US 2011/0238782 A1 · CONTENT DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM AND METHOD

Abstract

Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture consistent with the present invention provide an electronic marketplace that matches units of content from secondary content providers with suitable vacancies from primary content providers. Vacancies may constitute, or be included in, any digital transmission containers, such as a television or radio programming, web pages, and the like. Specifically, the electronic marketplace automatically matches content offered by secondary content providers with vacancies offered by primary content providers thus filling the vacancies in these containers through a real-time content trading, placement, and distribution system. To do so, attributes associated with the vacancies and with units of secondary content are used to trade and match suitable vacancies with suitable content. This invention enables both secondary content owners and vacancy owners (primary content providers) to obtain the full commercial benefit of their secondary content and containers.

Claims47

Dependent claims

A method for creating within a primary content of a digital medium a vacancy, the vacancy including a spatial and/or temporal region within the primary content, comprising:

defining the vacancy with at least one data processing system comprising at least one memory for storing instructions and at least one processor for executing said instructions by associating attributes that describe the vacancy with the vacancy;
reserving the vacancy, with the at least one data processing system, as a designated region in the primary content of the digital medium to be filled by a secondary digital content whose attributes match those of the vacancy,
wherein the attributes of the vacancy are used by the at least one data processing system to determine how and/or when the vacancy is to be filled by the secondary digital content.

A method for creating a snap-in for distributing, wherein the snap-in includes a unit of digital content comprising:

defining a snap-in with at least one data processing system comprising at least one memory for storing instructions and at least one processor for executing said instructions by associating attributes that describe the snap-in with the snap-in;
and
associating, with the at least one data processing system, a unit of digital content with the snap-in;
wherein the unit of digital content comprises textual content, binary content, video content or audio content, or a combination of two or more thereof;
wherein the attributes are used by the at least one data processing system to distribute the snap-in;
and
wherein the unit of digital content is rendered by the at least one data processing system into an appropriate form for the digital medium and/or context to which the snap-in is distributed.

4 more elements

A method of providing a broker for registering and discovering snap-ins and vacancies, comprising:

permitting with at least one data processing system comprising at least one memory for storing instructions and at least one processor for executing said instructions each one of a plurality of vacancy providers to submit information associated with themselves and their vacancies to a database, wherein information associated with vacancies includes, for each vacancy, vacancy attributes that describe the vacancy;
permitting with the at least one data processing system each one of a plurality of snap-in providers to submit information associated with themselves and their snap-ins to a database, wherein information associated with snap-ins includes, for each snap-in, snap-in attributes that describe the snap-in;
permitting with the at least one data processing system parties seeking content assets to view available snap-ins or vacancies;
permitting with the at least one data processing system parties to manually select a specific snap-in or vacancy for use;
permitting with the at least one data processing system parties to bind a specific snap-in to a specific vacancy, so that the snap-in content will appear in the specific vacancy if the snap-in attributes of the specific snap-in match the vacancy attributes of the specific vacancy and/or the information associated with the snap-in provider matches the information associated with the vacancy provider of the specific vacancy.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Content distribution system and method

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Content distribution system and method

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims47