Patent Application
20100191631
Not Applicable
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to tracking the acquisitions of content on a display, and generating a monetary value based on the number and lengths of the acquisitions of the displayed content.
2. Description of the Related Art
Commercial, or other, content, may be disseminated to the public through media sources such as radio, television, print, billboards, signage, online and mobile. In certain business models, e.g., a company supplies content to be displayed and that is aimed at attracting potential customers for the company and/or its commercial brand vendor partners. For example, the potential customer(s) and/or client(s) may acquire the displayed content through the intended means, i.e., visually, hearing and/or touching the displayed content. This content display, playing or otherwise communicating content, i.e., advertising, merchandising, promotion and/or general communication, referred to hereinafter as AMPC may have an applied value and be purchased. Those purchasing the AMPC through a media company, or developing the AMPC and displaying without aid of a media company, want to know as much as possible about the audience and the actual number of people that their advertising reaches. Many years ago, the information provided to advertising clients was simply an unverified theoretical number of people reached by the advertisement. This number of viewers/listeners was easily obtainable through subscription numbers for print media, and through statistically-based ratings numbers for broadcast media.
One established metric used by the advertising/media buying and selling community for quantifying the audience is gross rating points (GRP). Two well-established metrics for valuing the cost of advertising are cost-per-thousand (CPM) and cost-per-point (CPP). These are based upon traditional “reach and frequency” media valuation parameters. All of these are described in detail below.
GRP (gross rating points) is the sum of ratings achieved by a specific media vehicle or schedule. GRP represents the percentage of the target audience reached by a particular advertisement. For example, for an ad airing once and reaching 50% of its target audience, the ad is said to have a 50 GRP. If the advertisement appears more than once, the GRP figure represents the sum of each individual GRP. For instance, if a particular TV ad airs five times, each time reaching 50% of the target audience, the ad is said to have 250 GRP. In general, Gross Rating Points is the frequency of repetition, multiplied by the percentage of reach.
The CPM (cost-per-thousand) is defined as the cost of the advertising schedule, divided by the gross number of impressions, times 1000. In general, CPM is the cost required to reach one thousand people. The CPP (cost-per-point) is defined as the cost of the advertising schedule, divided by the gross rating points (GRP). In general, CPP is the cost required to reach one rating point, or one percentage point of the audience in the targeted area. Both of these quantities are made clearer by the following numerical example.
A geographic area being evaluated might be a country, such as the United States, or a specific television market, such as New York City. The major broadcast networks cover virtually all of the United States, and A.C. Nielsen, the company that provides television networks, television stations, and advertisers with the audience measurement, or rating, information, measures their audiences.
A typical television market covers a generally circular area, with a radius of about 75 miles (120 km) away from the stations' transmitters. In addition, the market also covers cable and satellite television subscribers that also receive the local stations' signals. One of the companies that measures television audiences, A.C. Nielsen, refers to this geographic area as a Designated Marketing Area (DMA). A typical DMA encompasses several counties and many cities, and is usually designated by the largest city in the area. Hence, the New York City market includes Newark in New Jersey, Port Jefferson Station on Long Island, Nanuet in New York, and Stamford in Connecticut.
The average television network program achieves about an 11.0 rating, which means that it reaches 11% of the 94,000,000 homes in America with television sets, or approximately 10,300,000 homes. If an advertiser were to buy ten commercials, each with a rating of 11.0 on a TV network, then the number of gross impressions would be 10 times 10,300,000, or 103,000,000. If the TV network were to charge an average of $150,000 for a typical 30-second-length commercial, the total cost of a ten-commercial schedule would be $1,500,000. The CPM of the schedule would be: ($1,500,000)/(103,000,000)×1000, or $14.56. In other words, for this sample advertising schedule, it costs $14.56 to reach 1000 viewers (or, equivalently, generate 1000 gross impressions).
