selecting, by the computer, an advertisement for the requested clip by applying the targeting criteria for a plurality of the advertisements to the program information associated with the clip; generating, by the computer, an attribution message for the requested clip, the attribution message comprising at least a portion of the program information about the clip; and communicating, by the computer, the clip with the attribution message and the selected advertisement to the user system.