1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for planning and managing advertising campaigns that include both digital media advertising and TV advertising across one or more digital formats and screens.
2. Prior Art
In the RTB (Real-Time Bidding) environment for electronic media impression auctions, an electronic advertising agency/consolidator operating a demand-side platform receives billions of daily auction opportunities for electronic media impressions from partners like Google®, Yahoo®, etc. These partners operate auctions for ad impressions and then place electronic ads based on auction results. A partner's auction is considered an external auction with respect to a demand-side platform where an internal auction may also be operated to determine which advertisements, also referred to herein as ads, and bids are submitted to the external auction. Each ad impression opportunity includes information parameters about the ad impression—for example, the target website, geolocation of the user, ad size, user cookie, etc, that are used for targeting purposes. The demand side platform then processes hundreds of ads in their system, supplied by advertiser clients along with desired filtering/targeting parameters, against information parameters supplied by the partner, and filters out any ads that do not qualify (for example the ad does not want to target Youtube.com®). For ads that are not removed due to a mismatch with targeting parameters, the demand-side platform then evaluates the corresponding bids that represent how much each client advertiser is willing to pay. The winning bid in the internal auction is then sent to the external auction to compete for the impression opportunity.
Note that in some scenarios, the electronic advertising agency/consolidator operating a demand-side platform and the advertiser/client may in fact be the same entity—for instance when they comprise a large organization with an internal advertising department capable of acting as a demand-side platform. Also, in such an instance, there may be no internal auction—just a submission to an external auction.
With the ever increasing growth of digital advertising, advertiser/clients are dealing with splitting their ad budget between TV and digital media. Digital media includes any electronic media format other than TV—essentially all digital formats that can be planned and delivered electronically. Digital media locations where an ad may be placed are called Media Properties. A Media Property or MP as described herein represents a specific instance of a media platform for electronically delivering information to a viewer. An MP as referenced herein usually refers to a website or URL on the Internet, however may also refer for example and without limitation to an App ID, a Game ID, or other digital electronic media including for example electronic billboards—small and large. Even digital watches with wireless connectivity are a form of MP.
As used in describing the invention as defined herein, television or TV includes:
Connected TV;
VOD (Video on Demand);
Broadcast TV;
Cable TV; and
TV programming provided online.
VOD is further defined as systems that allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content when they choose to, rather than having to watch at a specific broadcast time. IPTV technology is often used to bring video on demand to televisions and personal computers. Television VOD systems can either stream content through a set-top box, a computer or other device, allowing viewing in real time, or download it to a device such as a computer, digital video recorder (also called a personal video recorder) or portable media player for viewing at any time.
Television programming in general may be therefore viewed on conventional TV sets, or on any digital media viewing device, including without limitation PC/laptops, tablets, smartphones, and even digital watches. A viewer may be either a person, cookie, household, or any group of persons that watch the same programming—regardless of whether or not they watch simultaneously.
Current tools for helping advertisers split their budget between TV and digital media only deal with MP categorizations in aggregate, and typically only with respect to demographic characteristics such as age and gender. Methods are needed to more precisely plan and predict cross format ad campaigns where both TV and digital media are targeted in the same campaign. In particular, it would be useful to plan a campaign such that viewers who did not watch certain TV ads get to see them on digital media. It would also be useful at times to reinforce the viewing of certain TV ads by targeting the same viewers on digital media in order to increase the frequency of viewership of those ads.
Specific problems faced by a planner at an advertiser/client may include (written from the perspective of the planner):                Roughly how much incremental reach can I get by spending a portion of my TV budget on online video?        How do I get a controlled amount of additional frequency of impressions against targets that have likely seen my ads on TV?        Exactly how much should I spend on online video ads based on various goals: budget, frequency, reach, viewable?        How can I execute the digital and television portions of the campaign as easily as possible on an electronic platform, where planning and execution are integrated?        Exactly how much of the next campaign's share of budget should I spend on video?        How much should I spend on VOD and other avenues that provide incremental reach? How can I execute and track my ad spend across all formats easily?        
More specifically, a planner may have the following needs and goals (written from the perspective of the planner):                1. As a Planner, I need the latest data to be included in the TV Planning tool so that I can be confident in the results of the tool, by recognizing that the data from my historical TV buy is correct.        2. As a Planner, I need to have access to the correct and up-to-date data from the demand-side platform so that I can compare costs and reach versus my TV buy data historically.        3. As a Planner, I need to view the impact of shifting away some of my historical TV budget to online video advertising (executed via a demand-side platform) so that I can assess the impact of this shift on the unduplicated reach gains I can achieve.        4. As a Planner, I need to be able to easily execute a campaign with a demand-side platform for the online video ad portion based on the hypothetical TV and OLV (digital media) spend that I create in the planner, so that I can save time and reap the benefits around transparency and delivery that the demand-side platform offers.        5. As a Planner, I need to be able to apply a discount to the ‘rack rates’ that are quoted as ‘spend’ in the Nielsen TV data so that discounts I received from networks are included in the analysis, making my hypothetical spend plan more realistic.        6. As a Planner, I need to be able to ‘save’ a draft spending plan that I can access later so that I don't have to set up the analysis again after I've considered the plan over some time.        7. Preferably, the planning tool must be available via a public-facing website so I can easily perform prototype plans.        8. As a Planner, I need to be able to have the planning tool figure out the optimal amount of online video ad spend based on at least three different types of goals given the overall historical TV budget: maximize unduplicated reach at the same budget, maximize frequency at the same budget, and the most cost-effective reach across all available digital and TV formats and screens, so that I can tune my spend optimization to my particular marketing goal.        
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds