On-line interactive system and method for providing content and advertising information to a targeted set of viewers

What is claimed is:

1. A system comprising:

a queue builder for generating priority queues;

a computer mediated communications network for sending content data and subscriber data to the queue builder;

an on-line queue manager for receiving the priority queues from the queue builder and for sending content segment play lists to the computer mediated communications network; and

an exposure accounting module for receiving exposure data from the on-line queue manager and computing and outputting exposure billing data,

wherein the queue builder is provided with profile editors through which rule developers create definitions by building data base selection criteria for extracting records with a common profile,

wherein the queue builder accesses a disk storage that stores targeting data and rules for generating the priority queues, and

wherein the disk storage is also accessed by the exposure accounting module to adjust priorities in order to meet exposure goals.

2. A system according to claim 1 wherein the exposure accounting module comprises an exposure billing module, a contract maintenance module, and an exposure accounting storage;

wherein the exposure billing module receives data stored in an exposure storage of the on-line queue manager; and

wherein data is transmitted from the exposure billing module and the contracts maintenance module to a targeting data storage of the queue builder.

3. A system according to claim 2 further comprising an information warehouse manager coupled to the exposure accounting module and including an importer/translator, an information warehouse controller and an information warehouse storage, wherein the importer/translator receives data from an advertiser customer database and a third party database.

4. A system according to claim 1, wherein the on-line queue manager comprises a priority queue storage for receiving the priority queues output from the queue generator, the priority queue storage being connected to the computer mediated communications network.

5. A system according to claim 4 wherein the priority queue storage includes a subscriber queue, a location queue and a time period queue.

6. A system according to claim 1, wherein the computer mediated communications network comprises an on-line application server connected between a plurality of subscribers and the on-line queue manager.

7. A system for providing advertising and content information in an intelligently prioritized manner to an interactive computer mediated communications network comprising:

queue building means for gathering content and advertising information, combining the information gathered with predefined rules, and outputting prioritized queues resulting from the combination; and

on-line queue managing means for receiving the prioritized queues and outputting play lists to the computer mediated communications network in real-time,

wherein the queue building means is provided with profile editors through which rule developers create definitions by building data base selection criteria for extracting records with a common profile, and

wherein the queue building means accesses a disk storage that stores targeting data and rules for generating the priority queues whose priority is adjusted according to predetermined criteria.

8. The system according to claim 7, wherein the on-line queue managing means comprises a priority queue storage for receiving the priority queues output from the queue generator, the priority queue storage being connected to the computer mediated communications network.

9. A system according to claim 7, wherein the queue building means and the on-line queue managing means are used to create segment sequence definitions to ensure that multiple segments are shown in a specific sequence to a specific subscriber.

10. A system for providing targeted information to a user in an on-line computer mediated communication comprising:

a queue builder for combining a targeting data storage with a plurality of editors and outputting resulting data to a queue generator; and

an on-line queue manager including a priority queue storage which receives data from the queue generator, the on-line queue manager including a queue server coupled to the priority queue storage and connected to a server for an on-line information service via a request broker and a network interface,

wherein the queue builder is provided with a profile editor through which rule developers create definitions by building date base selection criteria for extracting records with a common profile, and

wherein the queue builder accesses the targeting data storage and rules for generating the priority queues whose priority is adjusted according to predetermined criteria.

11. The system according to claim 10, wherein the plurality of editors includes a rule editor and a time period editor in addition to the profile editor.

12. A system according to claim 10, wherein the on-line queue manager comprises an exposure status server for storing exposure data into an exposure storage.

13. A system according to claim 12 further comprising an exposure accounting module including an exposure billing module, a contract maintenance module, and an exposure accounting storage;

wherein the exposure billing module receives data stored in the exposure storage of the on-line queue manager; and

wherein data is transmitted from the exposure billing module and the contracts maintenance module to the targeting data storage of the queue builder.

