WO2009074791A1

WO2009074791A1 - Signage system

Info

Publication number: WO2009074791A1
Application number: PCT/GB2008/004070
Authority: WO
Inventors: Andrew Carr; Jason Aldous; Tim Johnson
Original assignee: Adtimize Limited
Priority date: 2007-12-10
Filing date: 2008-12-10
Publication date: 2009-06-18
Also published as: GB0724078D0

Abstract

There is provided a signage system comprising: at least one consumer identifier module arranged to derive at least one identifying key related to a consumer (100); a sign selector module arranged to select a sign based upon the identifying key; a display arranged to display the selected sign (200).

Description

Signage System

Field of the Invention

This application relates to a signage system in general, having for example application in a system for intelligent digital signage. In particular, this application relates to a method of operating a signage system. Further, this invention relates to a display apparatus, and a method of operating a display apparatus.

Definitions

The following abbreviations and terminology are referred to in this document.

Access Point: Hardware that connects wireless subscribers into a Network Operator's network (e.g. via GSM, UMTS, WiFi, WiMax or others).

Advertiser: An entity that wants to have an advert displayed.

Sign: A displayed image comprising a still image, a series of still images or a video. The sign may be an Advert which is displayed in return for payment from an Advertiser.

Consumer: A potential target of an advertisement.

IDS: Intelligent Digital Signage (IDS), or a signage system.

Subscriber: An individual who subscribes to a Network Operator for the provision of a service. The service may be wireless access to the Network Operators

Network.

Background

Poster and billboard advertising is well known. Typically an advertiser will pay to a site owner for an advert to be displayed at a particular location for a period of time. The minimum period of time that an advert can be displayed is determined by how frequently the poster can be replaced by an installer.

Automated billboards allow site owners to display more than one advert, on a cyclic basis. One example of an automated billboard comprises a strip of sheet material having three adverts thereon. The strip of sheet material is attached to two rollers, separated by the length of one of the adverts. The rollers are driven such that each advert is displayed for a predetermined period of time.

Digital signage has been developed to allow videos to be displayed to consumers in public places. Such digital signage can be found on public transport, where the displays are typically LCD screens connected to a video source. Digital signage may also be used in outdoor displays where the display may comprise an LED screen. These digital signs may display a plurality of adverts each comprising a still image, a series of still images or a video. Typically a plurality of adverts are displayed in series, these are cycled through in a predefined order.

Korean Patent application, application¹ number KR 20010008963 describes a billboard advertisement service that selects adverts for display dependent upon mobile phone users in the vicinity of the advertising display board. This is an improvement upon a digital display that has no knowledge of the consumers in the vicinity. The moving population in the area where the billboard is located is determined using a position tracking service of a mobile terminal, hi particular, a base station controller of a mobile communication network tracks a position of a mobile terminal and transmits this to a service server which checks if the mobile terminal is in the same area as the billboard. The service server then determines the majority inclination of the users in the same area as the billboard by reviewing user data corresponding to the identified mobile terminals. An advertisement corresponding to the majority inclination of the users in the same area as the billboard is then selected and transmitted to the billboard for display.

Targeted adverts are becoming increasingly popular, with advertisers seeking greater discrimination as to who their advert is displayed to. For example, targeted advertising used to be limited to displaying a particular advert in a business district of a town, or a particular ielevision commercial during a certain type of program. However, recently there has been significant growth in online advertising, which can be targeted, for example, according to the search terms a user enters on a search engine.

Embodiments of the present application seek to provide a signage system that provides targeted adverts, or signs, to consumers, or users, identified to be within the vicinity of a particular display.

Summary

There is provided herein a signage system for displaying different signs. The sign may comprise an image or a series of images. The series of images may define a video. The sign is displayed on a display of the sign. The sign may be an advert.

The sign displayed is dependent upon the consumers identified to be in the vicinity of the display. The system has consumer identifier modules which obtain identifying keys by observing the area around the display. The identifying keys can be derived from a consumer's appearance, or from a device they carry which transmits wireless signals (mobile phone, WLAN device, Bluetooth device, etc.).

A tracking module records which signs were shown in the presence of which identifying keys. This can also be used to look back to see whether a particular consumer was shown a sign, for example, after a purchase was made.

A consumer summariser attempts to link identifying keys together to correlate to a single consumer. A consumer database, potentially remote from the sign, stores consumer attributes (sex, age, postcode, etc.) associated with identifying keys.

A sign selector module selects the sign for display. One or more sign chooser modules identifies the sign that will generate the most revenue given the consumer attribute information it has, and transmits this identification to the sign selector module.

According to an aspect there is provided a signage system comprising: at least one consumer identifier module arranged to derive at least one identifying key related to a consumer; a sign selector module arranged to select a sign based upon the identifying key; a display arranged to display the selected sign.

The at least one consumer identifier module may comprise: a visual consumer identifier module; and/or a radio network consumer identifier module. The radio consumer identifier may comprise at least one of a 3G consumer identifier module; and/or a Bluetooth consumer identifier module; and/or a WiFi consumer identification module.

The radio consumer identifier module may operate using any radio communication protocol. A networked radio communication protocol may be used and/or a point to point radio communication protocol may be used. Examples of networked communication protocols are WiFi and cellular communication technologies such as a 3rd Generation Mobile System (such as the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) or CDMA 2000, both referred to herein as 3G). Examples of point to point radio communication protocols are Bluetooth™ and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification, as is sometimes used in tags, ID cards and passports).

The identifying key may be unique. The identifying key may be derived using a one-way algorithm. The one-way algorithm advantageously allows for the protection of the identity of the consumer, allowing for compliance with any local data protection or privacy laws.

The signage system may further comprise: a tracking module arranged to record the identifying keys related to consumers determined to be within the vicinity of the display and each sign displayed on the display when the consumer is in the vicinity of the display.

The tracking module may be further arranged to receive a particular identifying key and determine whether a sign has been displayed when the consumer related to the particular identifying key was in the vicinity of the display.

The tracking module may be further arranged to transmit to a server both the identifying keys and the information defining the sign that was displayed when a consumer related to the identifying keys were in the vicinity of the display. The tracking module may identify a level of interest of the consumer in the sign by monitoring any of: pupil dilation; whether the consumer's view is directed at the sign; and how long the consumer's view is directed at the sign.

There may be provided a triangulation module which monitors information from at least two consumer identifier modules and estimates the location of a consumer.

The estimated location may be that the consumer is determined to be within a particular region with respect to the display. The region may be "in front of the display", "behind the display", or "close enough to the display to read a particular size of text".

The tracking module may be further arranged to send a message to or receive a message from other tracking modules associated with other displays.

The messages may indicate that a particular consumer is travelling towards the location of the display. The message may identify the display the particular consumer was last in the vicinity of. The message may further indicate the sign displayed on the display that the particular consumer was last in the vicinity of, when the consumer was in the vicinity of it. Alternatively, the signage system may access a server to identify the sign displayed on the display that the particular consumer was last in the vicinity of, when the consumer was in the vicinity of it.

The location of the consumer (location information) may also be used to allow inter display cooperation. For example, consider a particular sign campaign and a particular consumer is identified as worth targeting with this campaign. A first episode of a series of signs may be displayed to the consumer at a first display. The apparatus associated with the first display may determine that the consumer is moving in a certain direction and that a second display is in that direction. If so, then the apparatus associated with the first display may send a message to the apparatus associated with the second display, the message indicating that the consumer is likely to soon be in the vicinity if the second display. The second display may then display episode 2 of the sign campaign when the consumer is identified as being in the vicinity of the second display. Subsequent episodes may be displayed on subsequent displays in a similar manner. An escalator is a good example where it is almost a certainly that after passing a first display on the escalator, the consumer will pass a second display. Walking along a street such as Oxford Street in London has less certainty but useful information may still be derived. In one embodiment, if a first display displays episode one of a sign campaign to a consumer, then the apparatus associated with the first display will determine the direction of travel of the consumer then pass this information and the unique key for the consumer to the apparatus associated with the display the consumer is next likely to encounter. If the apparatus associated with the next display identifies the unique key of the consumer, as predicted, then that display displays episode 2 of the sign campaign. If the unique key of the consumer is not identified by the apparatus associated with the next display, then it may be assumed that the consumer changed direction. If no other consumers are detected in the vicinity of the next display then episode 2 may be displayed on the next display anyway, based on the assumption that the consumer identifier modules cannot detect the consumer even though he is in the vicinity of the sign.

A consumer summariser may be provided, the consumer summarizer arranged to: receive identifying keys from each consumer identifier module; incrementing a matching score for pairs of identifying keys, where each pair member is received from different consumer identifier modules.

The consumer summariser may be further arranged to: determine that a pair of identifying keys are related to the same consumer when the matching score for the pair of identifying keys meets a threshold criterion.

Ϊ The consumer summariser may be further arranged to interrogate a consumer database, wherein the consumer database stores consumer attributes, the consumer summariser arranged to associate at least one consumer attribute with an identifying key. The consumer summariser may also use the visual consumer identifier module to determine a direction of travel of the consumer.

The consumer database may be external to the signage system. The consumer database stores identifying keys for a plurality of consumers. The identifying key in the consumer database may be created using the same one-way algorithm referenced above. There may be provided a location enhancer which reviews information from the at least one consumer identifier module in conjunction with stored display location information particular to the display.

Display location information is stored at each display so that the information from the consumer identifiers can be better used to identify the location of consumers detected by the consumer identifier modules. This is particular to the surroundings of each display. That is, in the case of tracking consumers and predicting which sign they are likely to encounter next, each display would need some location information specific to that display. The display location information also allows the display to better identify what area is covered by the consumer identifier modules. For example, a radio consumer identifier module located on the wall of a tunnel may determine that any radio signal received has an origin within a 180 degree field of view. In contrast a display mounted on a fence would need to calculate on which side of the fence a consumer must be for them to be able to see the display. The display location information may also define the field of view of the consumer identifier modules, and the field of view of the display. For example a pillar in the vicinity of the display will affect both what consumers may be visually identified by the signage system and what consumers in the area surrounding the sign will be able to see it.

Further still, consider the case where two displays are arranged back to back, sharing a plurality of systems, such as radio consumer identifier modules. In such a situation, an omni directional radio consumer identifier module will have a 360 degree field of view whereas each display will only have a 180 degree field of view. Such information is stored as display location information.

The stored display location information may be updated if the display is moved to a different location. The display location information may be configured upon installation of the display so it can be changed if the display is moved.

There may be provided a sign chooser module arranged to: receive a plurality of identifying keys from the at least one consumer identifier module; receive sign information regarding a plurality of signs; calculate a potential revenue for each of the plurality of signs based upon the received identifying keys; identify a sign for display that has a maximum potential irevenue and transmit the identity and potential revenue of this sign to the sign selector module. The sign information may comprise a revenue figure for display of the sign to consumers having one or more particular consumer attributes.

