WO2008117243A1 - Management of advertisement download and display - Google Patents

Abstract

A system for downloading advertisements, comprising receiving means for receiving an advertisement from a service provider, a storage means for storing the received advertisement, and a processor being arranged to store the received advertisement. A first part of the storage means is allocated for storage of advertisements of a first category and a second part of the storage means for storage of advertisements of a second category. The processor is arranged to determine a category of the received advertisement, and to store the received advertisement in the part of the storage means corresponding to the respective category of the received advertisement if sufficient storage space is available.

Description

Management of advertisement download and display

TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates to a system for downloading advertisements, comprising receiving means for receiving an advertisement from a service provider, a storage means for storing the received advertisement, and a processor being arranged to store the received advertisement in the storage means.

The invention further relates to a method and a computer program product for downloading advertisements.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Such a system is for example described in the United States patent application

US 2002/0138831. The US patent application describes a method for displaying advertisements transmitted to a user unit. An advertisement is tagged with a delay tag indicating whether display of the advertisement can be delayed. Only if the delay tag allows delaying display of the at least one advertisement, the advertisement is stored at the user unit, and the advertisement is stored and displayed. Determining whether to store a broadcast commercial is based upon a predetermined preference of the user for an item being advertised in the commercial, a previous purchase of an item being advertised in the commercial, and correspondence of at least one characteristic associated with the commercial to user profile information. Advertisements that must be displayed immediately do not have to be stored. The delay tags determine which ones of the stored advertisements are displayed at what moment in time.

It is a disadvantage of the method according to US 2002/0138831 that the service provider may submit more advertisements than can be stored by the receiver. Simple solutions, such as stopping receiving advertisements or deleting old or less relevant advertisements do not result in a balanced offering of advertisements.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the current invention to provide a system for downloading advertisements, which system is able to store a varied set of advertisements, even when not much storage space is available.

According to a first aspect of the invention, this object is achieved by providing a system according to the opening paragraph, wherein a first part of the storage means is allocated for storage of advertisements of a first category and a second part of the storage means for storage of advertisements of a second category, and wherein the processor is arranged to determine a category of the received advertisement, and store the received advertisement in the part of the storage means corresponding to the respective category of the received advertisement if sufficient storage space is available.

By allocating different parts of the storage means for different categories of advertisements, it is assured that the storage means is not filled with one type of advertisements only. When the amount of offered advertisements in the first category is very high, the system will stop storing those advertisements as soon as the part of the storage means specially allocated for these advertisements is full, but advertisements of other categories can still be stored in the other parts of the storage means. In this way, the system is able to keep a varied set of advertisements, even when the supply of advertisements is not diverse and the amount of storage space is limited.

In a preferred embodiment the processor is further arranged to, if insufficient storage space is available, compare a priority of the received advertisement with a priority of an advertisement that is already stored in the part of the storage means corresponding to the respective category of the received advertisement and, if an advertisement with a lower priority than the received advertisement is already stored in said part of the storage means, deleting the advertisement with the lower priority and storing the received advertisement in said part of the storage means.

In this embodiment it is assured that, when the storage space is limited, the most relevant advertisements of each category are stored.

According to a second aspect of the invention, a method is provided comprising receiving an advertisement from a service provider, determining a category of the received advertisement, checking whether sufficient storage space for storing the received advertisement is available in a part of a storage means for storage of advertisements of the determined category and, if sufficient storage space is available, storing the received advertisement in said part of the storage means. These and other aspects of the invention are apparent from and will be elucidated with reference to the embodiments described hereinafter.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS In the drawings:

Figure 1 shows a flow diagram of a method according to the invention, Figure 2 shows a block diagram of a system according to the invention, Figure 3 schematically shows allocation of the storage means, and Figures 4 and 5 show screen shots of an exemplary EPG wherein the current invention is implemented.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Figure 1 shows a flow diagram of a method according to the invention. The method is initiated in a start step 101. Optionally, all or part of the advertisements comprise an expiry tag, indicating a date and time after which the advertisement is not relevant anymore. When initiating the method, all expired advertisements are deleted from the storage means for freeing storage space. In a receive step 102, advertisements are obtained from a service provider. The service provider may, e.g., be a broadcast network that sends television programs and advertisements via a cable network, or a content provider offering multimedia content and advertisements via the Internet. After receiving an advertisement, the system reads the meta data of the advertisement. The meta data may, e.g., describe a name, genre, topic, content, preferred display time or expiry date of the advertisement. The advertisement may be a dynamic video or audio clip with a fixed duration, or may be a static advertisement that can be displayed for shorter or longer time periods. Preferably, the meta data also comprises a priority value set by the service provider. The priority may be in the range of 255 to 1, 155 being highest and 1 being the lowest priority.

