METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR EVALUATING AN AUDIENCE IN A CONTENT-BASED NETWORK

摘要

Methods and apparatus for identifying, creating and distributing audience qualities and other information to an advertisement management system and/or an advertisement decision maker. In one embodiment, the methods and apparatus of the invention provide a technique for classifying data collected about an audience, and creating and grouping qualifiers to those classifications. The invention further includes methods and apparatus for managing an advertising inventory via a management system. The inventory is defined in one variant by predicted or known secondary content insertion opportunities, and a particular audience of the primary content associated with the insertion opportunity. Subscriber privacy and anonymity is also optionally maintained via e.g., hashing or encrypting data relating to the CPE and/or subscriber, thus ensuring that audience data is not traceable to a specific user account.