Interactive TV audience estimation and program rating in real-time using multi level tracking methods, systems and program products

摘要

An interactive TV content creation tool imports video and other assets, including WebPages, Java script, etc., as a series of resources for interactive TV content creation for real time audience estimation and program ratings. A processing system embeds hyperlinks into one or more objects contained in a program frame as desired. Each hotlink has attributes. These attributes include shape, name, description and Z-order. The hotlink can have one of several shapes, including rectangle, ellipse and parallelogram. The hotlink types are included in an object tree which is displayed in a window to a creator. A hotlink type is selected in the hotlink tree, and a window displays a linked properties tab available for the selected object. There are several link types available; linking to a URL, another interactive TV content file, a video clip, an audio clip, an image, or a tracking action and transaction action. There are different parameters for different actions. One parameter is a tracking script. Another parameter is a tracking flag. The tracking flag can be set to follow different tracking modes. If the “enable global tracking” is chosen, a name/value pair “global=true” will be appended to the tracking script transmitted to the global tracking server through network. If the “enable local tracking” is chosen, a name/value pair “local=true” will be appended to the tracking script. The embedded tracking information can follow three multi-level tracking patterns (MTP): regular program viewing tracking, enhanced program viewing tracking, and per object granularity tracking. The viewer returns the script to a server which calculates audience estimation and program ratings for the interactive TV program.