Patent ID: 8369686

Claim:
A computer-implemented process for overlaying video advertisements in a digital video, comprising: using a computer to perform the following process actions: identifying textual components associated with the video; decomposing the video into a selected set of shots and identifying a keyframe in each shot; establishing a measure of relevance between each shot and video advertisements that is available for overlaying in the video, based on at least the textual components associated with the shot and descriptive textual information associated with the advertisements; for each of the selected set of shots, designating the advertisement having the highest relevance measure as the most relevant advertisement for the shot under consideration; establishing a measure of the intrusiveness associated with overlaying a video advertisement onto each of a plurality of prescribed overlay areas in each frame of a set of consecutive frames in the shot under consideration, said establishing comprising, for each of the prescribed overlay areas in each frame of the set of consecutive frames in the shot under consideration, generating a text map wherein each pixel of the text map identifies if that pixel displays a part of a textual element or not, generating a face map wherein each pixel of the face map identifies if that pixel displays a part of a person's face or not, generating an image saliency map wherein each pixel of the image saliency map has a value ranging from 0 to 1.0 and indicates the degree to which the pixel attracts the attention of a viewer with a value of zero indicating the highest degree of attraction and a value of one indicating the least amount of attraction, and combining the text, face and image saliency maps to produce an intrusiveness map, wherein each pixel of the intrusiveness map has an intensity value directly proportional to a degree of intrusiveness of that pixel, and for each of the prescribed overlay areas, determining a combined intensity across the intrusiveness maps computed for the set of consecutive frames in the shot under consideration to produce a combined intrusiveness map, computing the overall intensity of the combined intrusiveness map, and designating the overall intensity of the combined intrusiveness map as the intrusiveness measure for the prescribed overlay area under consideration, designating the prescribed overlay area in the set of consecutive frames that has the lowest established intrusiveness measure as the least intrusive overlay area, and scheduling the video advertisement designated as the most relevant advertisement for the shot under consideration for overlaying onto the overlay area designated as the least intrusive for the shot, whenever the shot is played.