Advertisers and their advertising agencies and media buying services evaluate television networks based on CPM because it has historically been a universally accepted comparative measure of media efficiency across several media. Thus, the cost of reaching 1000 viewers with the above sample advertising schedule on a TV network could be compared, for example, with how much it costs to reach 1000 readers with an ad in a magazine or newspaper.
It would be desirable to document the effectiveness of any kind of AMPC media, and to have the ability to generate an accurate value and associated billing based upon actual viewings or other type of behavioral engagement such as, but not limited to, sound, tactile, motion interaction(s). Moreover, recently, the distribution of media has grown to include the internet, cellular phones, digital billboards, and other new technology. Likewise, just as the media itself has become more sophisticated, the demands placed on identification and categorization of a particular advertiser's target audience have become more technologically complex.
For instance, and without limitation, for a digital AMPC message on a digital billboard, or a non-digital billboard, or a digital, or non-digital, sign in a public location, it may be desirable to bill a client using real, measured data of how often the particular message is viewed, what portions of the message are viewed, and for how long the message is viewed. This type of audience measurement and categorization is impossible with conventional ratings measurement schemes.
Accordingly, there exists a need for more sophisticated audience measurement and categorization for digital media displays, such as for AMPC communication, or any other suitable purpose.
An embodiment is a method for billing a client, comprising: displaying content corresponding to the client to a transient plurality of people on a display device; documenting, for a predetermined time period, all acquisitions of the displayed content for all people in the transient plurality with a documentation device; transforming the documented acquisitions into a predetermined value with a transforming device; and generating a bill for the client for the predetermined value.
A method and system are disclosed for transforming accessing of a displayed content by at least one person into an overall billed value. An exemplary embodiment comprises providing a display device that displays content, tracking the respective gazes of people near and in front of the displayed content, determining if, when and how long each person views, i.e., acquires, the display, transforming the acquisition data into a billing value by, e.g., determining a billing value for each acquisition based on the numbers of acquisitions and length of each acquisition, summing the billing values for all the respective viewings, and billing the client for the summed billing values. In some embodiments, the system may comprise an eye tracker to monitor the respective gaze directions of the people near the display. In other embodiments, the display device may comprise multiple display screens in the same general physical location, and the gaze tracking technology determines which screen in the display is being viewed. In other embodiments, the billing value is tabulated as a lookup table, with predetermined values for a given plurality of acquisition times and a given plurality of acquisition lengths of a particular piece of unique content. Acquisition times may include a start time, an end time, or any prescribed point within the acquisition. In some embodiments, the system includes multiple displays in different locations, each display location having its own gaze tracking camera and processing technology. In some of those embodiments, each display has its own set of billable values or its own lookup table associated with each unique piece of content.
The terms “acquire” and “acquisition” are intended to mean, for purposes of the present invention, any means by which a person, e.g., a potential customer or consumer, accesses the displayed content. Thus, an acquisition of the displayed content may, in various embodiments, comprise seeing, hearing, and/or touching/tactile or otherwise perceiving the displayed content.
Turning now to the figures,
The display system comprises a display device which may comprise a display screen 40, in the case of video-based content, which may include a cathode ray tube (CRT), a plasma screen, a screen having a backlight and a liquid crystal display (LCD), an array of organic light emitting diodes (OLED), an array of light emitting diodes (LED), or any other suitable dynamic electronic display mechanism. Alternatively, the display screen 40, as shown, may simply be a static image of a poster or sign.
The display screen 40 displays content provided by one or more clients and intended for acquisition by at least one person, i.e., a potential customer or client. The content may include promotion, merchandising, corporate communication, general messaging, advertisements or other paid programming or content that can be valued, and may be in any suitable motion graphics, web graphics, video, mobile media, or audio analog or digital format. The content may be entirely prerecorded, or may optionally include live drop-ins, streaming media, or dynamically-generated portions. The content may be digital or non-digital. Further, the content may comprise a dynamic video, a series of static images mixed with dynamic video, a series of purely static images, or a single static image.