14. A system according to claim 13 further comprising an information warehouse manager coupled to the exposure accounting module and including an importer/translator, an information warehouse controller and an information warehouse storage; and

wherein the importer/translator receives data from an advertiser customer database and a third party database.

15. A system according to claim 10, wherein the queue builder and the on-line queue manager are used to create segment sequence definitions to ensure that multiple segments are shown in a specific sequence to a specific subscriber.

16. A system for providing advertising and content information in an intelligently prioritized manner to an interactive computer mediated communications network comprising:

a queue builder for generating priority queues;

a data storage having content and advertising information, wherein this content and advertising information is combined with subscriber information and prioritized queues are outputted as a result of the combination; and

on-line queue managing means for receiving requests from the computer mediated communications network and outputting play lists to the computer mediated communications network in real-time,

wherein the queue builder is provided with a profile editor through which rule developers create definitions by building data base selection criteria for extracting records with a common profile, and

wherein the queue builder accesses the targeting data storage and rules for generating the priority queues whose priority is adjusted according to predetermined criteria.

17. A system for providing advertising and content information in an intelligently prioritized manner to an interactive computer mediated communications network comprising:

a queue builder for generating priority queues;

a data storage having content and advertising information, wherein this content and advertising information is combined with subscriber information and prioritized queues are outputted as a result of the combination; and

on-line queue managing means for receiving subscriber requests and outputting play lists to the computer mediated communications network in real-time,

wherein the queue builder is provided with a profile editor through which rule developers create definitions by building data base selection criteria for extracting records with a common profile, and

wherein the queue builder accesses the targeting data storage and rules for generating the priority queues whose priority is adjusted according to predetermined criteria.

Description Submit all comments and votes

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is directed to a system to be used in conjunction with various on-line networks that are both now in existence and yet to be created in the future. The system will assemble and provide content and advertising information to the network so as to be preferably distributed to a targeted set of viewers.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

It has been known in the prior art that target advertisements can be used in conjunction with a network for an interactive service as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,632 to Prodigy Services Company. However, this patent does not disclose how advertisement queues that are intelligently prioritized and interactively updated are built. Thus, although the patent discloses that on-line networks can be used to deliver targeted advertisements, it does not disclose the mechanism for building targeted queues accounting for the exposures of users to those ads, and the real-time management of priorities, frequencies, and types of content to be shown.

Other targeted advertising systems have been known such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,099,422. According to this system, a customized video cassette is prepared based on a persons' demographic and zip code information. A relational operation program is used to cause certain items of information to be retrieved from a customized memory for determining which segments are to be used and in which order they are to be recorded onto the videocassette. Unlike the present invention, there is no disclosure of a complete targeting system for on-line media that is both interactive and intelligent.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is directed to a targeting system and method that is both interactive and intelligent. Accordingly, the system according to the present invention includes some or all of the following major components: a queue builder for generating priority queues, a computer mediated communications network for sending content data and subscriber data to the queue builder, an on-line queue manager for receiving the priority queues from the queue builder and for sending content segment play lists to the computer mediated communications network, and an exposure accounting module for receiving exposure data from the on-line queue manager and computing and outputting exposure billing data.

The exposure accounting module includes an exposure billing module, a contract maintenance module, and an exposure accounting storage. The exposure billing module receives data stored in the exposure storage of the on-line queue manager and data is transmitted from the exposure billing module and the contracts maintenance module to the targeting data storage of the queue builder.

Preferably, the system also includes an information warehouse manager coupled to the exposure accounting module and including an importer/translator, an information warehouse controller and an information warehouse storage. The importer/translator receives data from an advertiser customer database and a third party database.

The queue builder according to the present invention preferably includes a targeting data storage coupled to a queue generator for generating the priority queues according to predetermined rules and profile definitions contained in the targeting data storage. Also, the on-line queue manager includes a priority queue storage for receiving the priority queues output from the queue generator. The priority queue storage is connected to the computer mediated communications.

