The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following more particular description of the preferred embodiments, as illustrated in the appended drawings, where:
With recent advances in digital transmission technology, subscriber television systems are now capable of providing much more than the traditional analog broadcast video. In implementing enhanced programming, the home communication terminal known as the set-top box (STB), has become an important computing device for accessing content services and navigating a user through a maze of available services. In addition to supporting traditional analog broadcast video functionality, digital STBs now also support an increasing number of two-way digital services such as video-on-demand and personal video recording (PVR).
In this specification, “consumer” refers to persons (recipients) who may use the advertiser's commodity or service, and absorb the content of the ads. The term “advertisers” refers to entities that prepare material relating to various products and services, with a view to induce the consumers to buy, use, or further promote the respective products/services. The term “content provider” includes the promoters that initiate, develop, and generate, entertainment content (programming) attracting many of the consumers. The term “service provider” includes the promoters who distribute entertainment content (programming) to the consumers, and integrate within the programming commercials provided by the advertisers. A single role as identified by these terms may be addressed by more than one entity, and a single entity may play more than one of the roles identified by these terms.
The term “supplemental information links” refers to the information that is displayed on a consumer terminal after a request to access supplemental information is made while watching the program. These links may be hierarchical e.g. indicating what subjects (e.g. information on actor, audio, vehicle, furniture . . . ) have supplemental information available at point of the program currently being viewed. The supplemental information links may then be selected to access the actual supplemental information. It is also possible to provide a consumer with the link to a really simple syndication (RSS) feed, which is a family of web feed formats specified in XML and used for web syndication. Web feeds provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other metadata. RSS, in particular, delivers this information as an XML file called an RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, web feeds allow a website's frequent readers to track updates on the site using an aggregator.
The specification uses the term “supplemental information” for the information related to a product, person or a service that is made available to a consumer, and which is directly associated to a program being viewed. This term broadly refers to any type of information available to the public or provided by advertisers regarding a respective product, person or service. Namely, it may include information not intended as explicitly promotional, similar to bonus features available on many DVDs, bibliographical material for various personalities, etc. The supplemental information may also include links to additional information that may be available to viewers.
For example, the supplemental information for a laptop shown within a certain program, could be the product type, model and the cost, and the supplemental information may include all technical parameters of the laptop, a tri-dimensional image, shipping and handling information, warranty information, etc. Or, the supplemental information for a performer (actor, athlete) may include the name and the most relevant appearances; with links to further information which may include biographical data, etc. and which may provide links to other programs featuring the performer. The supplemental information may include various levels of detail, e.g. simple identification, 30 second advertisement, 5-30 minute presentation, identification of local retailers,. etc. that the viewer can select between. In some instances, the supplemental information may include one or more links to additional information obtainable over the World Wide Web. The extent of the supplemental information available for viewing depends on the information provided by the advertiser. This supplemental information can be edited at any time. If, in the example, the laptop shown is obsolete, basic information on it can be provided along with links to current models. Or if there is a special limited time offer for a product, this can be advertised during the time of the offer.
The program may include an indication if supplemental information is available for the current point of the program. This may be in the form of an on-screen icon, which may further provide some form of indication of what type of information is available.
Finally, the term “broadcast network” refers to a network that connects the consumers with the entertainment content and the associated ads. The broadcast network can comprise TV, cable, streaming Internet, private networks, or any other mass-media broadcast. The broadcast network can charge a subscription fee for consumers to receive the entertainment and advertising content broadcast via the network. The invention is also applicable to systems supporting video on demand (VOD), including IPTV systems. The invention can furthermore be implemented to support video distribution by other means, including pre-recorded media.
Currently, a service provider includes commercials within a programming with a view to promote the advertisers products/services, in exchange for agreed-upon compensation. The basic idea of the invention is to keep records for each piece of supplemental information as to what locations in the program the information is relevant for. The location is a temporal measurement, and the location in the program is a range capturing the start and end of relevance or equivalently start and duration or any equivalent. The location measurement may be linear, as in time from beginning or frame number or it may be non-linear such as chapter or scene number, or it may be a hybrid such as time from the beginning of a given chapter. The location may also take the form of the location in the media file that is being read out.
The preferred implementation of the invention makes use of pre-existing location measurements; however the addition of a new location measurement mechanism is also covered by the invention. When a consumer requests supplemental information for something present at a given point in the program, the location in the program that the request was made at is compared to these records to find all relevant supplemental information. These records enable consumers to get linked with the supplemental information available for the respective product, person or service. For example, if a consumer wishes to find more about a car that is involved in a race in a program (a movie), a simple click while the car is on screen will provide a selection of links to available supplemental information relevant to that point of the program, including the car. It will be fast and easy to select the appropriate link. The availability of supplemental information to the viewer depends on the current location in the program that is being viewed and selected.
The example of
According to the invention, a supplemental information (SI) unit 10 is provided at the local server 20, for enabling the users in the geographical area served by local server 20 to access the available supplemental information of interest. Si server 10 provides access to the supplementary information to terminals 5-1, 5-2 and 5-3 or a RSS feed (not shown) on request. It is evident that a plurality of SI units 10 may be provided throughout network 7 for serving various local communities; also, a SI unit 10 may be located at the head end 1. If the SI units 10 are centralized, subscriber location information may be included in queries to allow for localized commercials. As indicated above, this information may refer to products and services provided of global interest (e.g. cars, computers, movies) or by local companies (e.g. specific retailers).
In all the above variants, after programming is developed, the supplemental information is associated with specific points or particular sections in the programming that direct the consumer to sources of information. The term “SI location” refers to the point or section within the programs that, when the consumer clicks, returns a particular supplemental information link. SI unit 10 includes a link database 16 that stores the supplemental information, and a table 18 that provides the association between the SI locations and the supplemental information links to the respective supplemental information. The entries may in addition contain an indicator of the type of information provided and/or what it is relevant to. It is to be noted that while
Table 18 in
One aspect of location translation separate from the metric used to measure the location occurs if the program is subject to different versions. For instance, the program may be edited for content such as removing scenes that may be objectionable to certain audiences. Or content may be inserted, for example conventional advertisements may be inserted into a broadcast program, and if the customer terminal is not able to automatically recognize the presence of the advertisements it will measure location as if it were a single program. The insertion or deletion of a known amount of content, at known points in the program, allows straight forward translation between locations in the edited program and the original program. The different versions of the program may be treated as different programs or a single table could be used with location translations used to compensate for deleted or added content.
In order to see/research a product/service, a consumer ‘clicks’ while a subject of interest is being presented (visually or audibly) in the program, using the channel selector or the mouse, etc. The click generates a query that arrives at a query processor 14 provided in the SI unit 10. In response to this action by the consumer, the consumer terminal (STB, PC, etc) or the SI unit, or both in cooperation determine the most recently viewed point of the program.
The program time of the query, denoted with TQ is used to identify entries in the table 18, as shown by a SI identifier unit 13. The SI unit 13 signals the location of the query within the program using the same metric as the entries in table 18. In any case, the SI location for that query is identified by unit 13 is used to determine which supplemental information links are available for the respective SI location. These are delivered to the consumer for selection. It is possible to have entries which match to any time index, i.e. they are relevant for the entire program. It is also possible to allow the consumer to send a query for supplemental information that is relevant for any point in the program, regardless of time index. This can be extended to allow the configuration of certain pieces of supplemental information to not be accessible by such a general query, for scenarios in which it is desired for the customer to view the program rather than only access the supplemental information. For instance, a training program could require access to supplemental links that can only be accessed while viewing the program in order to ensure the viewer watched the program. Or a contest could make use of supplemental links and it would not be possible to simply view all available links, it would be necessary to view the program.
A sender 17 is used to provide the link information to the consumers. Sender 17 is also used to deliver to the consumer terminal the supplementary data requested from the SI database 16. It is noted here that the supplemental information in database 16 may include additional links that direct the consumer to more detailed information, if of interest. This is generically shown by the network 9, which may be for example the Internet with its wealth of information, or may be a private network managed by the advertiser, etc. The extent of information provided in database 16 it at the discretion of the advertiser, as is the availability of any additional links. A further ability is for the SI accessed from the database 16 to provide a generic link, which provides links to specific advertisers which are relevant to the generic link. This allows multiple (potentially competing) advertisers to be accessed through a single entry in table 18. It also allows the connection between an advertiser or advertisers and content to be made without editing the entries in table 18 for each program.
The SI unit 10 may also be equipped with an accounting unit 12 that monitors use of commercials for establishing a revenue value for each program according to the usage of the supplemental information. The usage may be determined based on any charging model (e.g. pay per click, or per time, numbers of queries, downloading time, etc.). In the case of advertisements, the charges would tend to go to the advertisers, in the case of other supplemental information charges could apply to viewers, no charge access is also an option.
Other embodiments of the SI unit 10 are possible. For example, STB 2 provides the time-mark in the program of the query. Another variant is for the query processor 14 may send the link to the media delivery center for transmission to the terminal, and use a programming sender for delivery of the supplemental information, in which case sender 17 is not needed. Also, the query may be detected by the media delivery center 20, which is customary equipped with an interactive program guide unit (not shown); in this case, the media delivery center 20 identifies the queries as being related to requests for supplemental information, and provides the time of arrival information directly to SI identifier 13. In all variants, SI unit 13 identifies the relevant entries in table 18 based on the time of the query relative to the beginning of the program, or relative to some known part of the program.
It is also possible to configure the consumer terminal (STB or other implementation) to provide on screen cues when supplemental information is available. In the example of
The example of
In the examples shown in
In the embodiment described above, the consumer clicks on an image with an expectation to get information about a product/service. If no commercial or information is available for the respective sequence playing back on the consumer's display, the consumer may be given the option of bookmarking the location. The process of bookmarking may involve the sending of a permanent (direct) location value to the CT, in case the program is subject to multiple versions. It is possible to configure the consumer terminal (STB, PC) to display on-screen cues when supplemental information is available, by using the on-screen cue unit 11, as discussed above in connection with
This invention enables a large number of products/services to be “advertised” simultaneously—ultimately almost anything on the screen, anything being heard (i.e. music track) or discussed. Still further, this mechanism may be used to access non-program related advertising, in which a supplemental information link may allow connections to advertising not related to the program being viewed. This is particularly suited to local advertising (e.g. “Hmmm, I'm hungry, what are my choices?”). While this is similar in effect to accessing a web browser to search for information on the web, it does not require the consumer to use a different interface.