There may be provided a plurality of sign chooser modules, wherein the sign selector module: receives the identity and potential revenue of a sign from each sign chooser module; and selects a sign for display.

There may be provided at least one external sign chooser, which is external to a sign apparatus, and wherein sign information is transmitted to the external sign chooser in a disguised manner.

The external sign chooser may not be physically external to the sign apparatus, for example, it could be inside a locked box within the sign apparatus. The external sign chooser is external in the sense that the data stored within it is not accessible by the data inside it. The disguised manner may comprise a two-way cipher, and the key for two-way cipher may be stored at the sign selector module.

The sign information may comprise a sign identity and at least one revenue amount which would be generated by display of the sign to consumers having a particular consumer attribute.

The consumer summariser may be arranged to: receive consumer attributes for consumers whose identifying key has been derived by a consumer identifier module; and store the consumer attributes with the respective identifying key in a consumer cache. Consumer attributes may be any of: age; sex; location of residence; products purchased; and services subscribed to.

A consumer predictor may be arranged to calculate a likelihood that a consumer having a particular attribute will be in the vicinity of the signage system at a particular time on a particular day in the future, said calculation based upon: the consumer attributes of consumers observed to be in the vicinity of the signage system at the particular time on a previous day of the same type as the particular day; and the class of consumers observed to be travelling towards the signage system by other signage systems. The same type of day may be determined as a weekday (normal working days), or a non- weekday (weekends and public holidays). Alternatively, the same type of day may be determined as the same day of the week (Thursdays, for example), or the same type of public holiday (Bank Holiday Mondays, or Christmas Days, for example).

The sign selector may receive the indication of the likelihood that a particular class of consumer will be in the vicinity of the signage system at a particular time on a particular day in the future, send the indication to the at least one sign chooser module, and receive from each sign chooser module the identity of a sign. A sign cache may be arranged to retrieve and store the sign identified by each sign chooser module.

The sign cache allows for the pre-caching of signs before they are required. If the download of a sign from a sign source was begun only once a sign was identified when a consumer was identified in the vicinity of the sign, then a high bandwidth connection would be required in order to ensure that the download completed before the consumer left the vicinity of the sign. Accordingly, the pre-caching of signs allows for a low bandwidth connection between the display apparatus and a sign source. Further, the pre-caching of signs allows the signage system to continue to display signs even during a communication disruption.

A sign cache may be arranged to store each sign displayed by the signage system and a probability that the sign will be displayed again.. When more storage space is required than is available in the sign cache; the sign having the lowest probability may be deleted. The sign may be a still image, a series of still images, or a video. Different versions of the sign are stored as a plurality of sign portions with a plurality of selections of sequences of the sign portions.

A probability authorisation module may be arranged to receive an indication of whether a particular sign may be authorized for selection for display, the indication used to weight the selection made by the sign selector module.

When no identifying keys are detected, or when a communication disruption prevents a sign from being selected or a selected sign from being retrieved, a default sign or sequence of signs may be displayed. The identifying of the next sign to be display may be performed without interrupting the display of the current sign. The sign identification may be performed in real time.

Embodiments of the signage system address the problem of multi technology systems dual counting a consumer and thus skewing the record of the consumers determined to be in the vicinity of the display apparatus.

Embodiments of the signage system address the problem of accounting for whether the consumers have their back to the display or are facing it. If a consumer is in the vicinity of the display but facing away from it, then it is unlikely he will see any sign displayed on that display.

Embodiments of the signage system take into account the actual deployment of the advertising display board. That is, knowledge of the area surrounding the board such as walls, ceilings, etc. This may allow the signage system to ascertain whether the consumers are viewing the advertising display board.

Embodiments of the signage system address the problem of providing the advertiser with direct tracking feedback of who saw the advert and how many times they saw it.

Embodiments of the signage system take into account how long the consumers are in front of the advertising display board and therefore may optimise the type of sign displayed to that consumer. This type may be an appropriate length of a video, or a still image having a particular level of text detail.

Embodiments of the signage system take into account that as the demand for multi media video signs and adverts increases, and as higher definition displays become more common, the ability to accurately predict and cache optimised signs will have a large effect on the amount of possible revenue generated by the display.

Embodiments of the signage system allow for the fast moving and quick changing online advertising and bidding. Embodiments of the signage system allow an Advertiser to limit spending on an advertising campaign. Further, embodiments of the signage system address the problem whereby allocating a spending limit evenly amongst a plurality of deployed displays is not an optimal way of achieving maximum revenue from the Advertisers. The described signage system employs a probability authorisation system to optimise the revenue.

Embodiments of the signage system address the problem allow the mobile Telecommunications service provider to share some subscriber information with a third party while maintaining the privacy of the individual subscriber. In this way a signage system is provided that can include details of subscribers from a plurality of networks.

Brief Description of the Drawings

Embodiments will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the attached drawings, in which: Figure 1 shows a signage system;

Figure 2 shows a consumer summariser; Figure 3 shows a reporting module;

Figure 4 shows consumer information flowing between a deployed signage apparatus and a central reporting module; Figure 5 shows architectural variations for a sign chooser;

Figure 6 shows an embodiment of consumer/sign tracking;

Figure 7 shows an embodiment of a display board architecture;

Figure 8 shows an embodiment of probability authorisation;

Figure 9 shows a further embodiment of the signage system; and Figure 10 shows a still further embodiment of the signage system.

Detailed Description of the Drawings

There is provided herein a signage system comprising: at least one consumer identifier podule arranged to derive at least one identifying key related to a consumer; a sign selector module arranged to select a sign based upon the identifying key; a display arranged to display the selected sign.

The signage system disclosed herein will be described in more detail below with reference to a plurality of embodiments, which include an Intelligent Digital Signage system and a Digital Billboard.

Overview of System and Components

The IDS system and constituent components is shown in Figure 1 below. Note that in this diagram a 'component' is simply a sub-division of the system to aid understanding, the use of the term here does not necessarily comply with the definitions in software development methodologies such as Unified Modelling Language (UML).

High Level Design The IDS or Intelligent Digital Signage is a digital billboard with the capability of displaying the optimal advert based on the consumers in the visual vicinity of the advert. The IDS system is capable of using multiple technologies to assess who is in the vicinity of the advert, find out as much about the consumers as possible to evaluate the applicability of the available adverts and assess whether they are likely to be looking at the IDS display. The IDS system records who has viewed the adverts (without individually identifying them) and provides this as feedback to the advertisers so they can evaluate the success of the adverts.

The IDS system consists of the following components

• Consumer Identifier modules 400 (such as Network Consumer Identifier 410 and Visual Consumer Identifier 420) -identifies the consumers in front of the IDS display

• Consumer Summariser 600- enhances the consumer information as much as possible via network sources (such as mobile subscriber information) and identifies duplicate consumers provided by the possible multiple Consumer Identifier modules 400

• Advert Chooser 800 - chooses the advert to show which will generate the maximum revenue for the company hosting the IDS system.

• Tracking Module - this module holds tracking data of which consumers have past in front of the IDS system and which consumers are predicted to pass in front of the system in the future. • Advert Cache 1200 - holds the adverts which are most likely to be required during a given moment in time. The advert cache is also responsible for retrieving the adverts it believes will most likely be required next

• Consumer Cache -1000 holds the summary details for each consumer who has passed by the advert, so the data can be retrieved very rapidly if they appear in front of the advert again.

• Electronic digital display 200 — is the device used to show the multimedia advert. It may contain a moving image or stationary picture and may or may not include sound.

• Advert Voter and Selector 1400 — this component votes on which adverts to display based on the all the information provided by the Advert Chooser or multiple Advert

Choosers. i

• Consumer/ Advert Tracking Module 1100 - this component keeps tracking history for which adverts have been played and which consumers have seen these adverts.

• Consumer Predictor Module 1700 - this component predicts which consumers will be in front of an advert given any period of time in the future based on historical information and any information provided by other local IDS boards.

• Synchronization Module 1600 — this component provides a synchronization with local deployed EDS boards so that content can be synchronized while playing - so adverts spanning multiple boards can be played in any given area. • Tracking Reference Module 1500 - this component provides a mechanism for the IDS board to display tracking information for any given advert - such as a specific phone number to track responses.

Benefits of the design over previous designs

• Detailed feedback on how the adverts are viewed (by recording the amount of time people spend in front of the adverts, whether they appear interested), and also using more advanced customer tracking systems.

• The IDS system takes into account whether the same consumers are in front of the display and can therefore play follow on adverts.

• Ability for Advertisers to limit the amount they spend on a campaign without hindering the service provider of the IDS system to maximise the amount of revenue they retrieve from the Advertisers • The ability to more accurately target the consumers in front of the advert by taking into account the area/environment surrounding the advert and also whether the consumers are looking directly at the advert.

• The ability to more accurately ensure the system has the correct adverts, even in environments where the network connectivity is of lower bandwidth (unlike the previous designs which assumes a very high network bandwidth available at all times)

• The ability for Telecommunications providers to allow subscriber information be used to choose the advert being played without any subscriber information being provided to a third party. This is a very important benefit as most Telecommunications providers would not wish to provide any subscriber information to any third parties

(as it is very valuable to them) - aside from any data protection laws and issues around privacy.

Consumer Identifier Modules 400 Functionality Provided

This component identifies the consumers in front of the EDS display. It generates a unique consumer key for each consumer. This key can be used to identify that consumer in the Consumer Cache 1000.

The EDS system is not dependent upon particular Consumer Identifier Modules 400 i.e. the EDS design works with whatever Consumer Identifier Modules 400 are in the system.

Three examples of Consumer Identifier Modules 400s are

• Visual Consumer Identifier Module 420 • Network Consumer Identifier Module 410

• Radio Consumer Identifier Module 430

The interface between the Consumer Identifier Modules 400 and the Consumer Summariser 600 module is not dependent on the technology of the Consumer Identifier Modules.

Interfaces of Consumer Identifier Modules 400

The Consumer Identifier Modules 400 all provide a standard interface which on request provides • The number of consumers/devices in the vicinity of the display

• a unique key for each consumer or a unique key for each device

• The time the consumer/device has been in the vicinity

• the direction the consumer/device is travelling in

• the speed the consumer/device is travelling

• whether they are looking at the advert

• whether they are interested in the advert

Visual Identifier Module 420

Functionality Provided

The Visual Identifier Module 420 identifies which consumers are visually seen in front of the IDS display. The VIM 420 uses a Digital camera or set of Digital cameras based on or around the IDS display board to see who is in front of the board.

