Disclosed herein are systems and methods for protecting user privacy in networked data collection. One embodiment takes the form of a method that includes obtaining a user-data request that is associated with a requesting party. The method also includes preparing a first candidate response to the user-data request, where the first candidate response is based at least in part on data that is associated with a first user. The method also includes receiving additional candidate responses that are respectively based on data that is respectively associated with a plurality of additional users. The method also includes determining a privacy level of the first candidate response based at least in part on the received plurality of additional candidate responses. The method also includes determining that the privacy level exceeds a privacy threshold, and responsively sending, to the requesting party, a user-data response associated with the user-data request.

A method and system for planning and running video-on-demand (VOD) advertising includes a planner for planning advertising campaigns and an ad selector for running selected advertisements from selected ones of the campaigns. The campaigns are associated with household demographic classifications, video content category categories, household geographic locations, and/or video viewing times. In response to a viewer requesting a video, the selector selects the campaigns corresponding to the demographic classification associated with the viewer, the content category of the requested video, the geographic location associated with the viewer, and/or the viewing time at which the requested video is viewed. The demographic classification is determined by using an identifier of the viewer's set-top-box. The selector may select the campaigns corresponding to the content categories of the requested video. The content categories are determined by using an identifier associated with the requested video.

A facility providing systems and methods for targeting advertisements based on a polling system is disclosed. The facility provides techniques for interleaving advertisements within a stream of “split queries.” The ads are themselves split queries and are inserted sparsely into the split stream. An ad campaign may include “branch” nodes, with decision logic over the targeting variables representative of a program, complete with dynamic variables and flow control (branching logic). Via this paradigm, the ad campaign can direct highly specific users toward specialized content and offers. In addition to their value as ad impressions, splits may have associated with them custom advertiser-defined targeting variables and actions for how user responses update those variables. These variables may then be used as targeting variables.

The present invention relates to a method and device for providing an advertisement, in which a service device extracts a list of customers to be targeted based on authentication based information, and a user terminal device corresponding to the extracted list of customers collects non-authentication based information to provide an advertisement to an advertisement target application operated by a third party, and a recording medium in which a computer program for performing the method is recorded.

The present invention is directed towards a computer-implemented method and system for transactions involving device data due to operations of one or more devices. The method comprises transforming, by applying rules, the device data from the one or more devices into formatted device data that is useable for the transactions; sending the formatted device data to a storage location; generating a descriptive listing of the formatted device data; providing public access to the descriptive listing; and facilitating transactions involving the formatted device data in response to receiving information from the descriptive listing.

An online system receives a sponsored content item including a maximum amount of compensation for accessing the content, a budget, and a tracking mechanism identifying an action. When an opportunity to present sponsored content to a user eligible to be presented with the sponsored content item is identified, the online system determines a likelihood of the user performing the action identified by the tracking mechanism and an average likelihood of other users performing the action identified by the tracking mechanism. Based on the determined likelihood and the average likelihood, the online system determines a subsidy value. Additionally, the online system generates a penalty value inversely proportional to a number of the identified action that have been identified. The online system increases a bid amount by the subsidy value decreases the bid amount by the penalty value to determine whether to present the sponsored content item to the user.

A method for relaying advertising content may include intercepting, at a network providing communication between an end user device and one or more servers capable of responding to requests from the end user device, a request from the end user device and transmitted via the network, determining whether a response to the request will include advertizing content based on a destination of the request, intercepting the response based on the determination, modifying the response to modify source indicia of the advertizing content in a modified response, and enabling the modified response to be provided to the end user device to effectively relay the advertizing content from a different source.

A system and computer-implemented method for providing secondary online content to a user device based on a user interaction with primary online content are provided. The method includes receiving a content request for a primary content item stored in the memory for display on the user device, providing the primary content item for display on the user device, and transmitting a first interaction signal representing a first interaction between the user device and the primary content item, the first interaction signal including a user device identifier and the primary content item identifier. The method further includes accessing at least one concierge rule stored in the memory based on the first interaction signal, retrieving a secondary online content item based at least in part on the at least one concierge rule, and automatically serving the secondary online content item to the user device for display on the user device.

The described implementations facilitate the discovery and presentation of video advertisements in a non-intrusive manner by users of client devices. In one implementation, an informed opt-in preview representative of a video advertisement is generated. The informed opt-in preview is a short video presentation that is formed from frames extracted from the video advertisement that can be presented on a client device to provide a user with an overview of the video advertisement corresponding to that informed opt-in preview. For example, the video advertisement may be a two-minute video advertisement. In comparison, the informed opt-in preview may be as little as three—five seconds in length and simply provide an overview of the video advertisement.

Provided herein are display systems and units, including those configured for dynamic communication in a physical location, such as in retail settings. Also included herein are methods for dynamically displaying product information in a physical location, such as a retail setting.