The present invention generally relates to management of advertisements in communications systems, and in particular to personalized advertisement and methods for selecting which advertisement to show to a user in a TV system.
The IV advertisement market and the internet advertisement market are together an important part of the total advertisement market. Internet and TV advertisement trends point towards stepwise convergence but today there are still big differences.
TV advertisements are typically presented to the TV audience during breaks between TV programs and in the middle of a TV program. The advertisements are usually in the form of a short film which contains both video and audio. The content and marketing message of a specific advertisement is intended to attract a certain target group which is most likely to purchase an advertised product. The advertisement target group should preferably match the TV audience. General knowledge, such as gender, age etc about the audience is based on the content of the TV program adjacent to the advertisement break. For example an advertisement for a family car could be presented in the break adjacent to a family program. The problem is that TV advertisers can only make guesses and estimates of the viewers watching the advertisement.
Internet advertisements are typically presented either as banners on a web page or based on key words from a web search. They contain everything from pure text to audio, picture and video. The content and message of a specific advertisement is also in the Internet advertising case intended to attract a certain target group. The knowledge about the Internet user and how well the interests of the user match the advertisement can be derived from the context in which the advertisement is presented. For example a car website would probably attract individuals with an interest in cars. A car advertisement presented in the context of the car website could potentially attract some attention from the users. In the same way could a car advertisement that is presented when a user searches for “cars” obtain some interest. As a result, the advertisement target group would on some level be the same as the user of the Internet website.
Thus, the described prior art has limitations in accuracy of the match between the advertisement marketing message and the actual preferences of the actual target group. This causes that the advertisement is in many cases not relevant to all persons to whom it is presented and it is therefore a waste of marketing money for the advertiser. Also consumers feel that they are constantly bombarded with too many marketing messages which causes a growing resistance and negativity towards advertisements.
With Internet advertising it is possible to achieve a more accurate match between advertisement target group and the actual user who views the advertisement. A known method of doing this is that the user fills in a form with information about herself and her profile. This procedure requires a special user account with separate user login and password.
According to U.S. Pat. No. 5,974,398 Hansson et al it is displayed on the user terminal screen the advertisers most willing to pay for the user attention and the dollar amount bid. If the user chooses to see a particular advertiser message the user is being reimbursed, or a credit is applied to the user service account for the amount of the bid promised by the advertiser whose message was viewed. Thus the user gets a payment to view an advertisement.
The present invention overcomes the drawbacks of the prior art arrangements and it is a general object of the present invention to provide a method and a system for delivering personalized advertisements to an TV client in a TV audience. It is also a general object to provide an Advertising Application Server in such an TV system
It is a particular object of the invention to provide a method and arrangement and system based on IMS that enables Advertisement Providers via an auction based business relationship with Service Providers to deliver personalized advertisements.
These and other objects are met by the invention as defined by the accompanying patent claims.
In a first aspect of the invention it is disclosed a method of managing personalized advertisement in an TV system including a TV client, a User Preference Database, an Ad Providers Database and an Advertising Application Server. The Advertising Application Server detects that a user is present at the TV client and upon the detection receives preferences of said detected user. Also received in the Advertising Application Server is information on advertisements in the Ad Providers Database. A matching is done in the Advertising Application Server by use of the preferences and the available advertisements. From the matching one or more advertisements possible to show for the user are selected.
The selection of advertisements can be done according to best match criteria only or best match criteria in combination with a most popular Ad criteria.
In a second aspect of the invention said method further comprises steps related to an auction method. In the Advertising Application Server it is determined that advertisements from more than one Ad Provider has been selected. Upon this determination an auction invitation is sent to a Transaction Broker where an auction is performed. The Advertising Application Server receives information about the Ad Provider with highest bid and can then initiate transmission of advertisement from highest bidder.
In a third aspect of the invention it is disclosed an Advertising Application Server in the IV system for managing personalized advertisement to be delivered to the TV client. Said Advertising Application Server comprises several functional units. There is a Detecting Unit for detection of user presence at the TV client. There is a Preference Storage for storing of user preferences and an Advertisement Storage for storing advertisements from different Ad providers. For matching of user preferences with advertisements there is a Matching Processor connected with a Selecting Unit for determining if Advertisements from one Ad Providers has been selected and a Transmitting Unit for initiating the delivery of the one or more advertisements to the TV client.