Description of Operation

The Digital cameras take pictures of who is in front of the advert and processes the images to work out as much about the consumers as possible.

The image is processed to identify

• How many people/consumers are in front of the display

• Estimated age/sex of each individual consumers

To work with the Consumer Cache 1000 each image of each consumer in front of the display is used to generate a unique key.

The key generated uses the following rules

• regardless of the angle of individual in front of the advert, if they are facing the advert, and there is an un obstructed view of the face then the same key is generated for the same consumer. Thus if a consumer is face on to the IDS system, or have their left or right side of the face in front of the IDS system then the same key is generated.

• the key is the same if generated on multiple days so that the same consumer can be re- identified • the key is unique per person, no two consumers must generate the same key

• the key is a one way generated algorithm such that the key alone cannot be used to generate an image or picture of the consumer to protect the identity of the consumer

The key will therefore be generated by distances between features on the face of the individual - such as distances between the eyes, distance of the ears from the eyes, distance of the nose from the mouth and eyes, etc.

Using image processing of the size of individual, any shadows around and the location of the consumers shoes, the VIM 420 works out the distance between the IDS system and the consumer.

The VIM 420 identifies whether the individual is looking directly at the EDS system, by assessing the distance between the eyes of the consumer, the visibility of both ears and the amount of face that is visible. The maximum distance between the eyes is retrieved from the Consumer Cache 1000 module and will be used to work out whether the consumer is looking directly at the IDS system.

The VIM 420 works out the direction the consumer is moving in or identify if a consumer is stationary. It does this by requesting the last known location from the Tracking Module 1100.

The VIM 420 works out how interested the consumers are in the display board, by working out how big the consumers pupils are, whether the pupils have changed size (showing more interest) or have waned (showing less interest), whether they have started to turn away or are turning towards.

Data

This component generates the following data

• A consumer key based upon the consumers facial features • The location of the consumer relative to the IDS system

• The likeliness of the consumers sex (if the consumer isn't already held in the Consumer Cache 1000) • The likely age range of the consumer (if the consumer isn't already held in the Consumer Cache 1000)

• The speed of movement of the consumer and the direction of movement of the consumer (towards the display, away from the display, past the display, etc, etc). • The likeliness the consumer is looking at the display board

• Whether the consumer is using a mobile phone

• The above data is measured over time and compared in order to track trends.

Benefits of the design over previous designs The IDS system can use the Visual Identifier Module to enhance its knowledge of the consumers in front of the display and records whether it believes individual consumers are looking directly at the advert and therefore provide more detailed feedback to the advertiser. This is especially useful for advertisers who find that consumers watch the start of the advert but then turn away or lose interest before the advert has played through.

Alternate designs

Data reflecting levels of interest could be stored in with the Consumer Summariser 600 or the Consumer Cache 1000.

Network Identifier Module 410 Functionality Provided

The Network Identifier Module 410 identifies which consumers are located near or in the vicinity of the display board-

Description of Operation A Network Identifier Module 410 exists for each network technology. Each Network Identifier Module 410 specialises in a particular network technology.

Multiple or directional antennas are used for the Network Identifier Module 410 to locate and identifier all the devices of a particular technology within the area around the display board.

Once each device is located, it's unique key, whether that be a phone number for GSM/3 G technology or MAC address for wi-fi type technology is used to generate a unique consumer

^device key. This key is used to identify the user in the Consumer Cache 1000. The Network Identifier Module 410 triangulates the location of the device relative to the display board using multiple directional antennas. The Network Identifier Module 410 retrieves the previous known location of the device from the Tracking Module 1100 and uses it to work out the direction the device is travelling in and the speed the device is travelling in.

Data

This component generates the following data

• unique device key

• The location of the device relative to the display board • the direction the device is moving in

• the speed the device is moving in

Radio Identifier Module 430

The Radio Identifier Module 430 identifies which consumer devices are in the vicinity of the IDS system which use any of the non network subscriber radio devices such as Bluetooth, RFIDs, etc, etc.

Description of Operation

The Radio Identifier Module 430 communicates with the non network radio devices and retrieves their unique identifier dependent upon the network technology. Non network devices are defined as radio devices which do not require connectivity to a specific network to enable them to provide their services, they can provide their services using peer to peer or single device connectivity to work.

The Radio Identifier Module 430 triangulates the position of the radio device and provides this information to the Consumer Summariser 600.

Consumer Summariser - 600

Functionality Provided The Consumer Summariser collates the information provided by the instances of the Consumer Identifiers 400 (such as the, Network Consumer Identifier 410 and the Visual Consumer Identifier 420). In the case where there are multiple Consumer Identifiers the Consumer Summariser has the role of working out which consumers have been provided by more than one Consumer Identifier, this is to prevent double or triple counting of the consumers in front of the EDS system.

The Consumer Summariser 600 is responsible for storing all the information it finds in the Consumer Cache 1000.

Description of Operation

The following is an example of how the Consumer Summariser 600 could work 1. The Consumer Summariser 600 asks every instance of the Consumer Identifiers in the current IDS system for its view of what consumers are in the vicinity of the advert.

2. Each Consumer Identifier provides a unique key for every consumer it believes to be in the vicinity amongst other details. In the example of an IDS system that contains a Visual Consumer Identifier 420 and two Network Consumer Identifiers, one which uses UMTS and one which uses Wi-Fi, if three people are standing in front of the IDS system, each holds a 3 G mobile phone, one of the phones which also has a switched on Wi-Fi module, then the Visual Consumer Identifier 420 will indicate there are three people in the vicinity, the 3 G Network Consumer Identifier 410 will indicate there is 3 phones in the vicinity and the Wi-Fi Network Consumer Identifier 410 will indicate there is 1 Wi-Fi device in the vicinity. The Consumer Summariser 600 works out that there are 3 people in the vicinity of the advert and not 7 (i.e. it doesn't just add up the numbers given by the Consumer Identifiers).

3. The Consumer Summariser 600 checks the Consumer Cache for other linked unique key and uses this to remove duplicate consumers from its list. In the example above, it may have seen one of the consumers before in the Visual Consumer Identifier 420, it may have also seen one of the mobile phones before via the 3G Network Consumer Identifier at the same time. Thus it has already linked the unique key of one of the phones with the unique key of one of the consumers in the Consumer Cache 1000.

4. If the Consumer Summariser finds no information for any of the keys in the Consumer Cache 1000 database then it has to ask the Network Operators Subscriber database 700 for the subscriber information based upon the keys. We shall consider how the subscriber information is hidden from the deployed IDS board's service provider later on (as it depends whether the subscriber information is hidden such as mobile phone subscriber information or available such as possibly Wi-Fi subscriber information). When the information is provided back from the Network Operators Subscriber database 700 it is then stored in the Consumer Cache 1000.

5. The Consumer Summariser then searches the Consumer Cache 1000 database and the Consumer/ Advert Tracking Module 1100 given its remaining unique keys to find out whether these keys have been seen before and if so what adverts have been viewed. It also retrieves the vicinity pattern of the remaining unique keys and looks to see whether any of the unique keys have the same vicinity patterns. If two unique keys do have the same vicinity patterns then it will add points to the statistical matching score between the two keys. If the statistical matching score gets high enough then the two keys are matched as the same consumer, (more on how this works later). The Consumer Summariser 600 then attempts fuzzy matching on its remaining unique keys to see if it can match up any remaining keys. Fuzzy matching is performed on any data where there are any remaining unique keys which also contain subscriber information. This will typically happen if there are multiple Network Consumer

Identifiers 410 in the IDS system, as each NCI 410 provides subscriber information for each unique key. For the example where there is a device which has multiple network technologies such as a 3G phone which also has a Wi-Fi. The 3G NCI 410 provides a unique key for the 3G part, along with the subscriber information held by the Network Operators Subscriber Database 700 for the device, plus the Wi-Fi NCI

410 will provide similar information. The Consumer Chooser then fuzzy matches the subscriber information such as Name, Address, Postcode, mobile number, email address, etc, etc, until it either decided that statistically speaking it is a likely match or statistically speaking it is not a likely match. 6. The Consumer Summariser 600 then puts its collated data in the Consumer Cache

1000.

7. The Consumer Summariser 600 then uses a Location Enhancer which enhances the summarised consumer information with location specific information, which helps determine whether consumers are looking at or viewing the advert based on the location of the consumer, and information about the location of the IDS system. The Consumer Summariser 600 provides its best view of the consumers in the vicinity of the IDS system to Advert Chooser 800.

Same Vicinity Pattern - Statistical matching consumer devices together

This is fully described in the section on the Consumer/ Advert Tracking module.

What benefits do this design bring?

The Consumer Summariser 600 provides the EDS system with the ability to most accurately define the consumers in front of the IDS system at any given time using as much information as possible, hi an IDS system with a Visual Consumer Identifier and multiple Network Consumer Identifiers it does this to a very accurate degree, and thus has advantages over less accurate systems.

Alternate designs

1. It is possible to avoid summarising consumer information and just pass back raw information but this would increase the complexity of the Advert Chooser.

2. Fuzzy matcher of the consumer summariser is an optional extra

3. The location Enhancer could be dropped but this would weaken the solution

4. It is possible to implement the system with the Consumer Summariser located centrally provided there is enough network bandwidth. A default advert would need to be played if network delay prevented information reaching the IDS.

Advert Chooser - 800

Functionality Provided

This component selects the next advert it recommends displaying based upon the information it is provided. As discussed there may be multiple Advert Choosers per deployed IDS board. This is to cater for the situation whereby consumer/subscriber information cannot be shared between Advert Choosers.

Description of Operation The Advert Chooser 800 can operate in 2 modes, either as an External Advert Chooser 800 or an Internal Advert Chooser 800. The main difference between the two modes is how it

'^"■shares information with the Advert Selector 1400. Ultimately the Advert Selector decides on the actual advert that will be displayed based upon information provided by the Advert Chooser or Advert Choosers.

Internal and External Advert Chooser 800 The internal Advert Chooser 800 can share all its information with the Advert Selector. Whereas the External Advert Chooser 800 will not share any subscriber/consumer information with the Advert Selector 1400. The Advert Selector 1400 will not share any actual advert data with the External Advert Chooser 800.

The Advert Selector 1400 will provide 'morphed' data to the External Advert Chooser 800. Instead of giving the External Advert Chooser actual advert information such as the cost of the advert, or revenue generated on a per consumer profile basis (i.e. £8 for males between the ages of 20 and 25 who live in a certain post code), the Advert Selector 1400 will 'morph' all the data such that the External Advert Chooser 800 won't understand it.

