Patent Application
20080279349
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to network services and more specifically to network services integrated within Internet based media.
2. Description of the Known Technology
Networked electronic devices, such as personal computers, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, game consoles, interactive television or automative telematic devices, increasingly contain sequential media, such as video and audio clips. In the past, advertising necessary to provide economic return to support the development of sequential media have been restricted to graphical advertisement such as banner advertisements or text based advertisements, either of which is placed somewhere in a web page containing the sequential media.
However, in order to gain advertisement revenue, the sponsor of the sequential media must find a way to keep users or drive users to their web page. One drawback to this form of advertising is that the sequential media is often detachable from the web page from where it originates and can appear in any of the number of different contexts. For example, sequential media, such as a video found on Yahoo! can be placed on web pages that are not hosted or searched by Yahoo!. To be more specific, a video clip originally found on Yahoo! may be embedded using HTML code into a third party's personal web page. Therefore, given the mobility and variety of context sequential media appears in, advertisement simply appearing in the page where the media first originated does not provide the necessary revenue and customer service opportunities needed to support the sequential media's hosting and distribution costs.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved method for driving traffic to web pages using sequential media.
In overcoming the drawbacks of the prior art, a system and method for providing network services to a user of a computer capable of displaying Internet based media, such as sequential media, played by a media player in a display is disclosed. The method includes the steps of providing a media object, wherein the media object contains sequential media and network services information encapsulated within the media object. As stated in the background section, one of the drawbacks of prior art solutions is that rogue users can simply strip away the sequential media from any advertising information. Encapsulating the sequential media and network services information within the media object prevents rogue users from simply stripping away the sequential media from the network services information.
Other steps of the method include displaying sequential media of the media object in the display utilized by the media player and displaying a network services platform in at least a portion of the display utilized by the media player when prompted by a first user action, the network services platform contained within the networking services information of the media object
Further objects, features and advantages of this invention will become readily apparent to persons skilled in the art after a review of the following description, with reference to the drawings and claims that are appended to and form a part of this specification.
Referring to
The system 10 includes a general purpose computer 12 having a display 14 and input devices such as a keyboard 16 and a mouse 18. The general purpose computer 12 is capable of displaying via the display 14 sequential media played by a media player 20. The media player 20 may be located within a window 22 of an Internet browser. However, it should be understood that the media player 20 may be located anywhere such that the display 14 can display the media player 20 to the user of the general purpose computer 12. The general purpose computer 12 is connected to a network 24 that is preferably a distributed network such as the Internet.
In order for the media player 20 to display sequential media, a media object containing the sequential media must be provided to the general purpose computer 12. A central server 26 accomplishes this task by transmitting a media object to the general purpose computer 12 via the network 24. As will be better described later, the media object contains not only the sequential media but also contains at least one of (1) advertising information and (2) network services information. The advertising and/or network services information is encapsulated within the media object, thereby preventing rogue users from stripping out the advertising and/or network services information from the sequential media contained within the media object. By so doing, parties providing the sequential media can justify the expense in creating the sequential media because advertisement or network services will be contained within the media object encouraging users to buy products or use the network services offered by the provider.
Before the media object is sent to the general purpose computer 12, the central server 26 must first construct the media object to include the sequential media as well as any advertising information and/or network services information. The central server 26 accomplishes this task by requesting the sequential media, advertising information and network services information from a sequential media server 28, an advertisement server 30 and a network services server 32, respectfully, via a network 34. Similar to the network 24, the network 34 is generally a distributed network such as the Internet. However, it should be understood that the network 26 may be a local or wide area network.
When constructing the media object, the server 26 will request the appropriate sequential media from the sequential media server 28. At around the same time, the central server 26 also requests the appropriate advertising information and/or network services information from the advertising server 30 and the network information server 32, respectively. It should be understood that the central server 26 may select the appropriate advertising information and/or network integration services information based upon a variety of algorithms. For example, as will be described later, the central server 26 may construct the profile of the user of the general purpose computer 12 such that the requested advertising information or network services information is more likely to be of interest to the user of the general purpose computer 12. This may be accomplished by generating a central profile of the user of the general purpose computer 12. The central profile may be constructed by tracking the user's interaction with the general purpose computer 12 or by collecting information stored within the general purpose computer 12.
After the sequential media as well as the advertising information and/or networking services information is provided to the central server 26, the central server 26 will then create the media object encapsulating both the sequential media and the advertising information and/or network services information within the media object.
