Advertising management system for digital video streams

Abstract

A method and apparatus for the managing advertisements in a digital environment, including methods for selecting suitable advertising based on subscriber profiles, and substituting advertisements in a program stream with targeted advertisements. The Ad Management System (AMS)of the present invention manages the sales and insertion of digital video advertisements in cable television, switched digital video, and streaming video (Internet) based environments. The AMSprovides advertisers an ability to describe their advertisements (ads) in terms of target market demographics, required ad bandwidth, ad duration, and other ad specific parameters. The AMSreceives the ad descriptions that include some or all of the aforementioned parameters, and matches the ads to the advertising opportunities ('avails') available in the programming stream. The AMStracks different avails including duration and bandwidth of the avail, and uses a number of schemes to determine if the ad can be placed in the avail. The advertisements may be transported over an in-band advertising channel or over an out-of-band advertisement channel. At the multiplexing end, the ads may be multiplexed in one or more program streams synchronously, plesiochronously, or asynchronously. In either case, a dynamic linking process is used to insert the selected advertisements in the program streams.