A person walking by may glance at the display screen 40, or may optionally stop and watch the screen 40 for an extended period of time. A goal of the display system and method of the present invention is to accurately measure the audience of the display, and specifically the occurrence of each acquisition of the content by each member of the audience, i.e., at least one person, and to measure the duration of each acquisition of specific and unique content elements and to transform this acquisition data into an accurate value which is translated into a bill for the owner of the message of the displayed content.
The audience comprises in certain embodiments a transient plurality, as they stay by the display screen 40 for a relatively short period of time. Since the audience may comprise as few as one person, the present invention is intended to apply to an audience comprising at least one transient person. As will be readily understood by the skilled artisan, arrival and departure times for at least one transient person will likely be random, with respect to any time benchmarks in the case of video-based displayed content. By way of example, in the embodiments comprising content that is video based, an audience member may arrive at any point during the video, thereby acquiring a random subset of the whole and the duration of acquisition will vary as well.
Note that in some cases, the owner of the message of the displayed content may be an advertiser, a corporate department, a brand merchandiser, the provider of the displayed content may be an advertising agency that produced the content, and the owner of the display may be a different entity from both the advertiser and the advertising agency. Other alternatives are possible, such as for promotional spots for the store that houses the display. It will be understood that any bills generated by the display system are ultimately passed on to the appropriate entity, which is typically the advertiser. It will also be understood that the system 10 may display content from more than one content owner, e.g., an advertiser or a division within a corporation in the case of internal corporate communications, or more than one displayed content from the same content owner, e.g., advertiser, or any combination thereof.
The display system 10 may comprise a video camera 50, mounted next to, within, or near the display screen 40, which processes sequential images of the person 20 watching the screen 40. In the processed images, one or both eyes 30 of the person 20 are visible. The display system 10 further comprises a dedicated programmed digital computer comprising a hard drive, memory and a processor as well as processing software processes the images, for identifying the human eyes in each picture, identifying a gaze direction for each pair of eyes, determining whether or not each pair (set) of eyes is looking at the display screen 40, i.e., whether any of the pairs of eyes acquired the displayed content on the display screen 40 and, if it is determined that any set of eyes are looking at the display screen 40, determining the length of the viewing or acquisition of the displayed content on the display screen 40.
Such eye tracking may, in various embodiments of the present invention comprising visually displayed content, be performed by any suitable known hardware and/or software and is not considered part of the present invention. For instance, the gaze direction may be determined from a comparison of the pupil location of one or both eyes to the other features on the face and head. A person looking straight ahead will have his or her pupils centered in the eye, a person looking to the left will have his or her pupils shifted to the left, and so forth. Such comparisons may be performed in real time on the video stream from a standard low-cost webcam, USB or IP camera.
Note that the number of eyes viewing the screen may be up to twice as large as the number of people viewing the screen; the software may include one or more suitable algorithms to ensure that if both eyes of a single person are identified as viewing the screen, then only one viewing/acquisition is recorded.
The video camera 50 may compile a series of images with regular or irregular intervals which are, in turn, sent to the programmed digital computer for processing. The number of images compiled per second may be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 72, 120, or any other suitable number. These images may, in certain embodiments, be processed essentially in real time to give a number of people acquiring the displayed content by viewing the screen 40, as a function of time.
For each acquisition of the displayed content by a viewing of the screen 40 in the illustrated embodiment, the software in the display system 10 records the time of day at which the screen is viewed, and the duration of the acquisition of the content by viewing.
Initially, in
Of the three quantities, “viewing start time”, “viewing end time” and “viewing duration”, note that only two are needed. The third can easily be derived from the other two.
For this document, the quantity “viewing time” is intended to mean the time of day at which the screen is viewed during the particular viewing and also indicates “acquisition time” of the displayed content by viewing the screen 40. For purposes of the present invention, “viewing” and “acquisition” are, in certain embodiments, equivalent and interchangeable. Here, “viewing time” or “acquisition time” may be the viewing start time, the viewing end time, or any intermediate time between the viewing start time and the viewing end time.
