Patent Application
20090171711
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and systems of selling products over interactive platforms, such as but not limited to interactive platforms operating according to disparate network implementations.
2. Background Art
Different cable television networks, or networks supported by different cable television system providers, commonly referred to as Multiple System Operators (MSO), may support applications/platforms that operate according to different messaging protocols, operating systems, and other proprietary parameters. The disparate operation and proprietary nature of these networks can make it difficult to manage transactions carried out over the different networks.
The present invention is pointed out with particularity in the appended claims. However, other features of the present invention will become more apparent and the present invention will be best understood by referring to the following detailed description in conjunction with the accompany drawings in which:
The present invention contemplates managing any number of transactions executing within the system, which may include but is not limited to electronic transactions between the customers (same or different MSO), the customers and the MSOs, the customers and the vendors, the MSO and the vendors, etc. The transactions contemplated by the present invention are also intended to include single-entity transaction, i.e. transactions other than those carried out between multiple entities, such as but not limited to transactions or operations carried out by one of the entities that does not result in communication or require responsive communications with another one of the entities.
The system 10 may include a confederated transactions services controller to facilitate managing the transactions as contemplated by the present invention. The controller may be configured to provide standardized interfaces that allow the vendors and the MSO to communicate with each other or at least to output commonly understood information. In the cable television industry and other industries, for example, some of the MSO may have disparate messaging systems, protocols, interactive platforms, interfaces or mediums through which the electronic information must travel. Some of the disparate systems may not only transmit information differently but they may also rely on different collection methodologies and metrics to recover and assess information, such as information associated with customer usage/viewing habits.
The MSOs may rely on vendor advertisements and/or the collection of metric information as a source of revenue. In some cases, revenues can be generated from the sale of advertisement opportunities and/or information on customer habits (viewing, operation, etc.). The MSO can maximize revenues by maximizing the number of vendors selling products over their networks or maximizing the resell value of information it can collect on its customer and their habits. The MSOs, however, have had difficulty maximizing vendor reliance since the MSOs require the vendors to develop their own interfaces and support systems to interact with the disparate MSO systems. The present invention contemplates configuring the controller to develop standardized mechanisms through which vendor participation may be facilitated and maximized.
Block 22 relates to registering a product vendor with the confederated transaction service provider. The vendor is intended to refer to an entity desiring to sell products or services (referred to as products) to the customers where at least a portion of the operations associated with facilitating customer purchase of the offered products are executed through communications carried out over one of the MSO's networks. The registration process may include the controller providing a website or other portal where the vendor can input information regarding the vendor, its types of products and services, billing information, and other information that may be necessary to executing the operations contemplated by the present invention.
Block 24 relates to assigning a unique vendor ID to each registered vendor. The vendor IDs may be used to uniquely identify the vendor relative to the other vendors. The controller may use any method to generate unique IDs. The vendor IDs may be determined from information submitted by the vendors during the registration process, with a random number/text generator, and/or some combination thereof. The same vendor may request or be issued multiple vendor IDs as desired, such as to separately identify different product lines or sub-entities. The vendor IDs may be advantageous in allowing vendors having the same name to be separately identified within the system.
Blocks 26, 28 relate to registering the products being offered for sale and assigning unique product IDs to each of the products. During the registration process or at some point thereafter, such as if the vendor is introducing a new product, each vendor may be requested to identify the products it intends to offer for sale. The products may be identified with textual descriptions, pictorial illustrations, or other suitable forms of representation. The controller may then assign a unique product ID to each of the products so that each product is associated with a vendor ID and product ID. If a vendor has multiple products, each product may be may include a different product ID and the same vendor ID.
Blocks 30, 32 relate to determining whether the vendor or the controller is to be responsible for packaging an advertisement used to offer the product for sale. The packaging corresponds with formatting a textual description, picture, or other representation of the product (referred to as an advertisement for the exemplary purposes of the present invention) for use with the interactive services or other service supported by the MSOs. In the case of the vendors packaging the advertisements, the vendors may be responsible for distributing the advertisements to the MSOs. The MSOs may then use the received advertisements for programming or instructing client-side applications to offer the associated product to their customers. This may include any number of operations and processes in order to facilitate customer review of the advertisement, and if desired, its purchase.
