Patent ID: 7650617

Claim:
An advertisement inserting apparatus for selecting advertisement information from a plurality of candidate advertisements for insertion into a slot in content, the advertisement inserting apparatus comprising: a processor; means for calculating a first cost component by comparing attribute information of the advertisement information with requirements of a content provider; means for calculating a second cost component by comparing attribute information of the content with requirements of a commercial sponsor; means for calculating a third cost component by comparing attribute information of a subscriber and requirements of the subscriber with the requirements of the commercial sponsor; means for calculating a fourth cost component by comparing the attribute information of the advertisement information with the requirements of the subscriber; means for calculating a customized cost allocation for the advertisement information by adding a first scoring factor multiplied by the first cost component, a second scoring factor multiplied by the second cost component, a third scoring factor multiplied by the third cost component, and a fourth scoring factor multiplied by the fourth cost component; means for calculating a cost value of the advertisement information based on the customized cost allocation and a length of the advertisement information; means for establishing selection conditions, the selection conditions comprising an objective function and a constraint expression, the objective function maximizing a total of cost values of the advertisement information, the constraint expression equalizing totaled lengths of the advertisement information with a length of the slot; and means for selecting the advertisement information from the plurality of candidate advertisements based on the selection conditions; wherein the content provider provides the content, the commercial sponsor offers the advertisement information to be attached to the content, and the subscriber views the content.