Systems and methods enabling marketing and distribution of motion pictures and other media content by content creators and other content providers are described herein. A platform is provided by which a plurality of content providers can market and distribute media content to users. Information about activity of the users on the platform is obtained in relation to the item of media content or in relation to media content related to the item of media content. A request is received for an activity report comprising information related to a user demographic or a media content characteristic. Responsive to the activity report request, the activity report is provided to the content provider.

Embodiments are related to faster provisioning of targeted advertisements at a set-top box (STB) via an Internet Protocol (IP) connection between the STB and a remote server. The disclosed IP-based advertisement distribution system enables targeted advertisements to be pulled from the remote server efficiently, causing the advertisements to be made available within a short time frame (e.g., less than one day from the time when the advertisements are available). The disclosed methods enables a STB to determine whether to retain existing targeted advertisements, discard them, or provision newly-available advertisements. The targeted advertisements can depend on various factors such as demographic information of an owner of the STB, lifestyle information of the owner of the STB, etc.

A method for recommending feed sources in an event feed includes generating an event feed comprising a plurality of feed items associated with a user. The event feed includes a recommendation feed item comprising one or more feed item sources not being followed by the user. The method further includes causing at least a portion of the event feed to be displayed to the user in the event feed. In accordance with a determination that the user is viewing a graphical user interface associated with a first software application, the recommendation feed item includes feed item sources associated with the first software application. In accordance with a determination that the user is viewing a graphical user interface associated with a second software application different from the first, the recommendation feed item includes feed item sources associated with the second software application.

Methods, apparatus, systems, and articles of manufacture are disclosed to perform dynamic media insertion based on streaming meter data. An example apparatus includes meter data management circuitry to obtain, via a network, streaming meter data from a plurality of streaming meter devices, the streaming meter data including streaming sessions detected by the plurality of streaming meter devices, meter data processor circuitry to identify active streaming sessions based on the streaming meter data, trend analyzer circuitry to generate a viewing trend indicator based on the active streaming sessions, and trend reporter circuitry to transmit the viewing trend indicator via a network.

Methods, systems, and apparatuses for user engagement analysis are described herein. An analytics subsystem may use a plurality of activity data to generate a plurality of user profiles, corresponding user interest clouds for each user device of a plurality of user devices, and a first interest cloud associated with a particular client identifier. The analytics subsystem may generate a second interest cloud associated based on a subset of a plurality of media assets associated with a threshold quantity of engagements. The analytics subsystem may determine a plurality of clusters of the plurality of media assets and may generate a content interest cloud for each of the plurality of clusters.

Methods and systems of providing video content are disclosed. A request to view video content is received from a viewer. In response to the request, it is determined whether the viewer has advert-free rights to watch the video content. In response to determining that the viewer does not have the advert-free rights to watch the video content, an alternative advert (AA) query is prepared based on query rules, and the AA query is presented to the viewer. An AA query response to the AA query is received from the viewer. In response to determining that the AA query response is a first response, one or more AA offers are determined and the AA offers are sent to the viewer. The requested video content is streamed to a viewer device of the viewer without adverts.

Methods, systems, and media for streaming video content using adaptive buffers are provided. In some embodiments, the method comprises: transmitting, from a user device to a server, a request to stream a video content item; receiving, at the user device from the server, a predicted abandonment distribution that indicates a plurality of likelihoods of a user of the user device stopping presentation of the video content item at a corresponding plurality of presentation time points of the video content item; receiving, at the user device from the server, a first portion of the video content item; storing the first portion of the video content item in a buffer of the user device having a first size; causing the video content item to be presented by the user device; determining a second size of the buffer based on the predicted abandonment distribution; modifying a size of the buffer to the second size; requesting a second portion of the video content item from the server based on the second size of the buffer; receiving the second portion of the video content item from the server; and storing the second portion of the video content item in the buffer of the second size while continuing presentation of the video content item.

A method of assigning advertisements to slots in video channels of a bundle of channels provided to an end user. The method includes managing credits, for each specific channel of the channels, indicative of a difference between a number of advertisements provided by an owner of the specific channel that were displayed on other channels and a number of advertisements provided by owners of other channels displayed on the specific channel In addition, scores indicative of a predicted success of the advertisement with the end user are calculated for a plurality of advertisements. An advertisement to be displayed to the end user is selected responsive to a function of both the calculated scores and the managed credits.

Implementations disclose methods and systems for providing a media item at an adjusted playback. A method includes receiving, from a first user device, a playback request from a first user for a first media item including one or more portions of media content; determining an adjusted playback for at least one portion of the first media item that is different than a default playback for the at least one portion of the first media item. The determining is based on previous playback behavior of one or more users in relation to one or more media items that each included one or more portions of media content corresponding to the one or more portions media content of the first media item; and causing the at least one portion of the first media item to be rendered on the first user device at the adjusted playback.

Systems and methods for generating media program keywords based on a video-hosting website are disclosed herein. Control circuitry identifies, on the video-hosting website, video content items that include at least a portion of a media program. The media program has a media program identifier and the video content items have respective titles, each including one or more terms. The control circuitry identifies a term included in more than one of the titles and identifies a group of the video content items that have the term included in their title. Based on the video-hosting website, the control circuitry determines a cumulative number of rankings of the video content items within the group and generates a relevance score for the term based on the cumulative number of rankings. The control circuitry stores the term and the relevance score in a keyword database in association with the media program identifier.