The computer mediated communications network preferably includes an on-line application server connected between a plurality of subscribers and the on-line queue manager.

An object of the present invention is to provide a system for providing advertising and content information in an intelligently prioritized manner to an interactive computer mediated communications network including a queue builder for gathering content and advertising information, combining the information gathered with predefined rules, and outputting prioritized queues resulting from the combination, and an on-line queue manager for receiving the prioritized queues and outputting play lists to the interactive network host server in real-time. The queue builder includes a targeting data storage coupled to a queue generator for generating the priority queues according to predetermined rules and profile definitions contained in the targeting data storage.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a system for providing targeted information to a user in an on-line computer mediated communication including a queue builder for combining a targeting data storage with a plurality of editors and outputting resulting data to a queue generator, and an on-line queue manager including a priority queue storage which receives data from the queue generator. The on-line queue manager also including a queue server coupled to the priority queue storage and connected to a server for an on-line information service via a request broker and a network interface.

The system according to the present invention also includes an exposure accounting module including an exposure billing module, a contract maintenance module, and an exposure accounting storage. The exposure billing module receives data stored in the exposure storage of the on-line queue manager. Preferably, data is transmitted from the exposure billing module and the contracts maintenance module to the targeting data storage of the queue builder.

These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent in view of the following detailed description.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates an overall block diagram of the system according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 illustrates a more detailed block diagram of the Computer Mediated Network of FIG. 1.

FIG. 3 illustrates an overview of the Information Warehouse Manager of FIG. 1.

FIG. 4 illustrates a more detailed block diagram of the Information Warehouse Manager of FIG. 3.

FIG. 5 illustrates an overview of the Queue Builder of FIG. 1.

FIG. 6 illustrates a more detailed block diagram of the Queue Builder of FIG. 5.

FIG. 7 illustrates an overview of the On-Line Queue Manager of FIG. 1.

FIG. 8 illustrates a more detailed block diagram of the On-Line Queue Manager of FIG. 7.

FIG. 9 illustrates an overview of the Exposure Accounting Module of FIG. 1.

FIG. 10 illustrates an overall system overview of a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 11 illustrates a more detailed block diagram of the Exposure Accounting Module of FIG. 9.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

The present invention will now be described according to preferred embodiments of the present invention and in connection with the accompanying Figures.

Overview

A preferred embodiment of the overview of the system is shown in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 1, the system includes five major components: the queue builder 10, the on-line queue manager 20, the exposure accounting module 30 the computer mediated communications network 40 and the information warehouse manager 50. Implemented as a whole, the system provides a mechanism for targeting content in a computer mediated communication network or other medium.

The system takes data input from providers of information and/or access services in the computer mediated communications network 40. Data is provided that uniquely identifies and describes subscribers to the communications/information service. Additional data is provided that uniquely identifies and describes the content segments that will be targeted. Finally, data is provided by the provider of the computer mediated communications network 40 that uniquely identifies and describes content or application locations within the service where targeting requests may be generated. In addition to data from the communications network provider, third party data that describes the subscribers may also be input into the queue builder 10 from third party databases 44. The information warehouse manager 50 will attach this third party data to the existing subscriber data base to provide more information for creating profiles of populations within the subscriber base. Within the queue builder 10, the input data is put into a relational data base where the subscriber, content segment, and content location data can be analyzed and manipulated by rule developers. It is to be understood that all of the data storages are accessed by a relational data base system (not shown), such as products currently available from Oracle (Oracle7), Sybase or Informix. These rule developers can create profiles of subscribers, content segments, and content locations; and can create definitions of specific time periods that may be important in targeting content segments to subscribers. Once the profiles are defined and housed in the relational data base, the rule developers can target content segments to specific users, to content locations, or to time periods by creating a rule that defines the priority of a specific content segment for a specific subscriber, subscriber profile, content location, content location profile, or time period definition. The rules are housed in a targeting data storage 100.

