Flexible commercial monitoring

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11336970-B2
Application number	US-201916635107-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 25, 2019
Priority date	Nov 27, 2018
Publication date	May 17, 2022
Grant date	May 17, 2022

Abstract

Methods, apparatus, systems and articles of manufacture (e.g., physical storage media) to implement flexible commercial monitoring for television audience measurement are disclosed. Example television audience measurement systems disclosed herein include a flexible commercial detector to detect whether a first watermark decoded from a television program broadcast signal is a bridge watermark that indicates a portion of the television broadcast signal including the bridge watermark is associated with a flexible commercial insertion event, the flexible commercial insertion event corresponding to insertion of a flexible commercial in the portion of the television broadcast signal. Disclosed example television audience measurement systems also include a commercial metric calculator to credit audience exposure associated with the portion of the television broadcast signal to a flexible commercial crediting metric in response to a determination that the first watermark is the bridge watermark.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An apparatus comprising:
at least one memory;
instructions in the apparatus; and
processor circuitry to execute the instructions to at least:
detect that a first media watermark decoded from a television broadcast signal is a first bridge watermark that indicates a portion of the television broadcast signal including the first bridge watermark is associated with a flexible commercial insertion event, the flexible commercial insertion event corresponding to insertion of a flexible commercial in the portion of the television broadcast signal, the first bridge watermark including a first timestamp to represent a time of the first bridge watermark in the television broadcast signal, the first bridge watermark including a type value to identify the first bridge watermark as being associated with the flexible commercial insertion event;
determine a duration of the portion of the television broadcast signal associated with the flexible commercial insertion event based on a difference between the first timestamp of the first bridge watermark and a second timestamp of a second bridge watermark decoded from the portion of the television broadcast signal, the second bridge watermark including the same type value as the first bridge watermark; and
credit audience exposure associated with the portion of the television broadcast signal to a flexible commercial crediting metric in response to a determination that the first media watermark is the first bridge watermark.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 , the processor circuitry is to determine whether the first media watermark includes the type value to detect whether the first media watermark is the first bridge watermark.

3. The apparatus of claim 2 , wherein the first bridge watermark does not identify the flexible commercial included in the portion of the television broadcast signal in which the first bridge watermark is encoded.

4. The apparatus of claim 3 , wherein a second media watermark is encoded in the flexible commercial, and the first bridge watermark is encoded in the portion of the television broadcast signal to co-exist with the second media watermark.

5. The apparatus of claim 4 , wherein the second media watermark is encoded in a first watermarking layer, and the first bridge watermark is encoded in a second watermarking layer different from the first watermarking layer.

6. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the flexible commercial is a first flexible commercial inserted in a program conveyed by the television broadcast signal, the flexible commercial crediting metric is a first flexible commercial crediting metric associated with the first flexible commercial, and the processor circuitry is to average a plurality of flexible commercial crediting metrics determined for a corresponding plurality of flexible commercials inserted in the program conveyed by the television broadcast signal to determine an average flexible commercial crediting metric for the program.

7. At least one non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer readable instructions that, when executed, cause one or more processors to at least:
detect that a first media watermark decoded from a television broadcast signal is a first bridge watermark that indicates a portion of the television broadcast signal including the first bridge watermark is associated with a flexible commercial insertion event, the flexible commercial insertion event corresponding to insertion of a flexible commercial in the portion of the television broadcast signal, the first bridge watermark including a first timestamp to represent a time of the first bridge watermark in the television broadcast signal, the first bridge watermark including a type value to identify the first bridge watermark as being associated with the flexible commercial insertion event;
determine a duration of the portion of the television broadcast signal associated with the flexible commercial insertion event based on a difference between the first timestamp of the first bridge watermark and a second timestamp of a second bridge watermark decoded from the portion of the television broadcast signal, the second bridge watermark including the same type value as the first bridge watermark; and
credit audience exposure associated with the portion of the television broadcast signal to a flexible commercial crediting metric in response to a determination that the first media watermark is the first bridge watermark.

8. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 7 , wherein the instructions, when executed, cause the one or more processors to determine whether the first media watermark includes the type value to detect whether the first media watermark is the first bridge watermark.

9. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 8 , wherein the first bridge watermark does not identify the flexible commercial included in the portion of the television broadcast signal in which the first bridge watermark is encoded.

10. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 9 , wherein a second media watermark is encoded in the flexible commercial, and the first bridge watermark is encoded in the portion of the television broadcast signal to co-exist with the second media watermark.

11. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 10 , wherein the second media watermark is encoded in a first watermarking layer, and the first bridge watermark is encoded in a second watermarking layer different from the first watermarking layer.

12. The at least one non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 7 , wherein the flexible commercial is a first flexible commercial inserted in a program conveyed by the television broadcast signal, the flexible commercial crediting metric is a first flexible commercial crediting metric associated with the first flexible commercial, and the instructions, when executed, cause the one or more processors to average a plurality of flexible commercial crediting metrics determined for a corresponding plurality of flexible commercials inserted in the program conveyed by the television broadcast signal to determine an average flexible commercial crediting metric for the program.

13. A commercial crediting method comprising:
detecting, by executing an instruction with at least one processor, that a first media watermark decoded from a television broadcast signal is a first bridge watermark that indicates a portion of the television broadcast signal including the first bridge watermark is associated with a flexible commercial insertion event, the flexible commercial insertion event corresponding to insertion of a flexible commercial in the portion of the television broadcast signal, the first bridge watermark including a first timestamp to represent a time of the first bridge watermark in the television broadcast signal, the first bridge watermark including a type value to identify the first bridge watermark as being associated with the flexible commercial insertion event;
determining, by executing an instruction with the at least one processor, a duration of the portion of the television broadcast signal associated with the flexible commercial insertion event based on a difference between the first timestamp of the first bridge watermark and a second timestamp of a second bridge watermark decoded from the portion of the television broadcast signal, the second bridge watermark including the same type value as the first bridge watermark; and
crediting, by executing an instruction with the at least one processor, audience exposure associated with the portion of the television broadcast signal t

Assignees

• Nielsen Co Us Llc

Inventors

• Fuhrer Brian
• Kramer Marie

Classifications

• G06Q30/0242

  Determining effectiveness of advertisements · CPC title

• H04N21/44204

  Monitoring of content usage, e.g. the number of times a movie has been viewed, copied or the amount which has been watched (monitoring of user activities for profile generation for accessing a video database G06F16/739; protecting generic digital content where the protection is independent of the precise nature of the content G06F21/10; arrangements for monitoring the use made of the broadcast services in broadcast systems H04H60/31) · CPC title

• H04N21/8358 Primary

  involving watermark {(protecting executable software by watermarking G06F21/16; image watermarking in general G06T1/0021; watermarks inserted in still images for transmission purposes H04N1/32144; inserting watermarks during video coding H04N19/467)} · CPC title

• H04H60/56

  Arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition covered by groups H04H60/29-H04H60/54 · CPC title

• H04H60/66

  for using the result on distributors' side · CPC title