A programmable and universal video serving platform enabling brand safe digital ads to be inserted into linear television cable and broadcast programming feeds. A linear programming feed includes a cue message that indicates a spot for ad insertion into the programming feed. Detection of the cue message triggers the generation of a VAST protocol ad request from the video serving platform to a digital ad server, the request including programmable fields that are configured to obtain data to generate standard and custom VAST tag information, including audience impression information and distribution platform information as needed. The digital ad server delivers a VAST response back to the video serving platform identifying a digital ad for insertion, and the video serving platform enables playout of the selected digital ad during the designated insertion spot into the programming feed. This process can be implemented for national cable and broadcast network advertising such that VAST-driven ads can be placed to run on the entire footprint of the cable or broadcast network, or just in a particular geographic market.

A programmable and universal video serving platform enabling brand safe digital ads to be inserted into linear television cable and broadcast programming feeds. A linear programming feed includes a cue message that indicates a spot for ad insertion into the programming feed. Detection of the cue message triggers the generation of a VAST protocol ad request from the video serving platform to a digital ad server, the request including programmable fields that are configured to obtain data to generate standard and custom VAST tag information, including audience impression information and distribution platform information as needed. The digital ad server delivers a VAST response back to the video serving platform identifying a digital ad for insertion, and the video serving platform enables playout of the selected digital ad during the designated insertion spot into the programming feed. This process can be implemented for national cable and broadcast network advertising such that VAST-driven ads can be placed to run on the entire footprint of the cable or broadcast network, or just in a particular geographic market.

Methods and apparatus for inserting audience measurement data or interactive data into a compressed data bitstream are disclosed. An example apparatus disclosed herein includes a parser to access compressed audio data packets from a compressed data bitstream, a time shifter to time shift the compressed audio data packets in data frames of the compressed data bitstream to occupy locations of the data frames from which skip bytes are eliminated, and an inserter to insert at least one of audience measurement data or interactive data into auxiliary data fields of the data frames that increase in size due to the time shifting the compressed audio data.

Systems and methods for effectively and efficiently receiving, analyzing, and using subscriber content choice information are described. One embodiment of the present invention includes a subscriber-action database, such as a clickstream database, a media-content database, and a merge processor electronically connected to the two databases for merging data in the subscriber-action database with data in the media-content database to create a subscriber content-choice database. The media-content database may include programming and/or advertising data. The media-content database may also include category and context information to provide the capability to comprehensively analyze data in the subscriber content-choice database.

Systems and methods for effectively and efficiently receiving, analyzing, and using subscriber content choice information are described. One embodiment of the present invention includes a subscriber-action database, such as a clickstream database, a media-content database, and a merge processor electronically connected to the two databases for merging data in the subscriber-action database with data in the media-content database to create a subscriber content-choice database. The media-content database may include programming and/or advertising data. The media-content database may also include category and context information to provide the capability to comprehensively analyze data in the subscriber content-choice database.

Systems and methods are presented for insertion of assets into a stream of content (e.g., audio and/or video programming). Such assets may be targeted to network users separate from the surrounding content and deliveries thereof confirmed. Among other things, these systems and methods enable a new advertising paradigm based on guaranteed delivery of targeted commercial impressions. In this regard, the systems and methods generally provide assets with broadcast network programming (e.g., via actual insertion and/or switching to an asset channel) based on actual audience observations. For example, asset providers may wish to target assets for delivery according to specific audience classifications (e.g., gender, income level, locale, age, etc.). Programming providers, such as television programmers and radio programmers (e.g., standard tower broadcast radio and satellite radio), may receive information from broadcast network users and insert the assets into available bandwidth based on that information.

A computing system compares various reference fingerprints each representing a reference media stream broadcast on a different respective known channel, and the computing system determines that a plurality of the reference fingerprints match each other, thus defining a multi-match group of the matching reference fingerprints. In response, the computing system identifies a fingerprint feature that could define a distinction between the reference fingerprints, and the computing system resolves the multi-match based on the identified feature, thereby determining the channel carrying the media stream being rendered by the media presentation device. And the server then takes channel-specific action based on the determined channel.

A computing system compares various reference fingerprints each representing a reference media stream broadcast on a different respective known channel, and the computing system determines that a plurality of the reference fingerprints match each other, thus defining a multi-match group of the matching reference fingerprints. In response, the computing system identifies a fingerprint feature that could define a distinction between the reference fingerprints, and the computing system resolves the multi-match based on the identified feature, thereby determining the channel carrying the media stream being rendered by the media presentation device. And the server then takes channel-specific action based on the determined channel.

A computing system receives from a media presentation device a query fingerprint stream representing media content being presented by the media presentation device, where the query fingerprint stream has been determined to represent a first channel. The computing system then detects that a threshold mismatch exists between the received query fingerprint stream and a reference fingerprint stream representing the first channel, thus indicating a likelihood that the media presentation device has transitioned from presenting the first channel to presenting a second channel. Responsive to detecting the threshold mismatch, the system thus discontinues channel-specific action with respect to the first channel. For instance, the system could discontinue superimposing of first-channel-specific content on the presented media content and perhaps start superimposing of second-channel-specific content instead.

A computer-implemented method of using video viewing activity data as input to an aggregation engine built on the Hadoop MapReduce framework which calculates second-by-second video viewing activity aggregated to the analyst's choice of (a) geographic area, (b) video server, (c) video content (channel call sign, video program, etc.), or (d) viewer demographic, or any combination of these fields, for each second of the day represented in the video viewing activity data. Also calculates overall viewing for use as a denominator in calculations. The source data may be extracted from a database defined according to the Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. Media Measurement Data Model defined in Audience Data Measurement Specification as OpenCable Specifications, Audience Measurement, Audience Measurement Data Specification document OC-SP-AMD-I01-130502 or any similar format. These metrics provide detailed data needed to calculate information on customer viewing behavior that can drive business decisions for service providers, advertisers, and content producers.