In a fourth aspect of the invention there is a TV system for delivering of personalized advertisements to an TV client. The system includes a Presence Server for determining user presence at the TV client, a User Preference Database for storing of user preferences and an Advertisement Application Server for matching of the user preferences with available advertisements upon user presence detected. The Advertisement Application Server initiates the delivery of matched advertisements to the TV client.
In a fifth aspect of the invention the TV system further includes a Transaction Broker connected with the Advertising Application Server for performing an auction and for transmitting information on the Ad provider with highest bid back to the Advertising Application Server.
In a sixth aspect of the invention it is disclosed a method in an TV system for delivering of personalized advertisements to an TV client where user preferences are stored in a User Preference Database and available advertisements area stored in an Ad Providers Database. The method includes monitoring of user presence at the TV client and upon detection of user presence there is a matching done with user preferences and available advertisements used as input and after the matching procedure there is a step of selecting one or more Advertisement to be delivered to the TV client.
The method in the TV system also includes showing selected advertisement or advertisements to the TV client when only one Ad Provider is having advertisements that have been selected in the selecting step.
The method further involves performing of an auction if advertisements from more than one Ad Provider has been selected and determining the highest bidder. Advertisement/s from highest bidder is/are being showed to the TV client.
A first advantage of the invention is that a user of a TV client receive only relevant advertisements since they are personalized and since the TV system is aware of user presence which is utilized in the invention. A second advantage of the invention is the introduction of an auction method when there are several Ad Providers that have matching advertisement selected for a user. A further advantage of the invention is that the technical system disclosed supports business relations between the Ad Providers and the Service Provider managing the personalized advertisement. For example a first payment by the Ad Provider is done when the Ad Provider is putting Advertisement information in the Ad Providers Database owned by and managed by the Service Provider. A second payment from the Ad Provider to the Service Provider is done by the Ad Provider when a selected Advertisement/s is showed to the viewer.
The invention is understood by making reference to the following description taken together with the accompanying drawings, in which:
a, 2b, 2c and 2d are flow diagrams illustrating operational steps carried out in the IPTV system according to the present invention:
Throughout the drawings, the same reference characters will be used for corresponding or similar elements. Ad is used throughout the description for Advertisement or in the case Ad. AS, Ad is used for Advertising.
The present invention relates to management of advertisements in a communication system in particular personalized advertisements delivered to the user. One benefit is an increased satisfaction of the viewer who can watch advertisements in areas of interest while the advertiser has spent advertising cost only on possibly interested receivers.
The teachings of the present invention can be applied to any TV system that authenticates the user when the user is starting to watch TV on a terminal or client connected in the system. According to the example presented there is an Internet Protocol Television, IPTV, system including an IP Multimedia, IMS, system for management of control signals. IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) is a term used when delivering broadcasted TV-services over an IP network, typically a broadcast access network. In the example described the signaling is SIP Session Initiation Protocol signaling which is applicable for IMS systems but other signaling systems may be used as well.
The personalized advertisement service according to this invention is based on the IMS presence service. As defined in the IMS standard there are 3 main actors in the IMS presence scenario. The first actor is the IPTV client 103 which has the role of a presence user agent PUA. This entity publishes its presence status to the second actor which is a presence application server which in
The HSS 120 is within the IMS Core system 122 which also includes a Serving-Call and Session Control Function S-CSCF 124 which node is the main control point for services and also authenticates the user. The S-CSCF is located in the home network of the user and accesses data in the HSS for performing the authentication and service approval. The HSS contains subscription information for every user and the subscription specifies a list of IMS services which a particular user can access. This authentication and service approval is not described in detail but is indicated with dotted lines 125 in
In
The mentioned connections 590 and 592 can be used to indicate an interface between the Service Provider 110 and the Ad Providers 146 for setting up an SLA (Service Level Agreement) which clarifies the responsibilities of each party for enabling delivery of personal advertisements and payment methods.
