Targeted television advertisements based on online behavior

What is this patent about?

’878 is related to the field of cross-media targeted advertising and digital device synchronization. Specifically, it addresses the technical challenge of linking a user’s online browsing behavior on one device, such as a computer or mobile phone, to their television viewing experience on a separate device, such as a set-top box, without relying on personally identifiable information.

The underlying idea behind ’878 is that devices belonging to the same household or office can be logically grouped by analyzing their shared network footprint over time. By observing that multiple devices access the Internet through the same dynamically assigned IP address at the same time, a remote server can infer they are behind the same local router, effectively creating a virtual map of a user's hardware ecosystem without ever knowing the user's actual identity.

The claims of ’878 focus on a method and system for identifying an association between multiple devices within a local area network to enable cross-device actions. This is achieved by storing association-detection information—specifically device identifiers, IP addresses assigned to a modem, and timestamps—to determine that different devices have accessed the network through a common IP address during a specific window of time.

In practice, the system utilizes this association to take an automatic action, such as selecting a television advertisement based on the behavioral or demographic data harvested from a different device in the same group. For example, if a user searches for travel deals on a laptop, the system recognizes the laptop's connection history matches the set-top box's history and subsequently routes a travel-related commercial to that specific television.

This approach differs from prior solutions by eliminating the need for login credentials or static identifiers to bridge the gap between different media platforms. By leveraging the temporal correlation of transient network addresses, the invention provides a privacy-sensitive mechanism for behavioral targeting that remains effective even as mobile devices move between different networks or as service providers rotate IP assignments.