Systems and methods of providing collaborative consumer-controlled advertising environments

Abstract

Targeted or other advertising may comprise one or more advertisements presented to multiple users in a virtual world environment such that participating users can interact with one another and/or with executed advertisements. Groups of users may be invited to participate in collaborative virtual world environments based on consumer contact lists or profiles establishing matching preferences for such groups. Synchronized data may be narrowcasted or broadcasted to invited users. Such data may define one or more virtual world environments as well as traditional and/or virtual world advertisements for execution in the shared environment(s). Advertisements may be selected based on one or more consumer preferences associated with one or more of the users participating in the shared virtual world environment.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method of configuring a collaborative advertising environment, comprising:
 providing to a plurality of devices a media stream with information to obtain data comprising a virtual world advertisement within a collaborative virtual world environment;   receiving a request from a first device of the plurality of devices for participation in the collaborative virtual world environment; and   rendering the collaborative virtual world environment for display on the first device.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the media stream is broadcast to the plurality of computing devices. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1  further comprising:
 receiving a request from a second device of the plurality of devices for participation in the collaborative virtual world environment; and 
 rendering the collaborative virtual world environment for display on the second device. 
 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1  wherein an advertisement is played within the collaborative virtual, world environment. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the media stream is separate from the collaborative virtual world environment. 
     
     
         6 . An advertising device comprising:
 memory; and   a processor associated with the memory, the processor adapted to:
 provide to a plurality of devices a media stream with information to obtain data comprising a virtual world advertisement within a collaborative virtual world environment; 
 receive a request from a first device of the plurality of devices for participation in the collaborative virtual world environment; and 
   render the collaborative virtual world environment for display on the first device.   
     
     
         7 . The advertising device of  claim 6  wherein the media stream is broadcast to the plurality of computing devices. 
     
     
         8 . The advertising device of  claim 6 , wherein the processor is further adapted to:
 receive a request from a second device of the plurality of devices for participation in the collaborative virtual world environment; and   render the collaborative virtual world environment for display on the second device.   
     
     
         9 . The advertising device of  claim 6  wherein an advertisement is played within the collaborative virtual world environment. 
     
     
         10 . The advertising device of  claim 6  wherein the media stream is separate from the collaborative virtual world environment.