Once the data are loaded, the profiles are established, and the rules are developed, the queue generator 140 within the queue builder 10 creates priority queues of content segments for each identified subscriber, content location and time period definition. These queues are passed from the queue builder 10 to the on-line queue manager 20 over a dedicated network connection. The on-line queue manager 20 places the queues in a relational data base. Through a set of standard function calls that are imbedded in the applications of the communications service, these applications send requests for content segment play lists to the on-line queue manager 20. The requests identify the current subscriber, the content location of the request, the date and time of the request, and the type of content record (e.g. advertisement, movie, still picture, etc). The on-line queue manager 20 returns a play list of content segments that are targeted to the subscriber, location, and time period identified in the request. In addition, the on-line queue manager 20 records the response to the request as an exposure of the content segment(s) included in the play list.

Exposure data is housed in the relational data base within the on-line queue manager 20. Through standard function calls that are imbedded in the applications of the communications service, applications within the service network can send exposure data update requests to add subscriber interaction information (e.g. how long was the segment exposed to the subscriber, did the subscriber cancel the segment, etc.) to the existing exposure records. On a periodic basis, the exposure data housed in the relational data base is exported to the exposure accounting module 30.

The exposure accounting module 30 provides summary and detailed exposure billing data to customers of the programming engine (e.g. the owners of the calling applications on the communications network 40, advertisers, etc.). Information regarding the financial terms of commitments to deliver exposures to applications within the communications network 40 are entered into the exposure accounting module 30 and stored in a relational data base within the module.

Contract data includes the customer identification and billing information. In addition, the exposure accounting module 30 provides a facility to input and maintain simple information about the targeting campaigns that will be executed under the current contract. This campaign data is used by rule analysts to develop the appropriate profiles and rules to satisfy the objectives defined in the contracts data base. Pricing information is also assigned to various campaigns under each contract. When rule analysts develop rules, they are related to a specific campaign within the contracts data base. Exposure records that are imported regularly from the on-line queue manager 20, identify the rule that was used to generate each exposure. Using the exposure data and the contract data the exposure accounting module 30 assigns a price to each exposure and generates reports and export files to be delivered to customers.

System Configuration

There are several high level hardware and system architectures that can be implemented to realize the invention. One end of the spectrum of possible implementations is that every logical component of the invention (i.e. the Information Warehouse Manager, the Queue Builder, the Exposure Accounting Module, and the On-Line Queue Manager) is deployed on its own hardware platform. In fact, this implementation will be necessary when the number of subscribers, and content segments get sufficiently large (for example, when an excess of 2,000,000 subscribers will be targeted by more than 20 advertisers). The other end of the implementation spectrum would be to implement the three off-line components (i.e. the Information Warehouse Manager, the Queue Builder, and the Exposure Accounting Module) on a single hardware platform. This implementation of the invention will be feasible in support of smaller on-line services where the number of subscribers and advertisers is relatively small.

In either implementation of the architecture the on-line queue manager 20 should be implemented on a hardware platform that is dedicated to a particular on-line service application. Typically this hardware is located on or near the on-line application server that houses applications that will call the on-line queue manager 20. The on-line queue manager platform houses each of the processing components of the on-line queue manager 20: the network interface 210, the request broker 220, the queue server 240, and the exposure status server 230.

In addition this platform hosts a relational data base access program which controls and manages access to the priority queue storage 250 and the exposure storage 200.

The data files for these data bases are preferably housed on disk storage units attached to the on-line queue manager platform. The on-line queue manager platform is directly connected to the computer that hosts the on-line service applications that will request play lists from the on-line queue manager. Dial-up or dedicated telecommunications connections to the off-line processing components of the invention will be installed on this platform. These telecommunications connections will allow for the off-line components to reside in remote geographic locations relative to the on-line queue manager site.