After having received the advertisement, a check is performed in step 103, to see whether the advertisement is already stored on the storage medium. If so, the method returns to the receive step 102 for receiving the next advertisement. Optionally, the meta data of an already stored advertisement is updated if the meta data has been changed after the earlier storing of the advertisement. If the advertisement is not yet stored in the storage means, the method proceeds to availability check step 104. In the availability check step 104, it is first checked whether the advertisement belongs to a category for which storage space has been allocated. Then it is checked whether the part of the storage means corresponding to the category of the advertisement has enough storage space left to store the advertisement in said part of the storage means. If both checks result in a positive answer, the advertisement is stored in storage step 108 and the method returns to receiving step 102 for receiving the next advertisement. If the advertisement does not belong to a category for which storage space has been allocated, the method may return to receiving step 102 without storing the advertisement, or may store the advertisement in a part of the storage means allocated for 'other' advertisements. If not enough storage space is available for storing the advertisement in the part of the storage means corresponding to the category of the advertisement, the method proceeds to priority check step 105. In this step 105, a priority of the received advertisement is compared to the priorities of advertisements that are already stored in said part of the storage means. The priority of the received advertisement may, e.g., be derived from a priority value in the meta data or by matching the meta data with an implicit or explicit user profile. Priority values may be expressed in numbers, e.g. 1 to 255, or priority classes, 'A', 'B', 'C, 'D'. If the priority of the received advertisement is higher than the priority of an already stored advertisement, the lower priority advertisement is deleted and replaced by the received advertisement in replacement step 106 and the method returns to receiving step 102 for receiving the next advertisement. If the priority of the received advertisement is lower, the method directly returns to receiving step 102. If the received advertisement occupies a lot of storage space, it may be needed to delete two or more advertisements with a lower priority.

Figure 2 shows a block diagram of a system 10 according to the invention. The system 10 comprises a storage means 15 for storing advertisements and a processor 14 for performing the steps as described above. The storage means 15 typically comprise a hard disk or solid state memory. The system 10 is coupled to an external service provider via, e.g., a broadcast network or the Internet 17. Input means, such as a keyboard and mouse 12 or a remote control 11 are used for enabling a user to operate the system 10. A display 13 is provided for displaying the advertisements. Advertisements may, e.g., be displayed full screen in between two television programs, in a part of the display 13 during a television program, as part of an EPG user interface at regular time intervals when using a personal computer, or as desktop background on a PC. The processor 14 determines which advertisements to display and when to display them. The processor 14 uses some selection algorithm for selecting stored advertisements from the storage means 15. Preferably a mix of advertisements of different categories is selected. The advertisements may be selected randomly with advertisements with a higher priority value having a larger chance of being selected than advertisements with a lower priority value.

Figure 3 schematically shows allocation of the storage means 15. In this example, the storage capacity is divided into four parts of unequal size. In the first part 21, advertisements may be comprised with a high priority value that is assigned to the advertisement by the service provider. These high priority values may, e.g., be assigned based on the revenue paid by the advertiser. The second part 22 may, e.g., comprise advertisements that match with an explicit user profile. Such advertisements may inform the user about specific products that are of interest to the user. Higher priority values are assigned to advertisements that better match with the explicit user profile. The third part 23 may, e.g., comprise advertisements matching an implicit user profile, which profile is obtained by analyzing the usage of the system by the user. The implicit profile may, e.g., be based on genres, channels or content of TV programs watched, on websites visited, or on keywords used in search queries. The fourth part 24 may comprise other advertisements, such as advertisements particularly liked by others or various advertisements with a lower priority.

Allocating different parts of the storage means 15 for storage of advertisements of different categories may be done in several ways. For example, separate storage means may be provided for different categories or specific sectors on a hard disk may only be used for storing advertisements of different categories. Alternatively, one storage means is used for storing all types of advertisements and only the total amount of advertisements per category is limited. For example, all received advertisements are stored on one 2 GB hard disk and as soon as 1 GB of advertisements of the first category is stored, no more advertisements of that category are accepted anymore. The remaining storage capacity can then only be used for other types of advertisements. By allocating different parts of the storage means 15 for different categories of advertisements, it is assured that the storage means 15 is not filled with one type of advertisements only. Although the advertisements in the first category may have the highest priority values, only displaying advertisements resulting in high revenues for the service provider may result in reduced attention of the user. It is therefore preferred, that, when scheduling the display of advertisements, advertisements are selected from all categories. By also displaying advertisements matching a user's implicit or explicit user profile, the attention of the user is kept and the advertisements become more effective.

