Digital Advertising System

Abstract

A digital advertising system includes an advertisements module that provides a number of digital advertisements for display on a digital display device. A digital al sign module including the digital display device displays digital advertisements provided by the advertisements module, and captures video analytics data relating to previous viewers of the digital advertisements displayed by the digital sign module. A data mining module retrieves the video analytics data from the digital sign module and generates trained advertising models based thereon using a data mining algorithm. A content management system module coupled to the advertisements module and the data mining module receives the digital advertisements and the trained advertising models and generates a subset of the advertisements for display based on the trained advertising models.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method for selecting advertising for display on a digital sign, comprising:
 gathering video analytics data from a plurality of previous viewers of advertisements displayed on the digital sign;   analyzing the gathered video analytics data to determine viewing patterns of the previous viewers based on the gathered video analytics data;   training advertising models based on the viewing patterns; and   selecting an advertisement from a plurality of advertisements for display on the digital sign based on the trained advertising models.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein selecting the advertisement for display on the digital sign comprises selecting the advertisement for display on the digital sign for viewing by future viewers belonging to a same or similar demographic as the previous viewers. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising receiving advertiser preferences as to which advertisement to display on the digital sign for viewing by future viewers, and wherein selecting the advertisement for display on the digital sign based on the trained advertising models comprises selecting the advertisement for display based on one or both of the trained advertising models and the advertiser preferences. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein gathering video analytics data comprises gathering anonymous video analytics data. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the video analytics data comprises one or more previous viewer characteristics, the characteristics comprising gender and age. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 5 , wherein the video analytics data further comprises one or more of a date and time, a day-of-the-week, a timeslot, a display location, a viewing time, and an indication of whether the previous viewers are target viewers based on viewer characteristics associated with the previous viewers of advertisements displayed on the digital sign. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 receiving advertising data corresponding to the advertisements displayed on the digital sign; and   wherein training advertising models based on the viewing patterns comprises training advertising models based on one or both of the viewing patterns and the advertising data.   
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 7 , wherein the advertising data comprises a date and time, a display location, an ad category, and a duration or length for each advertisement displayed on the digital sign. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 gathering weather data corresponding to a time during which the advertisements were displayed on the digital sign; and   wherein training advertising models based on the viewing patterns comprises training advertising models based on one or both of the viewing patterns and the weather data.   
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 1  further comprising:
 receiving point-of-sale data; and 
 correlating the viewing patterns with the point-of-sale data to determine an effect of the advertisements displayed on the digital sign on a sale of a product or service identified in the advertisements. 
 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising displaying the selected advertisement on the digital sign. 
     
     
         12 . A digital advertising system, comprising:
 an input to receive a plurality of digital advertisements;   an output via which to transmit the digital advertisements for display on a digital sign module;   a data mining module to couple to the digital sign module to retrieve video analytics data relating to a plurality of previous viewers of the digital advertisements displayed on the digital sign and generate trained advertising models based on the video analytics data according to a data mining algorithm; and   a content management system module coupled to the data mining module to receive the trained advertising models, and to the input to receive the plurality of digital advertisements, the content management system to generate and transmit to the digital sign module a subset of the plurality of advertisements for display based on the trained advertising models and the plurality of digital advertisements.   
     
     
         13 . The digital advertising system of  claim 12 , further comprising an advertisements module coupled to the input to provide the plurality of digital advertisements. 
     
     
         14 . The digital advertising system of  claim 12  further comprising the digital sign module coupled to the output to receive the digital advertisements, the digital sign module to display the digital advertisements and to capture and transmit to a permanent store the video analytics data. 
     
     
         15 . The digital advertising system of  claim 14 , further comprising the data mining module coupled to the permanent store to retrieve the video analytics data. 
     
     
         16 . The digital advertising system of  claim 15 , wherein the data mining module generates trained advertising models based on the video analytics according to one of a number of well-known data mining algorithms including a Naive Bayes, a Decision Trees, and an Association Rules, data mining algorithm. 
     
     
         17 . The digital advertising system of  claim 14 , wherein the digital sign module comprises a digital sign player module in which to store, and from which to transmit to a digital display screen, the subset of the plurality of advertisements for display. 
     
     
         18 . The digital advertising system of  claim 12 , wherein the input further receives advertiser preferences as to which advertisement to transmit to the digital sign, and wherein the content management system to generate and transmit to the digital sign module a subset of the plurality of advertisements for display based on the trained advertising models, the plurality of digital advertisements, and the advertiser preferences. 
     
     
         19 . The digital advertising system of  claim 12 , wherein the data mining module to couple to the digital sign module to retrieve video analytics data and advertising data corresponding to display of the advertisements transmitted for display to the digital sign, and generate trained advertising models based on the video analytics data and the advertising data according to the data mining algorithm. 
     
     
         20 . The digital advertising system of  claim 12 , wherein the data mining module to receive weather data corresponding to a time during which the advertisements transmitted for display to the digital sign were displayed, and generate training advertising models based on the video analytics data and the weather data according to the data mining algorithm. 
     
     
         21 . The digital advertising system of  claim 12 , wherein the data mining module to couple to the digital sign module to retrieve video analytics data comprises the data mining module to couple to the digital sign module to receive anonymous video analytics data. 
     
     
         22 - 25 . (canceled) 
     
     
         26 . A computer readable medium which contains instructions that when executed by the computer, cause the computer to perform the following steps:
 gathering video analytics data from a plurality of previous viewers of advertisements displayed on the digital sign;   analyzing the gathered video analytics data to determine viewing patterns of the previous viewers based on the gathered video analytics data;   training advertising models based on the viewing patterns; and   selecting an advertisement from a plurality of advertisements for display on the digital sign based on the trained advertising models.   
     
     
         27 . The apparatus of  claim 26 , wherein the medium contains further instructions that when executed by the computer cause the computer to perform the step of receiving advertiser preferences as to which advertisement to display on the digital sign for viewing by future viewers, and wherein selecting the advertisement for display on the digital sign based on the trained advertising models comprises selecting the advertisement for display based on one or both of the trained advertising models and the advertiser preferences. 
     
     
         28 . (canceled) 
     
     
         29 . The apparatus of  claim 28 , wherein the video analytics data further comprises one or more of a date and time, a day-of-the-week, a times lot, a display location, a viewing time, and
 an indication of whether the previous viewers are target viewers based on viewer characteristics associated with the previous viewers of advertisements displayed on the digital sign.   
     
     
         30 . The apparatus of  claim 26 , wherein the medium contains further instructions that when executed by the computer cause the computer to perform the following step:
 receiving advertising data corresponding to the advertisements displayed on the digital sign; and   wherein training advertising models based on the viewing patterns comprises training advertising models based on one or both of the viewing patterns and the advertising data.