The MSOs may support applications running on customer premise equipment (CPE) that allows the customer to interactively purchase products associated with the advertisements. An interactive television (iTV) platform is one such mechanism that a number of MSOs may use to facilitate interactive actions with the customers. The iTV platform can display an advertisement, such as through a television commercial, pop-up/banner ad, or other user accessible interface, and provide a means by which the customer may order the product, such as by clicking on an icon or selecting a button on a remote control. The advertisements provided directly to the MSOs may require formatted according to the particular operating characteristics of the MSOs. If the MSOs rely on standard protocols and messaging requirements, less manipulation may be required for the vendor to package the advertisement for multiple MSOs.
Block 32 relates to the vendors relying on the controller to facilitate the packaging necessary to offering the products for sale over multiple MSO networks. This may include the vendors providing an advertisement in a preferred format to the controller and allowing the controller, or a user associated therewith, to re-format the advertisement according to the messaging, protocols, and other requirements of the MSO systems. The vendors and/or controller may instead rely on a developer to package the advertisements within an application that can be used to facilitate offering the products for sale. The developer may create an application that operates on CPE so that the application can be downloaded or otherwise distributed over the MSO networks to the client-side devices.
Regardless of whether a vendor, developer, or controller provides the advertisements to the MSOs/CPE, the present invention contemplates each advertisement including the vendor ID and product ID associated with the offered product. The format or means by which the IDs run with the advertisements/products may be determined according to the MSO networks and the CPE used to purchase the products.
Block 34 relates to a customer purchasing one of the offered products. The customer may indicate their desire to purchase the product through any number of operations, including the operations described above with respect the iTV platform. A transaction request may be generated in response to the customer purchase request. The transaction request may take many forms depending on the requirements of the associated MSO network and/or operating parameters of the CPE through which the request was made. Each transaction request may at least make reference to the vendor ID and product ID assigned to the purchased product specified in the advertisement. This information may travel with the transaction request for further processing.
Block 36 relates to identifying a vendor and product associated with the vendor and product ID included in the transaction request. The controller may include a database or other feature for cross-referencing the vendor ID and product ID with previously registered vendors and their products. Block 38 relates to issuing a purchase order to the identified vendor for the identified product. The purchase order may be issued to the vendor from the controller or the controller may issue instructions to the MSO of the purchasing customer to communicate the purchase order to the vendor. Billing and shipping information may be included in the transaction request or stored on the controller to facilitate billing and shipping the product to the appropriate customer. In some cases, the customer may be billed directly and/or the MSO may be billed instead of the customer.
As supported above, this method allows the present invention to support the field of distributed software applications and provide a means by which client applications may generate transaction requests, such as those associated with purchasing a product, in a manner that is independent of an access (MSO) network supporting the application. The vendor ID and product ID may be helpful in allowing the client software applications to remain unchanged when executed on any particular access network. A developer of a client application may register with the registration authority (controller), which provides a globally unique value assigned to the developer. The developer can then embed these values into the client application, which attaches it to a transaction request. The format and values in a transaction request can be transmitted to a logical service support by the access network. Because all request may be in a well known format and contain a registered value, all such requests can be associated with the developer, regardless of which client device, on which network, generated the request. The registration authority can resolve the values in the request to the particular developer whose application generated it. Transaction requests may indicate a user request for purchase, for information, for a service, or for any number of actions supported by the developer, an access network, or the set of access networks.
Extending this concept to cable TV, for example, allows the present invention to provide a national marketplace for client applications. A national footprint can provide the scale necessary to attract broadcast programmers and national advertisers, which is important for cable TV revenue generation and competitive position. With no such mechanism, applications would have to be modified to integrate with a particular network's messaging infrastructure, which in turn would have to integrate with any number of developers; or, developers would have to adopt a proprietary messaging scheme which in turn would have to be integrated into each access network's infrastructure. These two alternatives raise significant barriers for developers hoping to reach the entire cable audience. The present invention, in contrast, can be used to provide a single technical interface between developers and a national cable audience, much in the same way that video content is distributed in the same format and through the same mechanisms to all MSOs, so that a single point of contact for application developers can be used to enable message routing and provide the national scale necessary for national content distributors.