Let's take an actual simplified example, if the Advert Selector 1400 wishes to provide the following information to the External Advert Chooser 800

• BMW would be happy to pay £8 per males between the ages of 30 to 35 from the TW9 area • Cocoa Cola would be happy to pay £1 per male/female between the ages of 15 to 25 from any area

The Advert Selector 1400, may choose a multiplier of say 4 (to modify the cost to a meaningless number) and provide the following information to the External Advert Chooser 800.

• Advertiser A, happy to pay 32 units for males between the ages of 30 to 35 from the TW9 area

• Advertiser B, happy to pay 4 per male/female between the ages of 15 to 25 from any area

Every time the Advert Selector 1400 uses the External Advert Chooser 800 it will change the multiplier so that the External Advert Chooser cannot attempt to reverse engineer the multiplier at the end of a day. Also as can be seen from the example the actual Advertiser details have been hidden from the External Advert Chooser 800.

The Advert Selector 1400 does this by having a 'morphing' look up table. Every time it creates a request for an External Advert Selector it will populate the 'morphing table such as below'

When the External Advert Chooser 800 replies back to the Advert Selector 1400 it only provides the Advert it would choose i.e. Advert A, and the multiple multiplied by the number of people that match the required customer profile, e.g. if there were 20 males between the ages of 30 to 35 (from TW9) and there were 30 males/females between the ages of 15 to 25 then the Advert Chooser would do the two calculations of 32 (32 units per male for advert A) x 20 (number of males in target audience for advert A) = 640 and 4 (4 units per person for advert B) x 30 = 120. The External Advert Chooser would provide Advert A, and the number 640 back to the Advert Selector without understanding that it actually meant it was choosing the BWM advert and BWM were prepared to pay £20 to display Advert A.

Operation of Advert Chooser 800 The internal Operation of the Advert Chooser 800 differs slightly depending whether it is an External or Internal Advert Chooser 800.

The architecture of an Internal Advert Chooser 800 can be seen in Figure 5 - Architectural variations for the Advert Chooser. As can be seen in the diagram an IDS board can contain combinations of External and Internal Advert Choosers. In fact there are three main variations within the EDS board, completely hidden as shown in the External Advert Chooser component box, partially hidden as shown in the External Consumer Summariser component box and where all the components are internal.

If an IDS board includes a module for retrieving 3G subscriber data for, lets say the Orange 3 G network, and Orange have decided that they are completely unwilling to share any subscriber data with the IDS board service provider (i.e. the company which runs and maintains the deployed IDS board). Then the deployed IDS board will contain one box such as the one labelled External Advert Chooser component. Lets say this deployed IDS board also contains a Wi-Fi module, where the subscriber data is completely accessible, it will also have the internal Advert Chooser, and the other components around it. In this architecture the Advert Selector will communicate with both the Internal Advert Chooser and the External Advert Chooser (as describes in the examples below).

Description of Operation in the architecture with only an Internal Advert Chooser

In the case where there is only one Advert Chooser and it is an internal Advert Chooser the common way it operates will be as follows

1. The Advert Selector will ask the Advert Chooser to indicate what adverts it would play at a given point in time (either now or in x minutes time). The Advert Selector will provide a current list of adverts and algorithms to use in working out which adverts to play. 2. If the given point in time is in the future then the Advert Chooser will ask the

Consumer Predictor for its best guess about what Consumers will be in the vicinity at that point in time in the future

3. The Consumer Predictor provides it's best guess back to the Advert Chooser, it's best guess includes the profiles of the consumer it believes will be in front of the board, plus any actual keys of individuals it believes will be in front of the board at the given moment in time (such as people who get the same train home everyday).

4. Based upon the predictions the Advert Chooser will calculate how much money it would make on each advert. 5. The Advert Chooser then provides a list back to the Advert Selector containing a sorted (in order of how much money it would make) list of adverts.

Description of Operation in the architecture with only an External Advert Chooser In the case where there is only one Advert Chooser and it is an external Advert Chooser the common way it operates will be as follows

1. The Advert Selector 'morphs' the advert data (including Advert Names and how much money would be paid by each advertiser - as described in Internal and External Advert Chooser 800 section above)

2. Then it will carry out the same steps it does for the Internal Advert Chooser (described in the section above)

3. The Advert Selector will 'morph' the data it gets back from the Advert Chooser back into a form it understands.

Description of Operation where there are multiple Advert Choosers (including both Internal and External ones) hi the case where there are multiple Advert Choosers — i.e. one Internal Advert Chooser and multiple External Advert Choosers or just multiple External Advert Choosers.

4. The Advert Selector will ask the Internal Advert Chooser for it's list of which adverts it would play in which order (at a given point in the future).

5. The Advert Selector then morphs the advert data and the choices the Internal Advert Chooser provided and gives all that data to the External Advert Choosers and asks them (as described above) to provide their list of which adverts they would play and in which order.

The Advert Chooser takes into account multiple variables when working out which advert to select. To be able to identify the optimal advert to be displayed to maximise revenue generated from the advertisers, the Advert Chooser runs the calculations for the algorithm for each advert in the Advert Cache. It does this by using multiple processors where possible as there will be possibly thousands of adverts to choose from. The Advert Chooser takes into account the summarised distinct consumers in front of the IDS system, it also takes into account any extra information such as which consumers appear to be looking at the display board, how long they have been there, what other adverts they have seen, what speed they are travelling, etc, etc. hi a situation whereby consumers are moving past the display board very rapidly such as a motorway IDS deployment, the frame rate of the adverts are slowed down as much as possible or stationary adverts will be chosen. Then during a traffic jam adverts with faster display rates can be chosen.

Data This Component holds the following data:

• Summary of consumers currently near to the advert (if Consumer Summarizer component is deployed)

• Historical consumer summary information (if Consumer Summarizer component is deployed)

• The current algorithm for advert choice (received from the Advert Manager component whenever the algorithm is changed - as a tuning exercise)

• The current values to be used with the algorithm (received from the Advert Manager component whenever a new bid is accepted and the weightings change) • AU video files for all adverts that could be played next. Once a particular advertising campaign has ended then the associated video file(s) will be deleted from the local store

Interfaces Advert Chooser — Consumer Summariser Interface

The Consumer Summariser pushes the following data to the Advert Chooser:

• Number of consumer of each demographic grouping

This will be pushed by the Consumer Summariser at regular intervals, for example every thirty seconds (the interval will depend on how quickly the Consumer Summariser can determine the demographic grouping of the consumers, calls to remote Network Operator databases could take a while). The Advert Chooser will maintain historical records of this

Vlata and will make assessments of statistical distributions. Advanced features

The ability to choose the length of optimal advert

The ability to choose follow on adverts if the same people are watching as were previously watching (train station situation).

The ability to vote on consumer data such as age, sex, postcode, level of interest in the advert (pupil size, whether someone is looking at the advert), the location of advert (in Boots™).

Benefits of the design over previous designs

The Advert chooser 800 can update its own algorithm for choosing adverts, by receiving a new algorithm directly from the Advert Manager 1300. This enables the provider of the IDS system to utilize the very latest and optimal algorithm in terms of revenue generation.

Alternate designs

1. It is possible to make historical consumer summary information optional. It would then be necessary to make advert decisions only on the here and now

2. It is possible to hard code the algorithm for advert choice in the software so that a full software upgrade is required to modify the algorithm instead of just upgrading the algorithm independently of the main software.

3. It is possible to implement the system with the Advert Chooser located centrally instead of at billboard and if the IDS system has not been told by the central advert chooser what to play there would need to be a default advert to play.

Consumer Predictor 1700

Functionality Provided

The Consumer Predictor provides a single service - a prediction of the profile of consumers whom will be in the vicinity of the deployed IDS board at any given point in time.

Description of Operation When asked to provide its best guess of whom will be in the vicinity of the deployed IDS board at a given point in the future the Consumer Predictor 1700 will do the following

1. It will ask the Consumer/ Advert Tracking Module for who was in the vicinity for previous days such as this one (if it is a Wednesday, it may ask for who was in the vicinity of the board for the ten previous Wednesdays, if it is a Bank Holiday Monday it may ask for who was in the vicinity of the board during the ten previous Bank Holiday Mondays).

2. It will also evaluate any information it has been provided by the Central Consumer Predictor such as consumers who have been spotted recently by local IDS boards on their way towards this IDS board. The evaluation will include how far away the local

IDS boards are and when the consumers were predicted to pass by this IDS board.

3. The Consumer/ Advert Tracking Module will record the requests it has been asked for, so that at a later date a piece of batch processing can run to do a statistical analysis to provide more accurate prediction figures (i.e. spot statistical trends, etc).

As well as providing a prediction of which consumers will be in front of the board at a given point in the future the Consumer Predictor will provide a percentage figure which indicates how accurate the Consumer Predictor believes its prediction will be. For cases whereby the same consumers (or profile of consumers) pass by the board at the same time every day (for example at train stations that have commuters on them) the board may give a high percentage. If the deployed IDS board is outside a stadium which holds music events, the consumer profiles may not be the same very often.

Advert Voter and Selector 1400 The Advert Voter and Selector 1400 is the component in the system that co-ordinates and makes the final decision on which adverts to play. The Advert Chooser 800s are the components in the system that recommend to the Advert Voter and Selector 1400 which adverts to play.

By dividing up the responsibility between these two components several benefits arise • There can be multiple Advert Choosers within one deployed IDS system • The Advert Choosers 800 can located in a physically separate component to the Advert Voter and Selector 1400. These components can then be connected by a cable and the data shared between them can be minimized (as demonstrated in the section which details how the data 'morphing' works in the Advert Chooser 800). This enables the Advert Chooser 800 to recommend which adverts to play without sharing any consumer data with the Advert Voter and Selector 1400.

An example of a deployed EDS system which takes advantage of the responsibility split can be see inFigure 7 - A possible deployed IDS board architecture. This deployed EDS system contains three External Advert Chooser components (and their associated components). These three components could all be harded external boxes which attach to a board with a cable that connects each box to the Advert Voter and Selector 1400. One box is owned and connected to the r-mobile telecommunications network, another box is owned and connected to the Pear Communications network and the other box is owned and connected to the Bodavone communications network.

Each of the boxes via their External Advert Chooser 800 module can vote on which adverts they would play and the Advert Voter and Selector 1400 can collate that information and work out given all the mobile subscribers in the vicinity which advert is best to play. Also none of the External Advert Chooser 800 modules need to understand what subscribers exist in any of their competitors' networks, and the mobile telecommunications providers know that none of their subscriber information is provided to a third party.

