Verizon Digital Media Services Inc.

Kenneth Alan Brueck

David K Brown

David Frederick Brueck

Nathan James Edwards

Calvin Ryan Owen

Trevor Deren Hunsaker

Tyler Willey

Thomas Quinn

Paul D Heitlinger

The embodiments implement server-side third party content insertion with client-side tracking beacon. The solution embeds third party content within designated breaks of primary content to form a single unified stream that is streamed to a client requesting the primary content. The unified stream allows the client to receive all content without switching between different streams and prevents advertisement blockers running on the client from differentiating the third party content from the primary content and from blocking the third party content. The solution also generates and sends to the client, a configuration containing events and destinations the different content providers define for their respective content. The client monitors for the events specified in the configuration during playback of the unified stream. An event that is triggered causes the client to send a tracking beacon to a content provider specified destination associated with the event.

Hybrid client-side beacon tracking

Some embodiments provide server-side implementation and enforcement of blackout rules for streaming content. A server receives a request from an end user device and extracts a first identifier identifying the end user device and a second identifier identifying the requested stream from the request. The server determines if blackout rules identified for the requested streaming content using the second identifier apply to the end user device based on the first identifier. The blackout rules may restrict IP addresses, IP address subnets, or geographic regions defined using zip codes or DMAs. The first identifier can be an IP address that directly or indirectly maps to the blackout rules. If the first identifier is restricted by a blackout rule, the server identifies the restrictions of the rule, when they apply, and how they are to be applied before dynamically altering the content that is streamed to the end user device.

Server-side blackout enforcement

Growing community of inventors

Draper, UT, United States of America

Kenneth Alan Brueck