The Open Cable Application Platform (OCAP) and Enhanced Television (ETV) capabilities can be leverage in accordance with the present invention to provide a national platform for interactive cable services, much like web browsers create an interactive platform for Internet vendors. Thousands, of large, medium, and small enterprises might author interactive applications that hawk their wares, and deliver these applications to cable subscribers. These programs might be associated with video programming, or might be offered as stand alone services, via virtual or on-demand channels. For example, the present invention contemplates supporting a traditional 30 second ad spot, from which a viewer can place an order, with a model in which unbound applications are made available via an MSOs navigator. An interface may be composed of a standard Graphical User Interface (GUI), which may have a somewhat different visual appearance on different cable systems, in order to fit with the look and feel of the other applications supported by an MSO. Boilerplate code may be part of the interface so that it can execute standard interface functions with viewers and send standardized messages to the MSO transactions services system. Embedded in the code can be certain identifiers and metadata generated by the confederated transaction service used in the messaging to identify the vendor and the product.
From a suppliers' point of view, the economies of scale offered by a single cable t-commerce platform contemplated by the present invention can make the platform much more compelling than having to interface with completely different systems for individual MSOs. This can be helpful in allowing vendors to publish their t-commerce applications to a national cable audience in one step, rather than approaching individual operators. The confederated service, or ‘national cable transaction service’, might be instantiated by a set of web-based forms through which vendors register and configure the billing and fulfillment components. Once registered, a vendor can be issued a unique ID and is given template code to add to their application. Vendors can supply pricing information for individual items. Each item can also be assigned an ID which is incorporated into the application template. Vendor and item IDs can be transmitted from the application during a purchase and used to process an order. After an application is deployed, vendors can interact with the service to receive near-real-time metrics, collect orders, and update the service with order status. Commercial terms might be negotiated with individual MSOs, or mediated by the national cable transaction service.
Block 42 relates to registering vendors and MSOs to participate in a standard metric reporting system. The MSOs and vendors may desire a standardized means to report various transactions carried out over their networks. This information can provide vital feedback to the vendor with respect to customer viewing habits (programs, advertisements, behavior while watching, etc.) and may helpful to MSOs in persuading the vendors to increase the number of advertisements. The controller may be configured to register the vendors and MSO in a manner similar to that described above, i.e., with the use of common website or interface. The interface may allow the vendors and/or MSOs to select, vote, or otherwise establish a common set of metrics to be monitored by each of the MSOs.
Block 44 relates to determining a number of standard metrics to be measured by the MSOs. The metrics comprising the standard may be selected based on input from the vendors/MSOs or according to another methodology. Once established, the metrics may be suitable for use with each of the MSOs and their particular operating requirements. Because some of the MSO may measure the same metrics differently, Block 46 may be include to assign a metric ID to each of the metrics. Like the method described above, the metric ID may be used as a message means by which the MSO may attach or embed the metric ID within reporting elements used which the MSO to track the metrics. When the MSO reports the results of the measurements to the controller, the metric ID may be included.
Block 48 relates to the controller generating a report according to the standardized metrics. The report may be tabulated for each of the reporting MSOs and provide a aggregated measurement that the vendors can use to assess performance. The controller may be configured to cross-reference the information provided by the vendors against the metric IDs to tabulate the results from each vendors. Each MSO may report the results in different formats or according to different reporting schemes which the controller can differentiate according the metric IDs. This allows the controller to filter the measured metric and generate a report that can be understood by each of the participating vendors.
The method contemplated by the present invention describes a means by which a service delivery measurement can be collected from a disparate set of service delivery platforms. The system may composed of: a data format supported by any service delivery platform; a transmission protocol that enables any service provider to collect data from delivery platforms; and a data format and infrastructure used to aggregate and report on data collected from various delivery platforms and service providers. This can be useful in normalizing data collection methodology across service platforms, such as to provide: optimal efficiency to service providers and their service partners; and comparability of measurement on varying service platforms.
While the present invention is predominately described above with respect to managing transactions associated with product purchase and metric tabulations. The present invention, however, is not intended to be so limited and fully contemplates it use and application in any other manner. As required, detailed embodiments of the present invention are disclosed herein; however, it is to be understood that the disclosed embodiments are merely exemplary of the invention that may be embodied in various and alternative forms. The figures are not necessarily to scale, some features may be exaggerated or minimized to show details of particular components. Therefore, specific structural and functional details disclosed herein are not to be interpreted as limiting, but merely as a representative basis for the claims and/or as a representative basis for teaching one skilled in the art to variously employ the present invention.
While embodiments of the invention have been illustrated and described, it is not intended that these embodiments illustrate and describe all possible forms of the invention. Rather, the words used in the specification are words of description rather than limitation, and it is understood that various changes may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