Operation of Advert Voter and Selector 1400 - Example of how the Voting works

In the example where there is a deployed IDS board containing three External Advert Chooser components, one from r-mobile, one from Pear Communications and one from Bodafone Communications, the Advert Voter and Selector would work as follows

1. The Advert Voter and Selector 1400 would ask each External Advert Chooser 800 for its choice of adverts for say 30 minutes time, 20 minutes time, 10 minutes time, etc, etc. The reason for this and how it works will be discussed in detail in a later example. 2. Each External Advert Chooser 800 provides back a list of adverts ordered by how much money they would generate (although the actual figure is 'morphed' by the Advert Voter and Selector 1400 so that the Advert Choosers don't understand what they are looking at - see the example given in the section on Advert Chooser 800 for a more detailed example). For the sake of the example lets reduce the number of adverts that could be choosen to 2, one Advert for BWM (Advert A), and one Advert for Cocoa-Cola (Advert B). Advertiser A (BWM) wish to pay £8 per male between the ages of 25 to 35, whereas Advertiser B (Advert B) wish to pay £1 per male/female between the ages of 15 to 20.

In the vicinity of the deployed IDS board, there are the following individuals :-

• r-mobile subscribers/consumers - 5 between the ages of 15 to 20, 2 males between the ages of 25 to 35 (ignoring all the other age groups for now)

• pear communications subscribers/consumers - 12 between the ages of 15 to 20, 0 males between the ages of 25 to 35

• bodafone communications subscribers/consumers - 2 between the ages of 15 to 20, 12 males between the ages of 25 to 35

If say for this example that the Advert Voter and Selector 1400 has chosen a multiple of 2 for its 'morphing mulitiplier' then the results the External Advert Choosers will be as follows

Table 1 - Results from r-mobile Communications External Advert Chooser

Table 2 - Results from Pear Communications External Advert Chooser

generated

Cocoa-cola Advert B 12 x £l = £12 12 x 2 =24 1

BWM Advert A O x £8 = 0 O x 16 = 0 2

Table 3 - Results from Bodafone Communications External Advert Chooser

It is worth noting in the tables above that the Advert Name and Amount Generated are not known by the External Advert Choosers (as discussed in the section on Advert Choosers), the only fields seen by the External Advert Choosers are the Morphed Advert Name and Morphed Amount on a per targeted individual bases (i.e. 12 for Advert A and 2 for Advert B). The Morphed Amount Generated is calculated by the Morphed Amount on a per targedted individual basis multiplied by the number of individuals in that category (as can be seen in the tables above).

3. The results are combined by the Advert Voter and Selector to decide which advert to play. As can be seen from the tables above - if only the results from Pear Communications were taken into account then the Cocoa-cola advert would be played, but when all the tables are taken into account (i.e. when the amounts generated are all added together), the BWM advert would be selected by the Advert Voter and Selector, and £112 would be charged for playing the advert (£16 + £0 + £96).

This example shows the benefit of the Advert Voter and Selector being a separate component from the External Advert Choosers. It also demonstrates how the telecommunications service providers can each contribute their own External Advert Chooser which enables the Advert Voter and Selector to decide which advert to actually play using as much consumer information as possible (i.e. from multiple networks) without any of the network service providers giving away any subscriber information.

Operation of Advert Voter and Selector 1400 - Example of how it helps the Advert Cache to bring in the right adverts

Previously it was briefly mentioned that the Advert Voter and Selector 1400 periodically asks the Advert Choosers to provide a list of adverts with a guess and which ones they would recommend playing in the future, say 30 minutes from now, 1 hour from now, etc, etc. This is done so that the Advert Voter and Selector 1400 can tell the Advert Cache 1200 which adverts to download from the central IDS system. It also tells the Advert Cache 1200 which adverts are likely to be played in the coming seconds, minutes, hours etc, so that the Advert Cache can prioritize which adverts it downloads from the central IDS system.

The Advert Voter and Selector 1400 uses these predictive results to build a table of adverts it believes it will play, an example table can be seen in Table 4 - Example predictive Adverts to Play table.

Table 4 - Example predictive Adverts to Play table

In fact the table will be two dimensional, for each period of time, there will be a list of adverts that could be played, ordered by the amount generated by playing the advert. The example of T+10 seconds can be seen in Table 5 - Example predictive Adverts to Play in priority order for T+10 time period. This table is important as when the 10 seconds elapse the Advert Voter and Selector may find the advert hasn't downloaded into the Advert Cache yet. Therefore it can know what advert to play instead (which is obviously Advert I in this case). The Advert Voter and Selector will choose the highest advert in the table that is actually in the Advert Cache.

Table 5 - Example predictive Adverts to Play in priority order for T+10 time period

Operation of Advert Voter and Selector 1400 - Example of how it optimizes revenue by using probability authorisation

As discussed the Advert Voter and Selector continuously asks the Advert Choosers for their view on which adverts they will recommend to play in certain periods of time in the future.

The results of these predictions is provided to the Advert Cache so the Advert Cache can prioritize its downloading of adverts from the central Advert Manager in the central IDS system.

But there is potentially a very large issue - if the Advertiser wishes to limit spending on an advert/campaign then they may blow the limit by a long way if many deployed IDS boards all decide to play the same advert at the same time. It would be likely that the company providing the EDS service would not be able to charge the advertiser more than the agreed campaign/advert limit. This issue has a greater chance of occurring the more deployed IDS boards there are, and the lower the limit of the advert/campaign.

\

The solution to the issue is a system called probability authorisation. Probability authorisation is a solution whereby the deployed IDS boards as the central IDS system to authorisation an amount to charge the advertiser. The central IDS system can decide to only provide authorisation to certain IDS boards if it needs to limit authorisation for a particular advert during a point in time, or it can decide to provide a probability for each IDS board, of the chance it will be able to charge the advertiser.

Probability authorisation can be applied by having a central cache of requests, authorisations and probability provided at the central IDS system and having the deployed EDS boards constantly requesting and recording the results.

The probability authorisation works in the following way :-

• each deployed IDS board provides a list of adverts it intends to play in the coming periods of time (the periods of time the deployed IDS boards have predicted what consumers will be around).

• included with each advert is a probability that the advert will be chosen. This probability will be based upon how accurate the deployed IDS board believes the prediction of the advert played will be, how far away in time the prediction is for, and the order/priority of the advert to be played at the period, i.e. if it is T+l hour and the advert is 5th on the list then the probability is likely to be very low, however if it is T+10 seconds and the advert is 1st on the list (for that period of time) then the probability is likely to be very high

• the IDS central system contains a probability authorisation cache that lists each probability request that comes in, and uses this cache to work out what probability of authorisation to provide back out to the deployed IDS boards.

An example of how this works is in Error! Reference source not found.. In this example there are three deployed IDS systems A, B and C.

1. For time period T+l minute all three deployed IDS systems A, B and C request authorisation for the list of adverts they wish to play. IDS system A predicts it will play either F, G or H (the estimated amounts it thinks it can charge for each advert is

£300, £200 and £190 respectively). Also IDS system A knows that it has advert F in its cache, so it only requests authorisation for advert F, and it believes it will choose F

(with a probability of its predictions being correct of 40%). 2. Deployed EDS system B also wishes to play advert F at time period T+l minute.

3. IDS Central looks up the details on advert F and finds that it's paying limit is £500. Because IDS system A predicts it will need £300 and IDS system B predicts it will need £400 IDS Central realises it cannot authorise both IDS systems to play the advert so it provides authorisation probabilities back to both IDS systems.

4. Due to the fact that IDS system B believes with a higher probability that it will choose advert F, and also it will require a higher amount (more people seeing it), the IDS central decides to tell IDS system B that it has an 80% chance or authorising that amount in a minute's time. It also tells EDS system A that it has an 20% chance of authorising that amount in a minute' s time.

5. IDS system A and IDS system B will ask the Central IDS system for an update closer to when the minute has lapsed (in fact they may do so quite regularly - depending on network connection speeds, etc) and they will expect a higher probability of authorisation. If either get a lower probability they will realise an alternate IDS system is more likely to win the authorisation and therefore will probably choose the next advert in their list.

Summary of Advert Voter and Selector

As the period of time gets closer to possibly showing the advert, the accuracy of the predictions goes up, and the Central IDS system will start increasing the probability of authorisation for certain requests (for certain deployed EDS systems) and it may correspondingly decrease the probability of authorisation for other EDS systems.

Upon start of a cycle the Advert Voter and Selector reads the following data:

• Summary of consumers currently near to the advert (if Consumer Chooser component is deployed)

• The current values to be used with the algorithm (received from the Advert Manager component whenever a new bid is accepted and the weightings change).

When the current advert ends the Advert Voter and Selector then accesses the video file for ^he next advert and presents this to the Advertisement Billboard via a video output. (Note that the functionality associated with playback and the physical video output could be moved into a separate Component).

Advert Cache - 1200 Functionality Provided

This component use statistical processing to identify which adverts to hold at any given time to best provide requests from the Advert Voter and Selector 1400.

Description of Operation The Advert Cache 1200 holds a complete list of possible adverts and the bidding formula for showing each advert. The Advert Cache 1200 contains a historical record of all the requests to play adverts from the Advert Voter and Selector 1400. It also contains a list of future requests from the Advert Voter and Selector 1400 (list of adverts, when they are likely to be played, and what is the probability they will be played) and uses this to prioritize which adverts to download at any given point in time.

The Advert Cache 1200 then uses this list of adverts and probabilities to check that it has the best fit set of adverts in its cache, and requests any high probability adverts from the Central Advert Manager 1300. It throws away any low probability adverts if it starts to run low on storage memory.

The Advert Cache 1200 also periodically checks for demographic gaps in its cache. This is so it can request an advert for a particular gap just in case an unpredicted demographic goes past the advert at a given point in time and the Advert Chooser requests an advert that is not available in the cache.

Data

This module holds the following data

• Adverts • Length of advert

• Speed of advert (frame rate)

• Applicability of advert (whether it can be shown at certain times) The Advert Cache 1200 holds the adverts in an intelligent way, instead of holding multiple length versions of the same advert the Advert Cache 1200 is able to hold a single full length copy of an advert and also a list of frames for smaller versions of the advert that refer to the frame numbers contained within the full length advert. This enables the Advert Cache 1200 to hold a much greater number of adverts than would otherwise be possible.

Interface

The advert cache provides an interface detailing the adverts available immediately, the adverts available via network retrieval and a request for a specific advert to use.

The Advert Cache/Advert Manager interface retrieves the following from the Advert Manager

• Algorithm to be used to make advert choice. This happens infrequently and is only changed to 'tune' the effectiveness of the algorithm

• Values to be used with the algorithm. E.g. if two advertisers have both paid to display to a particular demographic but one has paid more, then the algorithm is weighted accordingly. This is pushed whenever a new bid is made.

• Video files. These are pushed whenever a new advertisement is placed.