There is disclosed a connection by a dotted line 111 from the Ad Providers in order to exemplify the way of entering data into the Ad Providers Database. However, if is possible to enter data into the Ad Providers Database from the Ad Media Repository 144.
In
The main filtering criteria to be used is the best match criteria. This filter displays the Ad based on how well it matches the preference of the viewer. Another filtering criteria to be used in combination with the best match criteria, is the most popular ad criteria. This filter displays the ad based on how many times it has been viewed by other viewers. A popular ad is assumed to be of higher interest to the viewer than a less popular one. The advertised product is likely to have high quality, low price, being trendy or in some way attractive to many viewers. The general customer perception of the specific product is high. If the best match criteria result in several Ads possible to deliver to the user also the most popular ad criteria may be applied in order to reduce the number of ads to be displayed. If one Ad is selected after applying one or both filtering criteria this Ad is being displayed to the user in accordance with steps 212 and 213 disclosed in
If more than one Ad from one Ad Provider has been selected it is possible to show a list of advertisements to the IPTV client, which is shown in step 209 in
In some situations, even after both mentioned filtering criteria has been applied in the matching step 204, Ads from more than one Ad Provider is being selected by the Ad. AS 105 to be displayed to the user or TV viewer. This situation is described in
Thus, one advertisement is being selected by use of filtering methods described above and
In order to get a deeper understanding of the invention a sequence diagram in
Said selecting step includes the use of an appropriate criteria for making the selection. One useful criteria is the best match criteria, which is obvious and can be from
If it is determined in the selection procedure that more than one Ad Provider has a matching advertisement then the Ad AS 105 sends 590 an auction invitation, similar to an auction Ad opportunity, to the Transaction Broker 142. The Transaction Broker 142 performs 591 the auction among the Ad Providers. This procedure is not described in detail. The result of the auction is the highest bidder and the information on the highest bidder is sent 592 from the Transaction Broker 142 to the Ad AS 105 where it is received. Now the Ad AS is informed about which Ad Provider has the highest bid and thus which advertisement is to be sent to the viewer. Optionally, as earlier mentioned, a list of advertisements can be sent to the viewer who can select Ad by doing a click in the list.
According to the invention described above the user when watching TV will receive personal advertisements that fits well with the interest of the user which makes the advertisements interesting to the user. The system manages and delivers personalized advertisement which both Ad. Providers and Service Providers benefit from. A further advantage of the system is the option of including payment from the Ad Providers to the Service Provider upon a user viewing the advertisements or the Service Provider updating the User Preference Database.
In step 593 a message “Authorized Content Transfer” is sent to the Ad Media Repository 144. This message contains information about which ad from the Ad DB to be sent to the viewer. The Ad media Repository then in message 594 sends the actual ad to the media server 130. Upon a signal “Start Streaming Ad” 595 from the Ad AS 105 to the Media Server 130 the Media server includes the Ad in the streaming of the TV content. This is indicated
A block diagram of the Advertising Application Server Ad AS 105 is shown in
The Ad. AS 105 also includes an Auction Communication Unit 635 connected with the Transaction Broker 142 for communication in cases when Advertisements from more than one Advertiser has been selected. The Auction Communication Unit 635 is also connected with the Selecting Unit 630 to receive information on when to contact the Transaction Broker 142. The Auction Communication Unit (635) transmits an auction Ad opportunity to the Transaction Broker (142) and receives back information on Ad provider with highest bid.
There is also a Subscriber Storage 640 for keeping information about subscribers of the IPTV personalized advertisement service. Upon reception of an IPTV client ID as a subscriber to the service there is a notification from the Subscriber Storage 640 to the Detecting Unit 610 to subscribe to presence status from the Presence Server 128. The Subscriber Storage 640 is connected to the Detecting Unit 610 as shown with dotted lines in
The invention is described as being implemented in an IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) with SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) signaling but the invention is not limited to such technical systems. Also other systems and signals can be used as long as the system is able to keep login information and is aware of when the user is watching TV on a client or terminal applicable in the system. For instance the terminal or client may be a STB Set Top Box according to the example or a PC terminal or a mobile terminal.
This application which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/896,657, filed Mar. 23, 2007, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
Number | Date | Country | |
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60896657 | Mar 2007 | US |