The present invention further covers the embodiments wherein a particular viewing/acquisition may extend from one daypart (and one billable rate) into the next daypart (with a different billable rate), or from one piece of content to another piece of content. For these cases, the cost may be pro-rated, so that the appropriate client may be charged for the actual time spent in each daypart and/or actual time spent in each unique piece of content.
In this document, “viewing duration”, i.e., acquisition duration, is as noted in
The viewing/acquisition time and viewing/acquisition duration may also be synchronized with the time of day, such as by an interne clock.
The display system 10 of
Although the display system 10 is shown with one viewer in
In addition to recording the number of people actually viewing/accessing the video screen 40 in the illustrated embodiment, as a function of time, the gaze (biometric/metric) technology may also tabulate the total number of people passing through and/or dwelling within the field of view of the camera 50, as a function of time. The total number of people may be useful for determining a billing rate for the AMPC. Such billing rates are described in more detail below, with respect to the lookup tables.
The recorded output from the gaze tracking system of the present invention includes at least two lists or databases.
As illustrated in
In some cases, the list treats each entering and exiting as a new viewer, so if the same person leaves the field of view/acquisition and then re-enters the field of view/acquisition, that person is treated as two separate viewers/acquirers of content. Alternatively, the list may recognize the particular person exiting and re-entering the field of view/acquisition as a single viewer, with multiple starting and ending times.
Such a log 70 of viewers or potential viewers may be useful for determining the billable rates for the display, in that it provides actual foot traffic numbers and viewing behavior as a function of time of day.
The second database 80, illustrated in
The two databases may be compared with an additional database that includes information regarding the content displayed on each screen. This additional database may include any or all of what content is displayed, start and end times for each content (referenced by the time of day), and/or which entity is the billable client for each content. Typically, this additional database is generated by the media server that feeds the display screen, rather than generated by the display itself. The time of day for this additional database may be determined from an internet clock, or by any other suitable method to ensure synchronization with the other databases.
As noted above, the billing may be pro-rated so that viewings/acquisitions that extend across two or more pieces of content and/or two or more dayparts may be billed suitably for the actual time spent viewing/acquiring each piece of content, at the appropriate billing rate.
The databases may be saved as a file on the display computer's local storage device, or externally collected and analyzed at a remote location, such as a hard drive or flash memory, or may be saved as a file on a locally or centrally-located dedicated programmable computer as described above. The databases themselves may be in any suitable format, including text, comma-separated value, tab-delimited text, and so forth.
In many cases, the databases may be broken into individual files that cover a particular block of time. For instance, there may be daily files, with databases 70 and 80 covering a particular 24-hour block. Or, there may be weekly files, with the databases 70 and 80 covering a particular seven-day block. Alternatively, any convenient block of time may be used.
In many cases, there may be more than one content display in the system. Such a system may comprise a network of displays, with each display being capable of displaying different content during any period of time. For instance,
Although two displays 60A and 60B are shown in
In general, the viewer log 70 provides traffic behavior (includes viewing behavior) information for its respective display. For instance, the log 70 may indicate how many people pass by a given display, as a function of time of day, and may also indicate how long these people may dwell at the display. If taken over an extended period of time, such as a week, several weeks or several months, the viewer logs 70 may provide raw potential audience numbers, and may answer the question of “How many people can this display ultimately reach?” More specifically, the viewer logs 70 may answer, “How many people can this display ultimately reach, as a function of the time of day?” Ultimately, this data is transformed by the present invention into value, i.e., “How valuable is this displayed content?”
The raw traffic numbers supplied by the viewer logs 70 may be used to determine billable rates, much like newspaper or magazine subscription numbers and TV and radio ratings may be used to determine ad rates. Much like radio ad rates, as discussed above, the rates for the display may be broken down into so-called “dayparts”, with each daypart having a different rate.