Benefits of the design over previous designs

Most advertising display boards are located in areas where people do not spend a long period of time, commonly motorway service stations, railways, shopping centres, bus stops, etc. Due to this, even if you work out the optimal advert to show out of all the possible adverts, it is unlikely that it will be possible to download a copy of that advert live via a network connection. Therefore some advanced cache is required to ensure the required advert is immediately on tap to be able to display.

If the lengths of time people spend in front of the advert vary, then it would be optimal to be able to display different versions of the same advert depending on how long people are spending in front of the advert at any given time. Thus for any given advert there may be several versions that exist for it, e.g. a 5 second version, a 10 second version, a 30 second version, etc, etc. This increases the storage requirements of the advert cache itself. While it would be the perfect solution to be able to store every advert and every variation of every advert, it would quickly become a storage issue, and therefore being able to accurately predict the correct advert, and to retrieve it from storage long enough in advance is a key feature of the IDS System.

Alternate designs

1. This module could be removed and stream adverts in real time from central location but this would be very network intensive and costly

2. The predictive functionality could be done centrally instead of at the Advert Cache

Consumer/ Advert Tracking Module - 1100

Functionality Provided

Tracking the Consumers and which adverts they saw, and which ones converted into sales is handled in three separate ways. • The adverts that were played and which consumers saw those adverts

• Obtaining unique contact details and associate it with an advert so the advertiser can link the sale back to the advert and

• Providing a service to the advertiser such they can provide a consumer's details, and the IDS service provider can provide details of which adverts of theirs the consumer saw.

The first and last service described above are handled in part by the Consumer/ Advert Tracking Module 1100, the middle service is provided by the Tracking Reference Module.

This component has two historical databases, one which contains which adverts were played (and any relevant tracking information about them), and which consumers (or devices) viewed the adverts that were played (i.e. which consumers/devices were recorded as being in the vicinity at the time the adverts were played). It is important to distinguish between devices and consumers, a device is an electronic component such as a mobile phone, which may have multiple communication interfaces such as 3G (UMTS), 2G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi etc, etc. A device may have one or more of its interfaces switched off, whereas a consumer may hold/have multiple devices. Utimately the deployed IDS board wishes to understand what consumers are in the vicinity of the board, not which devices are in the vicinity. One of the goals of the Consumer/ Advert Tracking Module is to gather enough information about the devices to spot when one person has multiple devices and/or one device has multiple interfaces so that the deployed IDS board can associate the devices or interfaces together and associate them with one individual. This is important to prevent double counting the number of consumers in the vicinity of the advert.

The Consumer/Advert Tracking Module can also contain enhancement databases. An enhancement database can exist to record extra information about what is going on during the playing of an advert. An example enhancement database would be a database which stored the number of heads counted in a crowd during the playing of an advert. This number could be used to validate the number of consumers counted via the Consumer Summariser.

The structure of the databases will be as follows :- The database which contains a historical record of which adverts were played will contain (this is not a normalised database).

The database which contains a historical record of which consumers were around when an advert was played

Description of Operation

The Consumer/ Advert Tracking Module 1100 holds these two databases as fast indexed databases (for quick searching).

When a consumer is in the vicinity of the display board the tracking module records the unique consumer key, the length of time they stayed in front of the display, which adverts they probably viewed.

When a device is in the vicinity of the display board the tracking module records the unique device key, the length of time the device stayed in front of the display; and which adverts the holder of the device likely saw.

On a frequent basis the Tracking Module 1100 provides the latest tracking data of the adverts displayed and the consumers (including ftieir unique keys) in the vicinity of the display board to the Reporting Module 900, so the Reporting Module can generate immediate billing.

The Tracking Module 1100 can also act as a cache, providing tracking information to the Reporting Module 900 when it deems that the Network Traffic is low enough to send the data without interrupting the Adverts being pulled down from the Network.

Same Vicinity Pattern - Statistical matching consumer devices together

As discussed previously many of the new generation of mobile devices such as mobile phones have multiple communications technologies as standard - such as 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth. As the deployed IDS board may contain Consumer Identifier Modules for multiple technologies the Consumer/ Advert Tracking Module may record that frequently some communication interfaces appear to be close to the deployed IDS board at precisely the same time on a repeated basis, i.e. a deployed board may notice that a Wi-Fi interface for the same phone (although the board won't recognize that it is the same phone) appears to be local to the IDS board at precisely the same day that a 3G interface appears to be local to the

'1IDS board. The deployed IDS board may notice this by searching through the historical consumer/interface table and identifying all the devices which register at exactly the same times every day. If this happens frequently enough for two devices, the deployed IDS board may summise that the two interfaces belong to the same device (i.e. a mobile phone) or that a consumer is carrying multiple devices. It is important for the Advert/Consumer cache not to be too eager to associate devices or components together otherwise it may associate devices held by two consumers as being held by one in the example whereby two people walk to the train station everyday together. (In this instance the Advert/Consumer Tracking cache may notice that the devices are together every morning but not together every evening).

Due to the sheer number of consumers that all the IDS boards see, it is key that the Advert/Consumer Tracking module does the matching up at a local level and not centrally at IDS central. Any matches that the Advert/Consumer Tracking module makes will be communicated out to the central IDS system. These matches will then be filtered back out to all the deployed IDS boards whom care about the individual consumer.

The Central IDS system will keep track of which deployed IDS boards have seen which consumers so that it can communicate any device matches it makes.

Data

The tracking module holds the following data

• which adverts have been displayed and when

• which consumers/devices were in the vicinity during the showing of the advert

Alternative designs

The Tracking Module could be located centrally

Tracking architecture The historical information of which consumers/devices saw which adverts is sent back to the IDS central whenever the deployed IDS board decides to do it. This depends on network traffic and how much information it has to send back. The Central IDS board can then work out and provide a report on a per consumer basis on which adverts they saw. This allows an advertiser to ask the IDS service provider to provide tracking information on a customer who has purchased a product.

Tracking Reference Module - 1500 Functionality Provided The Tracking Reference Module 1500 provides a service to obtain unique contact details which can uniquely identify an advert. This is to help the advertisers track back from each unique advert from the consumer sale to help the advertisers assess which adverts are successful.

Description of Operation

Just before an advert is played the advertiser would have indicated what unique contact details to provide for the consumer. These unique contact details can include email addresses, URLs, Bluetooth contacts and phone numbers.

These contact details will be displayed during or at the end of the played advert for the consumer to use to contact the advertiser. The contact details can change every time the advert is played, i.e. a different phone number, email address, etc, so that if the consumer contacts the advertiser, the advertiser can check the contact details and work out precisely which advert the consumer saw prior to contacting them.

The Tracking Reference Module works by holding a database cache of pre-approved unique contact details on a per advertiser basis, and/or by holding a database of Tracking Reference Suppliers (servers that provide contact details on demand).

Therefore it works in the following fashion

1. The Advertiser will pre-set up which unique contact details it has or which services it uses. 2. The Tracking Reference Module stores all the pre-set up unique contact details.

3. The Advert Voter and Selector requests a or some unique contact details from the Tracking Reference Module.

4. The Tracking Reference Module searches its database for pre-set up unique contact details and provides them back if appropriate.

5. Otherwise it will contact any set up Tracking Reference Suppliers for unique contact details.

6. The Tracking Reference Module will then record any used unique contact details and when they were used and for what advert. (This is to enable it to re-use unique contact details later on if it runs out of details, i.e. if it has a limited set of phone numbers. It will obviously try and space the number use as apart as it can to aid linking back up the sales and the adverts at a later point).

Reporting Module - 900 Functionality Provided

This component provides a centralised location to collate all the reporting and billing information for the advertisers based upon which adverts are being displayed in which locations. The Reporting Module 900 also has the overview of each IDS system, where it is located and where it is geographically in relation to other IDS systems. It uses this knowledge to provide predictive information about which consumers are likely to be in front of the other IDS systems soon.

Description of Operation

The Reporting Module 900 accepts updates from deployed IDS systems about which adverts have been displayed and a summary of what consumers have been in front of the display.

The Reporting Module 900 uses the information about what adverts have been displayed to charge the advertisers and produce Reports for the advertisers on who viewed the advert and when. The Reporting Module 900 then provides this information back to the Advertisers, so that the Advertisers can use this information in order to perfect their bidding parameters.

The Reporting Module 900 also provides the unique keys of which consumers saw the adverts to the advertisers, so the advertiser can track whether new or repeat viewers saw the adverts. The Advertisers cannot use the unique keys in any meaningful way, as they are one way encrypted and hold no data about the consumer.

When the Advertiser sells its product, they can choose to provide their consumer details to the Reporting Module 900, and the Reporting Module 900 will provide back the unique keys

(if they exist) for that consumer. The Advertiser can use this to work out which adverts the consumer saw before they purchased the product. This information provides no extra information about the consumer than the Advertiser already knows, except which adverts they saw. This enables the Advertiser to accurately assess which adverts work and which adverts don't.

The tracking of sales back to adverts and leads is carried out by the Consumer Tracking Module 950. It occurs in the following steps (and can be seen in Figure 4 - High Level Design of Consumer info flowing between deployed IDS and Central Reporting Module.)

1. Consumer A walks past an IDS board

2. The IDS board stores the unique key of the consumer's device or consumer in the Consumer Cache 600. The Consumer Cache 600 provides this information to all the modules within the deployed IDS system including the Tracking Module 1100 3. The Tracking Module 1100 provides a history of what consumers are passing by the

'1

IDS boards to the central Reporting Module 900.

4. The Central Consumer Database 920 within the Reporting Module stores the fact Consumer A walks past the IDS board at a certain time along with the adverts Consumer A probably saw. 5. Consumer A purchases a product from Advertiser X a few weeks later.

6. Advertiser X provides the Consumer A details to the Consumer Tracking Module 950.

7. The Consumer Tracking Module 950 generates the unique key (by using the consumer information) and finds all the history of what adverts that Consumer A saw in the Central Consumer Database 920 and works out how many and what adverts from Advertiser X that Consumer A saw before they purchased.

8. It then provides this information back to Advertiser X who can use this information to assess which of their adverts work best, how many times the adverts are typically seen before people buy. What time is best to show their adverts. The Reporting Module 900 also tracks which consumers are moving in which directions past the deployed IDS systems, and can therefore use its knowledge of the location of other IDS deployments to notify in advance any IDS systems of any consumers likely to pass by them shortly. The particular IDS system can use this knowledge to ensure the advert cache is holding the correct advert.

The Reporting Module 900 also provides updates to the Consumer Cache of which consumers have appeared in front of which IDS deployments. The Advert Voter and Selector can use this knowledge that certain consumers have already seen a given advert so it can show the next advert in a series of adverts.

