IMAGE DISPLAY DEVICE WITH DEMOGRAPHIC DATA AND PROGRAM-BASED AUTOMATIC ADVERTISEMENT SWITCHING FUNCTION
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The present invention relates to an image display device having a demographic data and program-type based advertisement selection function such that users are automatically offered an alternative advertisement.
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Digital and interactive TV systems provide a comprehensive amount of TV channels and programs leading to the general outcome that conventional advertisement techniques cannot reach targeted audience. Assuming that a TV service may have hundreds of channels, channel surfing, which might almost take one hour before every single channel is viewed at least once, also leads to the fact that an advertisement targeting a certain user profile is less likely to be viewed by the target audience while surfing such a vast number of channels.
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Accordingly, individual viewing preferences of users can be better processed and a more relevant advertisement content can be offered to them.
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Among others, one of the prior art disclosures in the technical field of the present invention can be referred to as US2011219398, which defines a system of delivering a personalized media item to a user of an interactive television. The system comprises a television terminal, a computing device and a remote control device. The computing device further comprises a set top box. The computing device may be connected to a server through a communication network. The system stores a personal profile for each of its users. The user's identity is determined after a user switches on the television. Personalized text messages for selected media items are displayed as scrolling tickers on the television display screen. The media items may include advertisement messages, headlines of news and selected stock prices. One of the tickers may be selected by the user employing the remote control device to display the next level of details using an enlarged display space or using the full television screen.
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The present invention provides a system and a method by which an image display device is operated such that users are automatically offered an alternative advertisement content based on their demographic data or hourly and/or weekly program viewing history.
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The present invention therefore provides a system and method by which an image display device is operable to automatically provide an advertisement content corresponding to a specific user profile determined based on demographic data or hourly and/or weekly-basis program viewing history of the users as provided by the characterizing features defined in Claim 1.
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Primary object of the present invention is to provide a system and method by which an image display device automatically switches to an alternative advertisement content targeting a specific user profile corresponding to the profile of actual viewers.
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The present invention proposes a method for operating an image display device by which a plurality of alternative commercial streams received from a broadcaster are displayed in a selective manner according to the basic demographic data of a user or users viewing the image display device. The basic demographic data is used to select a certain received commercial stream.
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The basic demographic data of the user or users can be obtained by manual user input or face and/or voice recognition techniques can be used by the image display device in a conventional manner. If there is a plurality of users viewing the image display device, the user with administrative rights is entitled to determine the commercial stream. In other words, his/her demographic data is used to determine the commercial stream to be primarily displayed. If no user in a plurality of users has administrative rights, a user priority list as defined by the administrator is used.
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Alternatively, content identifiers and age-specific classification in association with different programs as provided by the broadcaster can be used to establish a certain correlation between the contextual category and/or age-specific classification of the program and the basic demographic data.
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In a further alternative, users’ program viewing data can be used to create a hierarchical list of most frequently watched contextual categories such that previous viewing records of categories in association with a certain hourly time interval is determined on a daily and weekly basis, meaning that the most watched category during the actual hourly time interval is determined by comparing previous watching durations of different categories at that hourly time interval either considering all the previous same days of the week or irrespective of the day of the week.
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Accompanying drawings are given solely for the purpose of exemplifying a system and method by which an image display device is operable, whose advantages over prior art were outlined above and will be explained in brief hereinafter.
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The drawings are not meant to delimit the scope of protection as identified in the claims nor should they be referred to alone in an effort to interpret the scope identified in said claims without recourse to the technical disclosure in the description of the present invention.
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Fig. 1 demonstrates a general diagram according to which the image display device of the invention executes the method of operation according to the present invention.
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The present invention proposes an image display device enabling a user to reach a relevant advertisement content according to her/his personal preferences. An advertisement content within the technical context of the present invention may be defined as a commercial stream presented during a program broadcast or inserted between two programs as provided by the broadcaster.
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It is possible that the TV broadcaster provides a plurality of alternative commercials to be displayed in a selective manner during the specified time interval. To this end, it is desirable to determine which commercial is more likely to reach a targeted user on a time-dependant basis. The present invention therefore provides a method for technically associating the basic demographic data of the users with a commercial content. More specifically, the present invention provides a technical method for collecting the required information to be associated with a commercial content.
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According to the present invention, in an alternative manner, the commercial streams provided by the broadcaster can be launched by the users anytime by selecting the corresponding menu option or pressing a corresponding button so as to access the resource. To this end, the image display device of the invention may operate in response to an automatic advertisement launching and selecting button being actuatable on the TV front panel or by means of a remote control such that the image display device automatically displays an alternative commercial content in a sequential manner until a desirable commercial content can be found.
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The image display device in accordance with the present invention is configured to obtain basic demographic data such as gender and age of the users by conventional techniques such as either by way of obtaining user input manually or by more advanced techniques such as face recognition and/or voice recognition techniques. These more advanced techniques are presently used on an extensive basis and readily available to the skilled worker, they therefore need not be mentioned in the present description in detail.
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To this end, the present invention provides that the basic demographic data in relation with the user or users present in front of the image display device are obtained either by manual user input or face and/or voice recognition. In case more than one user are recognized by the image display device, the user with the administrative rights is to be determined, and if the user with the administrative rights cannot be recognized but other users are present, the image display device will determine the commercial to be presented based on a priority list with user priorities as defined by the user having administrative rights.
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It is to be noted that neither the basic demographic data nor the specific selection of the advertisements being streamed is needed to be conveyed to the broadcaster because the image display device itself undertakes the processing, i.e. it collects the required information and determines the commercial stream to be displayed.