As an example, we describe the daypart rates for radio, in the context of listenership. We assume for this example that there are three dayparts, denoted as “prime time”, “normal” and “late night”. The dayparts definitions used for any particular displayed content will be unique to that content and potential customer(s) and/or client(s).
In general, in the U.S., radio listenership is heaviest during the commuting times, when people are in their cars. As a result, the morning and afternoon drive times have peak radio listenership, averaged over all radio listening times. These drive times may be considered “prime time”, and may command the highest ad rates, since they have the potential to reach the most listeners.
The workday, between the commuting times, is considered “normal” listening, and fewer people listen to the radio while they're at work than when they're getting to and from work. As a result, the ad rates for the “normal” dayparts are lower than during “prime time”.
Finally, the late night time slots, which are after most people have gone to bed, have the fewest overall radio listeners. These time slots have comparatively low listenership, compared with the workday or drive time slots, and ads run during these late night slots reach fewer potential listeners. As a result, the ad rates for the “late night” dayparts are lower than both the “normal” and “prime time” dayparts.
Other media may use other benchmarks to differentiate among ad rates. For instance, an ad run on the back cover of a magazine may command a much higher rate than an internal ad, because the back cover is exposed to a potentially larger set of eyes than one inside the magazine.
Likewise, the billing rates for content shown on the video display of the display may have analogous dayparts. The dayparts themselves and their associate billing rates may be based on the number of people that pass in front of the screen in a particular time interval for a particular time of day, the average time that people dwell in front of the screen for a particular time of day, the conversion ratio of those who pass in front of the display and those that actually look at the display, and/or any other suitable quantities.
A benefit to the display system embodiments described herein is that many or all of these quantities may be directly measured by the display, and may be tracked over time. Unlike the audience with a statistically-based ratings system typically used for broadcast media, the potential audience for the displays is directly measurable. In addition, the measurable quantities may be used to determine the effectiveness of other entities, like location in a store, proximity to entrances/exits, and effectiveness of the content itself. For instance, if a particularly effective ad runs on a display, and generates longer dwell times or a higher conversion ratio than what is typically seen, the client that provides that ad may receive that feedback in the form of hard numbers, which is always beneficial to the client. As another example, if a display is moved from one location to another, the performance of the display before and after the move may be directly compared with actual measured numbers. All of this information is beneficial to the client and to the operator of the video system. Another dimension of this embodiment is the use of actual numbers to optimize the design and use of the displayed content. (e.g. measured biometric performance may show that a red background on a particular piece of content commands an overall longer viewing duration than the same content produced with a blue background. Font size, color, audio, photos can all be tested and optimized based upon measured results in order to maximize the effectiveness of the messages communicated to the intended audience.
A sample billable rate schedule 90 is shown in
The rates in this example are broken down by viewing duration, so that the client pays more for longer actual viewings of the content. In this example, there are eight ranges for viewing duration, including 0-1 sec, 1-2 sec, 2-3 sec, 3-4 sec, 4-5 sec, 5-6 sec, 6-7 sec, and more than 7 sec. It will be understood that any number of ranges may be used, and that the limits for each range may take on any suitable value.
Note that the rates in
As an alternative, the rate schedule may include calculations or formulas. For instance, the rate for a particular daypart may be a constant value multiplied by the actual viewing duration. In other words, if the rate may be $0.02 per second of viewing, then a 3.5-second-long viewing would cost $0.07. The formulas may optionally include calculations that incorporate the actual time of day, in addition to or instead of the actual viewing time.
Once the rate schedule 90 or lookup table 90 has been generated, it may be used as a “contractually agreed cost per viewing” of the content. In general, the rate schedule is the cost that is agreed between the network owner (owner of the display and the video system, and/or the location at which the display resides) and the advertiser (content provider). In some cases, such a rate schedule may vary from advertiser to advertiser, with allowances like a discount for a large volume of purchase, and so forth.