The Reporting Module 900 (via the Billing Component 910) provides a request based billing authorisation system for the deployed IDS systems. Before an IDS system shows an advert it will request authorisation to be able to charge for a particular advert, if the IDS system doesn't hear back from the Reporting Module 900 fast enough it may decide to show the advert anyway, but to increase the chance of not going over the Advertisers spending limit it requests authorisation from the Reporting Module 900 first. The Reporting Module 900 provides a probability back to the deployed IDS system that it will honour the billing request. The deployed IDS system can use this probability in choosing which adverts to display.

Example of how the Authorisation Probability system works

If three IDS systems predict 30 seconds before their next adverts are to be displayed that they wish to display Advert A, from Advertiser Z. Advertiser Z has decided to put a spending limit of £3000 pounds on displaying the advert. IDS board 1 predicts it will wish to show the Advert A at 70%, for £2900, with an accuracy of 60%, IDS board 2 predicts it will wish to show Advert A at 80% for £2000, with an accuracy of 50%, IDS board 3 predicts it will wish to show Advert A at 60% for £1000 with an accuracy of 40%.

To prevent giving each board a limit of £1000 to display an advert (and thus none of the boards can charge up to £2900 for a single showing), each board predicts its advert choices earlier and requests a statistical authorisation from the Reporting Module 900. In this example the Reporting Module 900 replies to IDS board 1, that it will honour the billing of £2900 to 70%, it replies to board 2, that it will honour the billing of £2000 to 20% and it replies to board 1 that it will honour the billing of £1000 to 10%.

The Reporting Module 900 determines the probability of payment it provides back to the EDS boards by taking into account how long until the boards are going to show the adverts, which boards have the highest probability of showing the advert and also the amount the boards will generate if they show the advert.

This will make IDS boards 2 and 3 unlikely to show that advert, whereas IDS board 1 is likely to decide to show the advert. Thus maximising the billing potential for displaying one advert, whereas the other boards can simultaneously show other adverts which have a higher authorisation potential.

Benefits of the design over previous designs Previous digital signage designs provide no such tracking capabilities, using unique one way encrypted keys, IDS is able to provide precise tracking of where the consumer saw the adverts, which adverts they saw to the advertiser. This enables the Advertiser to more accurately assess which adverts work and which ones don't.

Previous digital signage designs don't use statistical/probability authorisation systems and therefore do not maximise the amount of money that the Advertisers can be charged by the company running the IDS service.

Alternate designs It would be possible to download all network wide information to the tracking module on a nightly basis so the tracking module can make network wide predictions

hi another embodiment the Consumer Tracking Module 950 would only provide summary tracking information when given a whole group of customers. This is to prevent precise tracking details being given to the Advertiser. The Advertiser will provide a list of all their customers, and the sales for each customer and the sales amount and the Consumer Tracking Module 950 will generate the unique key for each consumer, retrieved all the tracking information for that consumer and then produce a high level report showing sales against adverts shown, and leads against adverts shown, and average number of showing before a sale, etc, etc.

Network Operators Subscriber Database - 700 Functionality Provided >

S

The Network Operators Subscriber Database 700 contains information about the individual in the vicinity of the advertising board.

Description of Operation There is a Network Operators Subscriber Database for each technology used to identify the presence of a consumer. The Network Consumer Identifier - 410 contains the specific technology to interact with the consumer (i.e. 3G, GSM, WiFi etc). The network operator of the 3G, GSM or WiFi service contains the Network Operators Subscriber Database as part of the service provider's day to day operations. The IDS system extracts information from the Network Operators Subscriber Database so that intelligent decisions can be made about the nature of the advert to be displayed.

The Network Operators Subscriber Database is therefore not a component of the IDS system but the EDS system is able to extract information from it. Therefore an API is provided by the Network Operators Subscriber Database to allow the IDS system to extract the required information.

Data

This component provides the following information • Subscriber name

• Subscriber current address

• Subscriber date of birth

• Date of commencement of contract with the subscriber

Since the Network Operator Subscriber Database is implemented by the network operator, different types of information is available from different network operators. For example, there may be some further marketing information held in this database. If so the IDS system is able to utilise this additional information.

Interfaces of the Network Operators Subscriber Database 700 The Consumer Cache 1000 passes a unique identifier to the Network Operators Subscriber Database 700. This unique identifier varies depending on the nature of the technology being used to identify the subscriber (i.e. 3G, GSM, WiFi etc).

On request the Network Operators Subscriber Database returns the following information:- • Subscriber Information outlined in the Data section

Consumer Cache 1000 Functionality Provided

The Consumer Cache 1000 provides a historical record of the consumers who have been identified, their unique key, any devices that have been identified, their unique keys and how long, and when they are in the vicinity. The Consumer Cache 1000 also provides a database of each unique key and what adverts have been playing when the unique key has been in the vicinity. The Consumer Cache 1000 also provides a unique key matching database, this database holds a statistical matching score, that is updated by the Consumer Summariser when it spots the same keys have the same vicinity matching patterns.

Description of Operation s The Consumer Cache 1000 provides a historical record of every unique key provided by the

Consumer Summariser 600. It then stores details of whenever the consumer identifier has been identified within the vicinity of the advert, how long it was in the vicinity and what adverts it potentially saw.

The Consumer Summariser searches through the Consumer Cache 1000 database and sometimes identifies matches of unique keys, i.e. if a consumer unique key and a 3G unique key have the same vicinity patterns within the advert then it is very likely that it is the same consumer. The Consumer Cache 1000 provides a database of statistical matching scores between unique keys. Activities which show the keys are likely to be from the same device increase the score, activities which show they are likely to be different decrease the score.

The Consumer Cache 1000 contains a fast access cache/database which is accessed/indexed by the unique key and also indexed by whether a consumer is currently in the vicinity.

Example of the Consumer Cache in operation

The Consumer Summariser 600 provides a list of unique keys (and key types) along with consumer information to be placed into the Consumer Cache 1000.

The Consumer Cache then follows the following operations

1. It checks (using its fast access index) whether the individual index keys are in the current local Consumer Cache 1000. 2. If the key is in the Consumer Cache 1000 then it adds any new information about the key.

3. If the key isn't in the Consumer Cache 1000 then the Consumer Cache asks the Reporting Module for the Consumer key and inserts a temporary key into the Cache - thus if one of the other IDS systems has already seen this consumer - it will be retrieved from the central Reporting Module

Alternative designs

1. It is possible to implement the system with the Consumer Cache located centrally and one instance of the Consumer Cache per IDS platform 2. It is possible to implement the system with one large consumer cache located centrally that the Consumer Summarisers on each IDS platform interfaces into 3. It is possible that a Network Operators Subscriber Database proxy may be required so that only one interface to the Network Operators Subscriber Database is implemented. This proxy services the needs of the consumer caches on each IDS platform.

Advert Manager

Functionality Provided

This component provides: • A GUI to allow advertisers to bid for advertising time

• A central engine that calculates values to be used with the advert choice algorithm

• Dissemination of values to be used with the algorithm to the individual IDS instances

• Dissemination of video files • The capability for system maintainers to tune the algorithm

• Dissemination of modified algorithms to the individual IDS instances

Description of Operation

An advertiser places a bid for advertising time. An example bid could be:

• Demographic = Females of age range 30 to 40 • Payment per person = £5

• Maximum budget per screening = £500

• Maximum spend per time period = £5000 per day

• Advertisement length = 12 seconds

• Minimum time between repeat showings = 2 minutes • Campaign length = 1 month

The Advert Manager gives the advertiser some feedback based on the bids already accepted, letting the advertiser know where they sit within the rankings. For example, another advertiser may already be offering a higher payment per person, but may have a lower maximum budget per screening. The advertiser may then wish to increase the value of their bid in order to elevate their position in the rankings.

There is an admin fee for placing a bid. This ensures that the overheads are covered even if the bid is not successful. Once the advertiser has chosen their final bid they upload the video file for their advert. This video file is checked by the System Maintainer to ensure that the video is suitable for showing.

Video files can also be sent via other means, for example a DAT tape via motorcycle courier.

The Advert Manager disseminates the bid details to the individual IDS deployments. The daily budget is split between the individual deployments (as opposed to each deployment _^checking a central balance). Advert Choice Algorithm:

• Obtain list of demographic groups currently within viewing range of advert (obtained from Consumer Summariser) - e.g. 12 viewers are females of age range 30 to 40 and 20 viewers are males of age range 14 to 21

• Determine which advert pays the most

• Play advert from that bid

• If bidder has reached their budgeted number of screenings for this location then mark bid as inactive for the remainder of this day. • Take into account the probability of the authorisation for billing given by the

Reporting Module. Thus even if an advert potentially pays a large amount of money if the probability of authorisation achieved was only low then it should consider the other adverts.

At the end of each day the advertiser are able to look at a report online showing how many times their advert was shown and the associated cost. The report also shows times when there selected demographic was present but there was another bidder who paid more.

Data

This Component holds the following data: • Account details for advertisers, including payment details

• Bid details

• Values to be used with the advert choice algorithm

Interfaces

Advertiser - Advert Manager Interface

The Advert Manager provides a GUI to allow the Advertisers to create accounts and make bids.

System Maintainer - Advert Manager Interface

The Advert Manager provides a GUI to allow the System Maintainer to 'tune' the advert choice algorithm and make 'system wide config' changes.

Advert Manger - Advert Cache Interface The Advert Manager pushes the following to the many instance of the Advert Cache:

• Values to be used with the advert choice algorithm

• Updates to the algorithm itself

• Video files

Alternate designs

The bid could include time ranges for when the advertiser wants the advert to be shown, e.g. 07.00 to 09.00.

The bid could include multiple versions of the advert of differing lengths.

The bid could include different types of advert, e.g. one for fast moving motorway traffic and another, more complex version, for consumers that are in stationary traffic.

The bid could specify a higher payment for consumers that have not yet seen the advert.

The bid could specify a higher payment for consumers that have already seen the advert.

The bid could specify geographic context for the advert, e.g. postcode and radius.

The bid could specify a weather context for the advert (weather as at an individual IDS location). E.g. only show adverts for sun cream when sunny.

The Advert Manager GUI could offer a large list of options that an advertiser chooses from in a separate dialogue box, once they have chosen the options they then choose the values.

The Advert Manager GUI could have a free form field that accepts an English language description of the demographic. A software application then scans and interprets what it can and prompts the System Maintainer to populate the unknown aspects.

The Advert Manager GUI could include rules based on external events. E.g. if Manchester United win a game on a particular day then play an advert for the Manchester United kit. When the event happens the System Maintainer would set a Boolean value as appropriate for Jhe Advert Chooser to read. Deployment

Physical Deployment

The IDS system requires the deployment of two types of systems. One Advert Manager and Reporting Module system and multiple EDS systems shown within the area defined by dashed lines in Figure 1.

