Tracking and verification for content promotion

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9681184-B1
Application number	US-201615095971-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Apr 11, 2016
Priority date	Apr 11, 2016
Publication date	Jun 13, 2017
Grant date	Jun 13, 2017

Abstract

Exposing consumers to content of secondary interest via a content distribution network is becoming increasingly difficult as Video on Demand gains popularity and consumers isolate themselves from secondary content, including: new programs, emergency alerts, etc. Additionally, ensuring that the consumers are consuming secondary content that is provided to them via the content distribution network poses technical difficulties for the service provider. Therefore, systems and methods that encourage consumers to consume secondary content and verify its consumption non-intrusively are of increasing importance to service providers. Providing consumers with the ability to opt in and out of tracking and verification for the promotion of content allows consumers to be provided secondary content and for the service provider to appropriately reward the consumers for consuming the content to encourage additional consumption of secondary content. Verification may include passive and active feedback from the consumer via a mobile computing device or set top box.

First claim

We claim:

1. A consumption tracker for promoting and verifying consumption of secondary content via a hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network used to deliver primary content requested by a given consumer, comprising:
an HFC transmitter, operable to transmit, via the HFC network to a set top box (STB) accessible by the given consumer, secondary content and requests for feedback related to the secondary content, wherein the transmitted secondary content affects presentation of the primary content;
an HFC receiver, operable to receive feedback signals via the HFC network transmitted from the STB associated with the given consumer in response to the requests for feedback;
a consumption tracker controller, operable to determine an extent of consumption of the secondary content transmitted by the HFC transmitter based on a time when the feedback signals are received by the HFC receiver, and the consumption tracker controller is further operable to transmit a message to a policy manger to update a consumer profile for the given consumer to reflect the extent of consumption of the secondary content by the given consumer, wherein the policy manager is operable to:
determine a weight by which to update the consumer profile based on:
a number of other consumers associated with a subscriber account associated with the given consumer;
a desirability of the secondary content;
a number of times that the secondary content has been consumed; and
whether the given consumer shared a status related to consuming the secondary content via a social media platform; and

provide benefits to the given consumer based on a credit associated with the consumer profile, wherein the benefits include:
an increase in quality of service; and
a credit transfer to a different consumer profile.

2. The consumption tracker of claim 1 , further comprising:
a cellular transmitter, operable to transmit, via a cellular network in communication with the HFC network to a mobile phone associated with the given consumer, the secondary content and the requests for feedback;
an impression receiver, operable to receive cellular feedback signals via the cellular network from the mobile phone;
wherein the consumption tracker controller is further operable to determine the extent of consumption of the secondary content transmitted by the cellular transmitter based on a time when the cellular feedback signals are received by the cellular receiver; and
wherein the secondary content and requests for feedback transmitted by the cellular transmitter are transmitted via a text message to the mobile phone.

3. The consumption tracker of claim 2 , wherein the requests for feedback are transmitted by the cellular transmitter.

4. The consumption tracker of claim 1 , wherein the transmitted secondary content affects the presentation of the primary content by overlaying a portion of the primary content with the secondary content while the primary content is being presented.

5. The consumption tracker of claim 1 , wherein the transmitted secondary content affects the presentation of the primary content by interrupting the presentation of the primary content with the secondary content until the secondary content has been fully presented.

6. The consumption tracker of claim 1 , wherein when the given consumer requests new primary content, the STB displays the secondary content while waiting for the new primary content to be delivered from a head-end.

7. The consumption tracker of claim 1 , wherein the requests for feedback override content request signals on the STB, wherein content request signals received by the STB are interpreted as the feedback signals.

8. The consumption tracker of claim 1 , further to determine whether an active profile associated with the given consumer is opted in to receive the secondary content.

9. The consumption tracker of claim 1 , wherein the secondary content is selected by the given consumer.

10. A method for promoting and verifying consumption of secondary content via a hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network used to deliver primary content requested by a consumer, comprising:
selecting a secondary content item;
providing the secondary content item to the consumer;
receiving a feedback signal from the consumer indicating that an action was performed while the secondary content item was provided to the consumer, validating consumption of the secondary content item;
in response to receiving the feedback signal from the consumer, determining an extent of consumption;
updating a consumer profile associated with the consumer to reflect the extent of consumption by the consumer including determining a weight by which to update the consumer profile based on:
a number of other consumers associated with a subscriber account associated with the consumer;
a desirability of the secondary content item;
a number of times that the secondary content item has been consumed; and
whether the consumer shared a status related to consuming the secondary content item via a social media platform; and

providing benefits to the consumer based on a credit associated with the consumer profile, wherein the benefits include:
an increase in quality of service; and
a credit transfer to a different consumer profile.

11. The method of claim 10 , further comprising:
determining whether an active profile associated with the consumer is opted in to receive secondary content item.

12. The method of claim 10 , wherein the secondary content item is selected by the consumer.

13. The method of claim 10 , wherein providing the secondary content item to the consumer further comprises:
inserting the secondary content item into primary content of a video on demand (VOD) content item, wherein inserting the secondary content item comprises overlaying the VOD content item with the secondary content item while the VOD content item is presented to the consumer.

14. The method of claim 13 , wherein the secondary content item is an emergency weather alert inserted during the VOD content item; and
wherein the emergency weather alert is selected based on a location of the consumer.

15. The method of claim 10 , wherein the secondary content item is provided via a text message, including a tracking pixel, transmitted to a mobile phone associated with the consumer; and
wherein the feedback signal is received from the mobile phone via the tracking pixel, and wherein the action is accessing the text message.

16. The method of claim 10 , wherein the feedback request is received from a set top box (STB) associated with the consumer; wherein the action is transmitting an STB command signal; and wherein the feedback signal uses the STB command signal and ignores the functionality of the STB command signal.

17. The method of claim 10 , wherein the extent of consumption is determined based on a period of time between when the feedback signal was received and a previous verification of consumption.

18. A system for promoting and verifying consumption of secondary content via a hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network used to deliver primary content requested by a given consumer, comprising:
a content provisioner in communication with a plurality of subscribers, wherein each subscriber of the plurality of subscribers is associated with at least one consumer, the content provisioner operable to provide primary content items and secondary content items to each subscriber, and receive feedback signals from each subscriber, wherein the feedback signals indicate actions taken by the given consumer in relation to the provision of the se

Assignees

• Cox Communications Inc
• Cox Communications Inc

Inventors

• Killick Ray
• Raza Muhammad Asif

Classifications

• H04N21/44204 Primary

  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

• H04N21/25891

  being end-user preferences (retrieval of video data in a video database based on user preferences G06F16/739; arrangements for recognizing users' preferences H04H60/46; user profiles in network data switching protocols H04L67/306; processing of user preferences or user profiles in wireless networks H04W8/18) · CPC title

• H04N21/4788

  communicating with other users, e.g. chatting {(arrangements for providing for computer conferences, e.g. chat rooms, to substation in data switching networks H04L12/1813; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104)} · CPC title

• H04N21/6181

  involving transmission via a mobile phone network (arrangements for providing broadcast or conference services to substation in data switching networks in combination with wireless systems H04L12/189; wireless uplink channel access H04W74/004) · CPC title

• H04N21/252

  Processing of multiple end-users' preferences to derive collaborative data · CPC title