초록 ▼

A method of distributing program material to a number of access providers which have identified themselves as having clients meeting profiles specified in a program material placement request, which is typically from an advertiser. More specifically, summary information is transmitted to a control d

A method of distributing program material to a number of access providers which have identified themselves as having clients meeting profiles specified in a program material placement request, which is typically from an advertiser. More specifically, summary information is transmitted to a control distribution node from each of the access providers, where the summary information describes customer profile information on the customers using each respective access provider. This summary information is then processed by the control distribution node to allocate the number of copies of program material that may be delivered to the clients or customers by each of the access provider nodes.

대표청구항 ▼

[ Having thus described our invention, what we claim as new and desire to secure by Letters Patent is:] [1.] In a communications network having at least one control distribution node and a plurality of access provider nodes, each access provider node providing program material to a plurality of clie

[ Having thus described our invention, what we claim as new and desire to secure by Letters Patent is:] [1.] In a communications network having at least one control distribution node and a plurality of access provider nodes, each access provider node providing program material to a plurality of clients, a method of distributing program material placement requests to said access provider nodes over said network, said method comprising:a. transmitting summary information describing customers of each of said access providers to said control distribution node;b. processing a program material placement request using said summary information to determine which of said access providers are eligible to receive said program material;c. transmitting a placement request query to said eligible access providers;d. processing by each of said eligible access providers to determine a corresponding number of said clients which satisfy said placement request query and are served by each said eligible access provider;e. transmitting each number determined in step d to said control distribution node;f. processing each said number received in step e to allocate to each access provider a corresponding subset of a total number of copies of said program material placement request which each of said eligible access providers is to transmit to said clients; andg. distributing a corresponding modified version of said program material placement requests corresponding to said placement query to each of said access providers, each modified version of said program material placement request specifying said corresponding subset for each said access provider.