The Advert Manager/Reporting Module system can be hosted anywhere that it has a fast connection to the internet. If the system is scaled up multiple servers can be used for the Advert Manager/Reporting Module but conceptually there is only one of each.

The advertising board is a field deployable system which contains a plasma screen or projector or LCD, a processing board containing CPUs, hard discs and RAM an optional set of transmitters/receivers, an optional high definition digital camera and a connection to the internet. The processing will be carried out on a real time true multi tasking Operating System such as UNTX, LINUX or similar.

Further Embodiment

Figure 9 shows a further embodiment of the signage system. Three consumer identifier modules 901a, 901b and 901c are shown. A sign selector module 905 and a consumer summariser 915 are each connected to each of the consumer identifier modules 901. The consumer summariser is further connected to a consumer database 917. The sign selector module 905 is connected to a tracking module 925, which is arranged to receive at least one query concerning a key, and which is in turn connected to a server 927. The sign selector module 905 is connected to a display 985.

In operation, the consumer identifier modules 901 are arranged to derive at least one identifying key related to a consumer. The sign selector module 905 is arranged to select a sign based upon the identifying key, and the display 985 is arranged to display the selected sign. The consumer summariser 915 can be further arranged to receive identifying keys from each consumer identifier module 901, and increment a matching score for pairs of identifying keys, where each pair member is received from different consumer identifier modules 901. The consumer summariser 915 may be further arranged to interrogate the consumer database 917. The consumer database 917 can be arranged to store consumer attributes, the consumer summariser 915 arranged to associate at least one consumer attribute with an identifying key.

The tracking module 925 is arranged to record the identifying keys related to consumers determined to be within the vicinity of the display and each sign displayed on the display when the consumer is in the vicinity of the display. The tracking module 925 can be further arranged to receive a particular identifying key and determine whether a sign has been displayed when the consumer related to the particular identifying key was in the vicinity of the display. The tracking module 925 can be further arranged to transmit to the server 927 both the identifying keys and the information defining the sign that was displayed when a consumer related to the identifying keys were in the vicinity of the display.

Still Further Embodiment

Figure 10 shows a still further embodiment of the signage system. Three consumer identifier modules 901a, 901b and 901c are shown. Two sign chooser modules 902a and 902b and an external sign chooser module 903 are connected to each of the consumer identifier modules 901. Further, the two sign chooser modules 902a and 902b and the external sign chooser module 903 are connected to a sign selector module 905.

The sign selector module 905 is connected to a sign cache 935 and a probability authorization module 945. The sign selector module is further connected to a tracking module 955 which is connected to a consumer predictor 957, which in turn is connected to a sign chooser module 959. The sign chooser module 959 is connected to the sign selector module 905.

The sign selector module 905 is connected to a display 985.

In operation, the sign chooser modules 902 are arranged to receive a plurality of identifying keys from the at least one consumer identifier module, and to receive sign information regarding a plurality of signs. The sign chooser modules 902 are further arranged to calculate a potential revenue for each of the plurality of signs based upon the received identifying keys; and to identify a sign for display that has a maximum potential revenue and transmit the identity and potential revenue of this sign to the sign selector module. The sign selector module 905 receives the identity and potential revenue of a sign from each sign chooser module 902; and selects a sign for display.

The external sign chooser module 903 is external to the sign apparatus. Sign information is transmitted to the external sign chooser 903 in a disguised manner. The sign information comprises a sign identity and at least one revenue amount which would be generated by display of the sign to consumers having a particular consumer attribute. h.

The consumer predictor 957 is arranged to calculate a likelihood that a consumer having a particular attribute will be in the vicinity of the signage system at a particular time on a particular day in the future. This calculation is based upon the consumer attributes of consumers observed to be in the vicinity of the signage system at the particular time on a previous day of the same type as the particular day, and the class of consumers observed to be travelling towards the signage system by other signage systems.

The consumer predictor 957 generates the indication of the likelihood that a particular class of consumer will be in the vicinity of the signage system at a particular time on a particular day in the future; and sends the indication to the sign chooser module 959, which sends the identity of a sign to the sign selector module 905. The sign cache 935 is arranged to retrieve and store the sign identified by each sign chooser module 902, 903, 959. The probability authorisation module 945 is arranged to receive an indication of whether a particular sign is authorized for selection for display, the indication used to weight the selection made by the sign selector module 905.

Closing Remarks

In the foregoing specification, the invention has been described with reference to specific embodiments thereof. It will, however, be evident that various modifications and changes may be made thereto without departing from the scope of the technique. The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense. It is to be noted that the methods as described have shown steps being carried out in a particular order. However, it would be clear to a person skilled in the art that the order of the steps performed, where the context permits, can be varied and to that extent the ordering of the steps as described herein is not intended to be limiting.

It is also to be noted that where a method has been described it is also intended that protection is also sought for a device arranged to carry out the method and where features have been claimed independently of each other these may be used together with other claimed features.

Claims

CLAIMS:

1. A signage system comprising: at least one consumer identifier module arranged to derive at least one identifying key related to a consumer; a sign selector module arranged to select a sign based upon the identifying key; a display arranged to display the selected sign.

2. A signage system according to claim 1, wherein the at least one consumer identifier module comprises: a visual consumer identifier module; and/or a radio network consumer identifier module.;

3. A signage system according to claim 2, wherein the radio consumer identifier comprises at least one of a 3 G consumer identifier module; and/or a Bluetooth consumer identifier module; and/or a WiFi consumer identifier module.

4. A signage system according to claim 1, 2 or 3, wherein the identifying key is unique.

5. A signage system according to any preceding claim, wherein the identifying key is derived using a one-way algorithm.

6. A signage system according to any preceding claim, further comprising: a tracking module arranged to record the identifying keys related to consumers determined to be within the vicinity of the display and each sign displayed on the display when the consumer is in the vicinity of the display.

7. A signage system according claim 6, wherein the tracking module is further arranged to receive a particular identifying key and determine whether a sign has been displayed when the consumer related to the particular identifying key was in the vicinity of the display.

8. A signage system according claim 6 or 7, wherein the tracking module is further arranged to transmit to a server both the identifying keys and the information defining the sign that was displayed when a consumer related to the identifying keys were in the vicinity of the display.

9. A signage system according claim 6, 7 or 8, wherein a triangulation module monitors information from at least two consumer identifier modules and estimates the location of a consumer.

10. A signage system according to claim 6, 7, 8 or 9, wherein the tracking module is further arranged to send a message to or receive a message from other tracking modules associated with other displays.

11. A signage system according to any preceding claim, further comprising a consumer summariser arranged to: receive identifying keys from each consumer identifier module; incrementing a matching score for pairs of identifying keys, where each pair member is received from different consumer identifier modules.

12. A signage system according to claim 11, wherein the consumer summariser is further arranged to: determine that a pair of identifying keys are related to the same consumer when the matching score for the pair of identifying keys meets a threshold criterion.

13. A signage system according to claim 11 or 12, wherein the consumer summariser is further arranged to interrogate a consumer database, wherein the consumer database stores consumer attributes, the consumer summariser arranged to associate at least one consumer attribute with an identifying key.

14. A signage system according to claim 13, wherein the consumer database is external to the signage system.

15. A signage system according to claim 13 or 14, and wherein the consumer database fβtores identifying keys for a plurality of consumers.

16. A signage system according to any preceding claim, further comprising a location enhancer which reviews information from the at least one consumer identifier module in conjunction with stored display location information particular to the display.

17. A signage system according claim 11, 12, 13, 15 or 16, wherein the consumer summarizer monitors information from at least two consumer identifier modules and estimates the location of a consumer.

18. A signage system according to any preceding claim, further comprising a sign chooser module arranged to: receive a plurality of identifying keys from the at least one consumer identifier module; receive sign information regarding a plurality of signs; calculate a potential revenue for each of the plurality of signs based upon the received identifying keys; identify a sign for display that has a maximum potential revenue and transmit the identity and potential revenue of this sign to the sign selector module.

19. A signage system according to claim 18, further comprising a plurality of sign chooser modules, and wherein the sign selector module: receives the identity and potential revenue of a sign from each sign chooser module; and selects a sign for display.

20. A signage system according to claim 18 or 19, further comprising at least one external sign chooser, which is external to a sign apparatus, and wherein sign information is transmitted to the external sign chooser in a disguised manner.

21. A signage system according to claim 20, wherein the disguised manner comprises a two-way cipher, and wherein the key for two-way cipher is stored at the sign selector module.

22. A signage system according to any of claims 18 to 21, wherein the sign information comprises a sign identity and at least one revenue amount which would be generated by display of the sign to consumers having a particular consumer attribute.

23. A signage system according to any of claims 18 to 22 when dependent on claim 11, wherein the consumer summariser is arranged to: receive consumer attributes for consumers whose identifying key has been derived by a consumer identifying module; and store the consumer attributes with the respective identifying key in a consumer cache.

24. A signage system according to claim 13, 22 or 23, wherein consumer attributes are any of: age; sex; location of residence; products purchased; and services subscribed to.

25. A signage system according to any preceding claim, further comprising a consumer predictor arranged to calculate a likelihood that a consumer having a particular attribute will be in the vicinity of the signage system at a particular time on a particular day in the future, said calculation based upon: the consumer attributes of consumers observed to be in the vicinity of the signage system at the particular time on a previous day of the same type as the particular day; and the class of consumers observed to be travelling towards the signage system by other signage systems.

26. A signage system according to claim 25, when dependent on claim 18 or 19, wherein the sign selector: receives the indication of the likelihood that a particular class of consumer will be in the vicinity of the signage system at a particular time on a particular day in the future; sends the indication to the at least one sign chooser module; receive from each sign chooser module the identity of a sign.

27. A signage system according to claim 26, further comprising a sign cache arranged to retrieve and store the sign identified by each sign chooser module.

28. A signage system according to any of claims 1 to 27, further comprising a sign cache arranged to store each sign displayed by the signage system and a probability that the sign will be displayed again.

29. A signage system according to claim 28, wherein: when more storage space is required than is available in the sign cache; the sign having the lowest probability is deleted.

30. A signage system according to any of claims 27 to 29, wherein the sign is a still image, a series of still images, or a video, and wherein different versions of the sign video are stored as a plurality of sign video portions with a plurality of selections of sequences of the sign video portions.

31. A signage system according to any preceding claim, further comprising a probability authorisation module arranged to receive an indication of whether a particular sign is authorized for selection for display, the indication used to weight the selection made by the sign selector module.

32. A signage system according to any preceding claim, wherein when no identifying keys are detected, or when a communication disruption prevents a sign from being selected or a selected sign from being retrieved, a default sign or sequence of signs is displayed.

33. A signage system according to any preceding claim, wherein the identifying of the next sign to be display is performed without interrupting the display of the current sign.