Once an advertiser or client has agreed on a particular rate schedule 90, and begins running content on the video screen(s) on one or more displays, then each viewing of the content becomes a billable event.
The viewings log 80 includes information about each viewing, including start time, end time and duration (or includes any two of these three, from with the third can easily be recreated). Based on the time of day of each viewing, each viewing falls into one of the predetermined dayparts in the agreed-upon rate schedule 90. Based on the actual duration of each viewing, each viewing fits into one of the predetermined ranges for duration in the rate schedule 90. The cost for that particular viewing is taken from the rate schedule 90, or lookup table 90. This reading from the lookup table 90 may be repeated for each viewing.
The information from the viewings log 80 and the lookup table 90 are combined in an itemized summary 100. The information in the summary 100 may be useful to the client in that the client can see the real viewing durations, albeit grouped as a histogram into the predetermined ranges. As shown in
Ultimately, the summed costs (third column of 100) are themselves summed, and one arrives at a total billable cost for all viewings 110. In practice, this may include all viewings in a particular time frame, such as for a week, several weeks, a month or several months.
The flow chart of
It will be understood that the flow chart of
In all cases, the documented acquisitions of the content, such as viewings/acquisitions of the displayed content and recording of the start and end times of the viewing/acquisition, are transformed into a predetermined dollar value. The transforming device may be a computer located at a kiosk or at a centralized location, which receives the start and end times of the displayed content, the start and end times of each viewing, pro-rates any applicable viewings/acquisitions to their associated content, accesses a predetermined lookup table that includes billing rates or values for each viewing/acquisition based on viewing/acquisition time of day and viewing/acquisition duration, determines a dollar value for each content acquisition, and compiles the dollar values for all the acquisitions of the content into a bill, to be sent to one or more clients for their respective displayed contents.
Ultimately, content acquisitions that extend across the transition from one piece of content to another may be broken into sections, with each section being associated with the content that is actually acquired. These sections may be treated independently of each other, so that one section of the viewing contributes to the bill for one piece of content, and the other section of the acquisition contributes to the bill for the other piece of content. The two pieces of content may be the same and repeated, or may optionally be entirely different pieces of content, optionally with different billing rates, and optionally from different billable clients. Once the billing process is understood for a single piece of content, it is straightforward to pro-rate the viewing time across multiple pieces of content and treat each piece of content separately for billing.
In this example, a gaze from a particular viewer extends over three distinct pieces of content, which are denoted as “Ad A”, “Ad B” and “Ad C”. It will be understood that although the content is labeled as “Ads”, the content need not be advertisements, and may have any suitable function. Ad “B” runs immediately following Ad “A”, and after a pause, Ad “C” runs after Ad “B”.
The pause may represent a short interval of a blank screen, a decorative or informational pattern, such as a logo, a “Seasons Greetings” sign, or any suitable non-billable interval. The pause may arise from necessity, such as during a time required for a buffer or cache to fill, or may be optional, such as for aesthetic reasons. In this example, the display system may still record the information from the viewers, but need not assign a dollar value to it during the pause.
The start and end times of Ads A, B and C are recorded by the display, or are logged by the server that displays the ads (may be done locally or at a remote site server/processor). The start and end times are typically recorded as the time of day, and are typically synchronized with an internet clock. Similarly, the start and end times of each viewing are also typically synchronized with an internet clock.
Each of the three ads may have its own billing rate or rate schedule, much like billable rate lookup table 90 from
Because the start and end times of the ads and the start and end times of particular viewings are all synchronized against a common clock, such as an internet clock, the viewings are easily pro-rated based on what content is actually viewed. In the example of
Each of the three billable times noted at the bottom of
In addition to the acquisition start and end times being recorded by the display system, there may be other optional quantities that may be of use to the display operator and/or the client. For instance, in the case of video-based displayed content, the gaze tracking technology can capture information such as traffic, dwell time, viewing durations, viewer age and ethnicity, number of non-viewers, and so forth. Any or all of these quantities may be synchronized with an internet clock, and with the start and end times of the display content.