Through telecommunications links, exposure status data is transferred to the exposure accounting module on a regular basis. In an architecture that must support a large number of advertisers, content segments and subscribers, the remaining logical components of the processing components of the exposure accounting module 30 (i.e. the contracts maintenance module 310 and the exposure billing module 300) should be deployed on a single computing platform. The data files that support these processing components are preferably housed on dedicated disk storage units.

One of these disk storage units, the targeting disk storage 100, is used to house the targeting data and rules that will be used to generate the priority queues. The targeting disk storage 100 is accessed primarily by the queue builder 10, but can be accessed by the exposure accounting module 30 to adjust priorities for campaigns that are in danger of not meeting exposure goals. The exposure accounting module 30 will also generate rules to ensure that subscriber cancellation requests are fulfilled.

The queue builder processing components will also be implemented on an independent computer processing platform. The data used to build queues, and the priority queues that are generated by the queue builder 10 will be housed on a disk storage device that is accessed by the other two off-line components of the invention. Once the priority queues are generated, they will be transferred through the telecommunications connection to the on-line queue manager 20. The data will be transferred to the disk storage device dedicated to the on-line queue manager 20 after every new set of priority queues is generated. The data that is used to develop subscriber and content segment profiles is loaded into the targeting data base 100 by the information warehouse manager 50.

The information warehouse manager 50 is preferably implemented on its own computing platform which will be capable of reading multiple physical media formats for incoming data from third parties, advertisers, and on-line information services. This data will be read from electronic files on diskettes, tapes, and files sent through telecommunications lines into the importer/translator processing module 500. From there the data is written to a disk storage device (the information warehouse storage 520) that is dedicated to the information warehouse manager. When import sessions are run, data is read from the information warehouse storage 500, translated, mapped, and written to data structures in the targeting data storage 100. All of the off-line processing components of the invention preferably access the data on the disk storage devices through a distributed relational data base manager. The relational data base manager according to the present invention will preferably be deployed on individual computing hardware platforms.

Alternatively, the information warehouse manager 50, the queue builder 10, and the exposure accounting module 30 can be deployed on the same computing platform using a shared disk storage device. As in the case of the distributed architecture, the data would be accessed and managed using the relational data base manager. The computing platform would be connected to the on-line queue manager 20 through dedicated telecommunications lines. These lines would be used to transfer priority queues to the on-line queue manager 20, and exposure status data from the on-line queue manager 20 on a regular basis.

The Overall System

FIG. 1 illustrates a preferred embodiment of the overall system according to the present invention. A computer mediated communications network 40 exchanges requests and responses with an on-line queue manager 20. The computer mediated communications network 40 also communicates with an information warehouse manager 50 by transferring content description and subscriber descriptive data. The information warehouse manager 50 in turn sends basic descriptive data to a queue builder 10, which also receives some queue building rules from an exposure accounting module 30. The exposure accounting module 30 also provides data source control information to the information warehouse manager 50. The queue builder 10 develops prioritized queues and sends them to the on-line queue manager 20.

A more detailed description of the specific interaction between the major components of the system outlined above is provided below.

The Computer Mediated Network 40

A more detailed block diagram of the computer mediated network 40 is shown in FIG. 2. The computer mediated network is shown along with its connections with the on-line queue manager 20 and the information warehouse manager 50. An on-line application server 410 exchanges information with a subscriber 400 as well as the on-line queue manager 20. The on-line application server 410 is connected to an on-line service data storage 420, which holds subscriber account data, other business data, and content files (ie. content segments). This data storage is interconnected to an on-line service business system 430. The on-line service business system 430 sends information out to the information warehouse manager 50.

It is to be understood that the computer mediated network 40 can be embodied in a number of different ways and that the embodiment shown in FIG. 2 is a preferred realization of the network as contemplated by the present inventors.

The Information Warehouse Manager 50

An overview of the information warehouse manager 50 is shown in FIG. 3 and a more detailed block diagram is shown in