Advertisement auction system

A method for auctioning advertising opportunities, the method comprising:

• constructing a profile of a subscriber based on activities of the subscriber, wherein the activities of the subscriber include television viewing transactions;
• recognizing an advertisement opportunity in a medium;
• providing notification of the advertisement opportunity to advertisers;
• receiving advertisement characterizations from the advertisers, wherein the advertisement characterizations characterize an associated advertisement;
• determining a correlation between the advertisement characterizations and the subscriber profile, wherein the correlation is calculated as a scalar product between the advertisement characterizations and the subscriber profile;
• providing the correlation to the advertisers;
• receiving bids for the advertisement opportunity from the advertisers;
• and
• selecting the winning bid.

A system for auctioning an advertisement opportunity, the system comprising:

• means for determining a subscriber profile based on subscriber activities;
• means for announcing an advertisement opportunity, wherein each advertisement opportunity corresponds to an opportunity to place an advertisement in a program;
• means for receiving advertisement characterizations from one or more advertisers, wherein each advertisement characterization corresponds to an advertisement;
• means for correlating the advertisement characterizations with the subscriber profile to produce a correlation result, wherein the correlation result is calculated as a scalar product between the ad characterization and the subscriber profile;
• means for transmitting the correlation result to the one or more advertisers;
• means for receiving a bid for the advertisement opportunity from the advertisers;
• and
• means for determining if the bid is acceptable.

A computer program embodied on a computer-readable medium for auctioning an advertisement opportunity, the computer program comprising:

• a source code segment for receiving an advertisement characterization;
• a source code segment for creating subscriber profiles based on subscriber activities;
• a source code segment for calculating a correlation factor between the advertisement characterization and the subscriber profile as the scalar product of the ad characterization and the subscriber profile;
• a source code segment for transmitting the correlation factor to one or more advertisers;
• a source code segment for receiving a bid for the opportunity;
• and
• a source code segment for selecting a successful bid which results in transmission of the advertisement to the subscriber.

A method for auctioning a right to transmit an advertisement to a consumer, in an advertising opportunity, based on a correlation between a consumer profile and advertisement profiles, the method comprising:

• receiving transaction data for the consumer;
• constructing the consumer profile based on the transaction data, wherein the consumer profile characterizes the consumer;
• receiving the advertisement profiles from advertisers, wherein the advertisement profiles characterize associated advertisements;
• correlating the advertisement profiles and the consumer profile, wherein said correlating includes calculating a scalar product between the ad characterization and the subscriber profile;
• providing the results of said correlating to the advertisers;
• receiving bids for the advertisement opportunity from the advertisers based on the provided results;
• determining the winning bid;
• transmitting notification of the winning bid to the advertiser;
• and
• permitting the advertisement to be transmitted to the consumer in the advertisement opportunity.