Referring to
The sequential media area 38 is a portion of the media player 20 used to display the sequential media. As stated before, although this embodiment shows the media player 20 displaying sequential media, any type of Internet based media may be displayed. Located below the sequential media area 38 in this embodiment is the control area 40. The control area 40 includes a variety of controls for controlling the sequential media in the sequential media display area 38. The controls include a play button 42 for playing the sequential media, a fast forward button 44 for fast forwarding the sequential media, and a sound button 46 for adjusting the sound (if any) of the sequential media.
Additionally, the control area may include a progress bar 48 having a progress indicator 50 for graphically indicating the amount of play time left for the sequential media. A timer 52 can be displayed indicating the amount of time the sequential media has played or amount of playing time remaining. Of course, additional controls and indicators may be implemented within the control area 40 to provide the user additional ways to interact with the sequential media.
When the general purpose computer 12 receives the media object from the central server 26, the media player 20 will first display a pre-roll advertisement as shown in
The purpose of the pre-roll advertisement is to notify the user of the advertising sponsor without annoying the user such that the user decides not to view the sequential media. Furthermore, in order to further reduce the user's anxiety in waiting for the pre-roll advertisement to finish, a timer may be displayed to inform the user of the remaining duration of the pre-roll advertisement.
Referring now to
As the sequential media plays within the sequential area 38, the user 12 can then open a rich media advertisement shown in
The rich media advertisement is displayed in at least a portion of the sequential media display area 38. The rich media advertisement may be a video, an interactive computer game, a configurator for building, pricing and buying goods and/or services, a static advertisement, a micro web site capable of launching other web sites, an interactive map, an Internet telephony connection, an instant messaging connection or any combination of the above. Of course, the rich media advertisement can be any one of a number of electronic advertising systems capable of being displayed on the display 14 of the general purpose computer 12.
When the rich media advertisement is displayed, the sequential media which may have been previously playing is paused while the rich media advertisement is displayed. The rich media advertisement can be removed from the sequential media display area 38 by selecting a close button 58 located within the persistent banner advertisement 36 or by simply pressing the play button 42. An indicator (not shown) may be utilized by the media player 20 to encourage the user to close the rich media advertisement.
Another way for initiating the display of the rich media advertisement is to allow the media player 20 to finish playing the sequential media. When the sequential media is finished playing by the media player 20, the rich media advertisement can then be displayed within the sequential media area 38.
As the user interacts with the rich media advertisement, information may be collected regarding the user's interactions. This can then be forwarded to the advertisement server 30. The information may then be used to create a profile indicating advertisements likely to pique the interest of the user. Once the profile has been created, the advertisement server 30 can then customize the rich media advertisement with the intention of providing a rich media advertisement likely to be of interest to the user.
The user's interaction with the rich media advertisement can include several factors. These factors may include time spent interacting with the rich media advertisement, behavior of the user when interacting with the rich media advertisement, performance metrics of the rich media advertisement, execution speed of the rich media advertisement, time and date when the user interacted with the rich media advertisement, the Internet Protocol address of the user, the user's system, platform, and web browser configuration information and the user's media identifier information.
Additionally, user information may be sent to a remote location such as the central server 26 (
Referring to
By providing additional information to the user, the user will be encouraged to either view additional advertisements or be encouraged to visit websites of those parties sponsoring the sequential media. Like the advertising information, the network services information is not limited to use only with sequential media, but may be used with other types of media such as still pictures.
Referring to
The network services platform 60 can be initiated to be displayed within the sequential media area 38 when the sequential media has finished playing or by moving the cursor with the mouse 18 below a line 56 of
When the network services platform 60 is displayed, the sequential media which may continue playing or may be paused while the network services platform 60 is displayed. The network services platform 60 can be removed from the sequential media display area 38 after a fixed duration without any interaction from the user.
Generally, information provided within the network services platform 60 will relate to the tab 62 selected by the user. For example, if the tab 62 displaying more media, thumbnails of the additional media will be displayed within the network services platform 60. Alternatively, if the tab 62 relates to providing the user more information relating to the subject of the media displayed in the sequential media area 38, the network services platform 60 will display more information such a search provided by an Internet search engine.
Moreover, as the user interacts with the network services platform 60 information regarding the user's interaction with the network services platform 60 can be sent back to the central server 26 such that a profile can be generated relating to the user. By so doing, the central server 26 or a third party can customize the network services provided to the user based upon the profile generated based upon the user's interaction with the network services platform 60.
As a person skilled in the art will readily appreciate, the above description is meant as an illustration of implementation of the principles this invention. This description is not intended to limit the scope or application of this invention in that the invention is susceptible to modification, variation and change, without departing from the spirit of this invention, as defined in the following claims.
