Targeted advertising and content recommendation are typically based around the collection, sharing and mining of information with respect to a potential viewer base. For example, if a person or group of people has a particular interest, then an advertiser who learns of this interest may select an appropriate advertisement to be viewed by such a person or group that would garner the most views and have the greatest likelihood of converting a viewer into a customer. In order to learn of such interests, targeted advertising and recommendation systems often request feedback from a person or group of people to learn what their interests are. Alternatively, targeted advertising and recommendation systems often monitor the activity of a viewer of a particular medium, such as television, and use associated contextual information (e.g. temporal information) to judge whether a viewer is likely or unlikely to be interested in a particular advertisement.
Unfortunately, privacy becomes an issue for users of such personalization systems. When a user learns that a particular system shares the information located in his/her user profile with a content provider or an advertiser, the user often feels that his or her privacy has been violated and is more reluctant to share any additional information about their interests. Such reluctance can stymie the effectiveness of a content recommendation and targeted advertising system, making their services appear less valuable to advertisers.
In view of the foregoing, a privacy-preserving content recommendation and targeted advertising method and system are disclosed. The system includes an aggregator that is connected to one or more users and collects rich user data therefrom. The method involves collecting rich user data from one or more users, the rich user data including content viewing habits of the one or more users; building one or more user profiles corresponding to the one or more users; storing the one or more user profiles in a memory database; requesting one or more content profiles from one or more providers; receiving the one or more content profiles; determining whether one of the one or more user profiles is a target user profile for one of the one or more content profiles based on the rich user data associated with the target user profile; and delivering one or more content programs associated with the one of the one or more content profiles to the user associated with the target user profile.
For a more complete understanding of the present invention, reference is made to the following detailed description of an embodiment considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:
The techniques generally relate to a content recommendation and targeted advertising system that utilizes rich user data in making decisions on what content to recommend and what advertisements to deliver to a particular user. The rich user data is collected at an aggregator, which creates user profiles for multiple users using such rich user data. The user profiles are then used to recommend content and target advertisements based on whether a particular content and/or advertisement profile can be a suitable match to a particular user based on the rich user data associated with that user. During this process, the privacy of the user profiles is kept by not sharing them with content providers and/or advertisers, and/or by sharing them with content providers/advertisers under a privacy-preserving protocol.
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After gathering such rich user data, the aggregator 12 builds a user profile (step 112) that serves as a description of the user's interests. This user profile can be updated regularly as the aggregator 12 obtains more rich user data during the course of its operation. The user profile can also be used with other user profiles to train content recommendation algorithms. Once they are built, the aggregator 12 stores the user profiles in a local memory (step 114). In one embodiment, once user profiles are stored locally, the aggregator 12 requests content profiles 32 and/or ad profiles 36 from the content provider 28 and/or advertiser 30, respectively (step 116). Upon receiving the content and/or ad profiles 32, 36, the aggregator 12 then matches them to the user profiles it deems most suitable for the content recommendations 34 and/or advertisements 38 contained in the content and ad profiles 32, 36 (step 118). The aggregator 12 then delivers the content recommendations 34 and/or targeted advertisements 38 to the users associated with the matched user profiles.
After the aggregator 12 has stored the user profiles in a local memory, the aggregator 12 identifies which user profiles are associated with a set of users watching a particular program (step 115). The aggregator then identifies the advertising spaces available during the particular program (step 117). Such advertising spaces can include commercial breaks, embedded video space present during the program, and in-program objects that can selectively display advertisements, such as a billboard at a live sporting event or a blank label of an object during a scripted show. The aggregator 12 then auctions the advertisement spaces associated with the particular program to advertisers based on the information contained in the user profiles (step 119). These advertisement auctions can auction the advertising space based on where and when they appear during a program. For example, certain advertisement spaces that appear earlier in the program can be auctioned at a higher price than advertisement spaces that appear later in the program. Alternatively, the advertisement auctions can be based on the location of the advertisement spaces in the watched program. When an auction is won, the aggregator receives a content and/or advertisement profile from the content provider and/or advertiser having the winning bid (step 121). The content profile is then delivered to the set of users watching the particular program (123).
In the embodiments discussed above, the user profiles are not accessible by content providers 28 and advertisers 30. This is done to allow the aggregator 12 to pick and choose what information it deems suitable for sharing with the content provider 28 and/or advertiser 30 for the purposes of selecting content recommendations or advertisements while maintaining the individual privacy of each user. In other embodiments, the user profiles are exchanged with the content provider 28 and/or advertiser 30 under a privacy-preserving protocol. In such a protocol, the user profile is transformed into a sanitized version of the user profile, which can then be shared with the content provider. The content provider then matches the sanitized user profile to a content profile and returns the content profile to the aggregator.
The various embodiments disclosed herein can be implemented as hardware, firmware, software, or any combination thereof. Moreover, the software is preferably implemented as an application program tangibly embodied on a program storage unit or computer readable medium. The application program may be uploaded to, and executed by, a machine comprising any suitable architecture. Preferably, the machine is implemented on a computer platform having hardware such as one or more central processing units (“CPUs”), a memory, and input/output interfaces. The computer platform may also include an operating system and microinstruction code. The various processes and functions described herein may be either part of the microinstruction code or part of the application program, or any combination thereof, which may be executed by a CPU, whether or not such computer or processor is explicitly shown. In addition, various other peripheral units may be connected to the computer platform such as an additional data storage unit and a printing unit.
All examples and conditional language recited herein are intended for pedagogical purposes to aid the reader in understanding the principles of the invention and the concepts contributed by the inventor to furthering the art, and are to be construed as being without limitation to such specifically recited examples and conditions. Moreover, all statements herein reciting principles, aspects, and embodiments of the invention, as well as specific examples thereof, are intended to encompass both structural and functional equivalents thereof. Additionally, it is intended that such equivalents include both currently known equivalents as well as equivalents developed in the future, i.e., any elements developed that perform the same function, regardless of structure.
It will be understood that the embodiments described herein are merely exemplary and that a person skilled in the art may make many variations and modifications without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. All such variations and modifications are intended to be included within the scope of the invention as defined in the appended claims.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/US2013/045343 | 6/12/2013 | WO | 00 |