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According to the present invention, the basic demographic data of the users can alternatively be determined by the image display device based on the monitored program viewing data. It is known that digital broadcasting services generally provide information in regards to the genre of the programs being watched. The genre information may typically define a certain number of categories characterizing the content of a program. A content identifier therefore describes the contextual category of the digital program so as to let the users obtain information as to the classification of an event or a program. Further, it is also possible to receive age-specific program classifications. In this regard, it is possible to define a certain correlation between the contextual category and/or age-specific classification of the program and the user profile. In other words, it is possible to make an assumption that an animated movie is less likely to be watched by adults or a news program reporting on local or international events is less likely to be watched by children.
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Alternatively, it is also possible that a user herself/himself arranges a predefined list comprising a plurality of programs assigned to various program genres. In both cases, the image display device may have a database of various programs categorized in the form of a plurality of program genres indicative of the contextual character of the given program and associated with a certain user profile.
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In accordance with the present invention, the image display device may be fitted with an internal memory in order for storing the program-pertinent contextual category information such that TV programs that were being watched up to that time and their category are known and processable on a time-dependant basis. The image display device determines for a specific time of the day which program category was watched up to that time more frequently on a daily or weekly basis. In other words, the image display device may determine that a certain program is being watched every day or every Saturday during a certain time interval, that is on a daily or weekly basis. In this way, the image display device may create a priority list having frequently watched specific program categories on a time-dependant manner and can associate these categories with specific user profiles such that a priority list of commercial streams is obtained to be displayed on a time-dependant basis any moment the image display device is on.
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For instance, when a given user watches a documentary on 12:41 pm on a Sunday on Channel A, the advertisement to be displayed is determined by comparing all the categories’ previous viewing records between 12 and 13 pm every day and every same day of the week, and the category having the longest watching duration in the actual category on a daily or weekly basis is determined. For example the documentary category can be a less preferred category in view of daily analysis, i.e. comparing the category-based watching durations during the hourly time interval irrespective of the day of the week, but can be the top category in view of weekly analysis based on the specific day of the week.
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If the documentary category is the most watched category or has a certain priority on a daily and/or weekly basis with regard to the actual time interval, an advertisement content associated with this category is selected as the primary alternative advertisement content to be displayed and a priority list is created accordingly. On the other hand, as delineated earlier, the basic demographic data in relation with the user or users present in front of the image display device are obtainable either by manual user input or face and/or voice recognition and the primary alternative advertisement content associatable with the determined user profile is hence displayable.
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A user may press a button anytime dedicated to the automatic advertisement selection and launching function on the remote control and the primary alternative advertisement content will be displayed based on the same method of operation.
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In a nutshell, the present invention proposes a method for operating an image display device, said image display device receiving a plurality of broadcasting services, said method for operating the image display device comprising the steps of a) receiving a plurality of alternative commercial streams to be displayed in a selective manner, b) determining basic demographic data in relation with at least one user viewing the image display device, c) defining a certain correlation between the basic demographic data in relation with at least one user and a received commercial stream and, d) displaying a received commercial stream with which the determined basic demographic data in relation with at least one user is associatable. The predefined rules for acknowledging a correlation between the basic demographic data and a received commercial stream can be provided as in the case of a look-up table. For instance while teenagers can be associated with a commercial content category of sportswear and computer games, a male having reached a certain age can be associated with a commercial content category of more expansive cars.
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In an embodiment of the present invention, said step of determining basic demographic data in relation with at least one user viewing the image display device comprises the additional step of obtaining the basic demographic either by manual user input or by face and/or voice recognition techniques.
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In a further embodiment of the present invention, said step of determining basic demographic data in relation with at least one user viewing the image display device comprises the additional steps of receiving contextual category and/or age-specific classification of the actual program being viewed and defining a certain correlation between the contextual category and/or age-specific classification of the program and the basic demographic data. The predefined rules for acknowledging a correlation between the contextual category and/or age-specific classification of the program and the basic demographic data can be provided as in the case of a look-up table. For example, while a football event can be generally associated with males, a cooking program may be generally associated with females.
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In a still further embodiment of the present invention, said step of determining basic demographic data in relation with at least one user viewing the image display device comprises the additional steps of receiving contextual categories of programs being viewed, monitoring program viewing data so as to create a hierarchical list of most frequently watched contextual categories on a time-dependant manner by comparing all the categories’ previous viewing records during an hourly time interval based on past data on a daily and weekly basis and defining a certain correlation between each contextual category in the hierarchical list and the basic demographic data.
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In a yet still further embodiment of the present invention, said step of obtaining the basic demographic either by manual user input or face and/or voice recognition techniques comprises the additional step of determining whether said at least one user is a user with administrative rights.
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In a yet still further embodiment of the present invention, said step of determining whether said at least one user is a user with administrative rights comprises the additional step of determining a priority list with user priorities as defined by the user having administrative rights. An alternative advertisement having the highest priority is determined based on the demographic profile of the users in a user priority list.
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In a yet still further embodiment of the present invention, said received commercial stream with which the determined basic demographic data in relation with at least one user is associatable is directly launchable by said at least one user calling an automatic commercial stream selection and launching function.
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In a yet still further embodiment of the present invention, the automatic commercial stream selection and launching function can be called by means of a remote control button.
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In a yet still further embodiment of the present invention, the method for operating the image display device further comprises the steps of repressing the remote control button upon which the next prioritized commercial stream is displayed.
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In a yet still further embodiment of the present invention, the method for operating the image display device further comprises the step of visually listing titles of all the prioritized commercial streams in case the remote control button is hold pressed.
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In this regard, the invention ensures that a user is offered an enhanced TV viewing experience by which an image display device is operated such that users are automatically offered an alternative advertisement content based on their demographic data or hourly and/or weekly program viewing history.