In addition, any or all of these optional quantities may be used to affect the rate schedule for the displayed content. For instance, for content that appeals primarily to women, such as women's clothing, it may be desirable to bill only for the number of viewings by women, and not for the viewings by men. Or, for a particular drug associated with the elderly, it may be desirable to bill only for the number of viewings by older people, and not for viewings by younger viewers. Such a tailoring of the recorded data may not be suitable for all applications, but it is possible in many cases, based on the types of attributes recorded by the display system.
Thus far, it has been assumed that the display system uses eye tracking to determine whether or not a person is paying attention to content displayed on the video screen. Although this may be the least invasive way of monitoring the person's interest in the video content, from the point of view of the person, there may also be other acceptable alternatives.
For instance, the video displays, as described above, may be passive display monitors, and may use any suitable display technology, such as liquid crystal displays, plasma, organic light emitting diodes, and so forth. In other cases, the video displays may support an interactive component, and may incorporate such elements as touch-screen sensitivity (which sense the fingerprints of people), radiofrequency identification tags (RFID), infrared scanning, magnetic card reading, optical card reading, RFID card reading, and/or any other quantitative biometrics that generate a datalog of all of the actions. Such a datalog may be referred to as “clickstream data”.
In some cases, the clickstream data, or any other element(s) gathered from an interactive display may be used to supplement or replace the eye tracking components described above. Similarly, an “acquisition” of the displayed content, when used with another biometric, may be analogous to a “viewing” of the displayed content when used with an eye tracker.
Note that the above processing of data involves several transmissions, receptions and transformations. Images, or the encoded data stream that represents images, are captured by, and transmitted from, a camera to a data processor, are received by a data processor, and are analyzed/processed by the data processor to extract viewing information from people's eyes in the image. The images are sequentially captured and processed, so that the extracted acquisition of content information may be transformed into an acquisition start time and an acquisition end time for each particular acquisition of the screen. The acquisition start time and the acquisition end time may be synchronized to the time of day with an internet clock. The video elements themselves are transmitted from a data server (either centrally located or local to the display) and received by the screen in the display. The video elements all have associated display start times and display end times. The display start and end times are correlated with the acquisition start and end times to produce a list of all acquisitions of each video element and an associated viewing duration for each viewing on the list. Any acquisition that extends past the beginning and/or end of a video element is pro-rated, so that the associated viewing duration corresponds to the actual length of time that video element is viewed/acquired. If an acquisition extends over two video elements, then there are two assigned acquisition durations, one to each of the two video elements, and each of the two assigned acquisition durations corresponds to the length of time for which each video element is actually viewed, i.e., acquired. Once the tally of all acquisition durations for each video element is compiled, the acquisition durations are assigned a dollar value based on a predefined or predetermined lookup table or rate schedule. The rate schedule may have histogram-style values for various bins, each bin having a range of viewing durations, and may also have histogram-style values for various dayparts, or display start and/or end times. Alternatively, instead of fixed values assigned to each bin, the rate schedule may have rates in dollars per time, so that the actual acquisition durations may be multiplied by the rates to get a dollar value. Finally, the dollar values are summed, are assigned to the respective billable clients for the video elements, and are distributed as bills.
The description of the invention and its applications as set forth herein is illustrative and is not intended to limit the scope of the invention. Variations and modifications of the embodiments disclosed herein are possible, and practical alternatives to and equivalents of the various elements of the embodiments would be understood to those of ordinary skill in the art upon study of this patent document. These and other variations and modifications of the embodiments disclosed herein may be made without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.
The present application claims priority under 35 U.S.C §119(e) to provisional application No. 61/148,129, filed on Jan. 29, 2009, under the same title. Full Paris Convention priority is hereby expressly reserved.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61148129 | Jan 2009 | US |