Figures 4 and 5 show screen shots of an exemplary EPG wherein the current invention is implemented. Electronic Program Guides (EPG) provide information about the TV programs that may be viewed in the near feature. The user uses the input means 11, 12 to search for TV programs of interest and browse for list of available TV programs. Generally, TV programs are ordered in tables. Columns 44, 45 and rows of these tables represent, channels, scheduled broadcasting times, genres or recommendation values of the available programs. Table cells 46, 47 represent TV programs and provide, information about said TV programs, such as title, genre, cast, language, or even a content summary. It is not necessary that the complete screen 40 is occupied by program information. For example, a picture in picture frame 41 may show the currently active channel. For application of the current invention, parts 42, 43 of the screen may be used for displaying advertisements. In the example of figure 4, a first frame 42 shows an advertisement from one of the categories and a second frame 43 shows an advertisement of the same or another category. One table cell 46 is highlighted. The user uses the input means 11, 12 for moving a highlighting cursor to the cell 46. The TV program in the highlighted cell 46 may be selected for recording or for activating an alert message at the moment the program starts. The highlight cursor may have a color that is different from the color of the other table cells, but may also comprise a, possibly transparent, advertisement.

In figure 5, the first frame 42 shows the same advertisement as in figure 4 and a second advertisement 51 is shown full screen in the background of the EPG. The manner of display of the advertisement may be based on the category to which the advertisement belongs.

It should be noted that the above-mentioned embodiments illustrate rather than limit the invention, and that those skilled in the art will be able to design many alternative embodiments without departing from the scope of the appended claims. In the claims, any reference signs placed between parentheses shall not be construed as limiting the claim. Use of the verb "comprise" and its conjugations does not exclude the presence of elements or steps other than those stated in a claim. The article "a" or "an" preceding an element does not exclude the presence of a plurality of such elements. The invention may be implemented by means of hardware comprising several distinct elements, and by means of a suitably programmed computer. In the claims enumerating several means, several of these means may be embodied by one and the same item of hardware. The mere fact that certain measures are recited in mutually different dependent claims does not indicate that a combination of these measures cannot be used to advantage.

Claims

CLAIMS:

1. A system (10) for downloading advertisements, comprising receiving means for receiving an advertisement from a service provider, a storage means (15) for storing the received advertisement, a first part (21) of the storage means being allocated for storage of advertisements of a first category and a second part (22) of the storage means for storage of advertisements of a second category, and a processor (14) being arranged to determine a category of the received advertisement, and store the received advertisement in the part of the storage means corresponding to the respective category of the received advertisement.

2. A system (10) as claimed in claim 1, wherein the processor is further arranged to, if insufficient storage space is available, compare a priority of the received advertisement with a priority of an advertisement that is already stored in the part of the storage means corresponding to the respective category of the received advertisement and, if an advertisement with a lower priority than the received advertisement is already stored in said part of the storage means, deleting the advertisement with the lower priority and storing the received advertisement in said part of the storage means.

3. A system (10) as claimed in claim 1, wherein at least one further part (23, 24) of the storage means is allocated for storage of advertisements of respective further categories.

4. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the first category comprises advertisements with a priority value set by the service provider.

5. A system (10) as claimed in claim 1, wherein the second category comprises advertisements with a priority value that is determined from explicit user input.

6. A system (10) as claimed in claim 3, wherein one of the further categories comprises advertisements with a priority value that is determined from an implicit user profile.

7. A method for downloading advertisements, comprising receiving (102) an advertisement from a service provider, determining (104) a category of the received advertisement, checking (104) whether sufficient storage space for storing the received advertisement is available in a part of a storage means for storage of advertisements of the determined category, and if sufficient storage space is available, storing (107) the received advertisement in said part of the storage means.

8. A method according to claim 7, further comprising if insufficient storage space is available, comparing (105) a priority of the received advertisement with a priority of an advertisement that is already stored in said part of the storage means, and if an advertisement with a lower priority than the received advertisement is already stored in said part of the storage means, deleting (106) the advertisement with the lower priority and storing (106) the received advertisement in said part of the storage means.

9. A computer program product which program is operative to cause a processor to perform the method as claimed in claim 7 or 8.