Interactive television program guide system for determining user values for demographic categories

摘要

An interactive television program guide system for determining user input values for demographic categories is provided. The system includes user television equipment having a receiver for receiving program guide information for the interactive television program guide, a user input receiver for receiving user input from user interface, such as a remote control, a microprocessor which utilizes the user input received to determine user values for demographic categories, and memory for storing the user values determined. In one illustrative use of the system for targeting advertisements to a user of the interactive television program guide, the receiver also receives advertisements, where the advertisements have preselected values for specified demographic categories. The user television equipment, preferably using microprocessor, compares the preselected values for the specified demographic categories associated with the advertisements with values of corresponding demographic categories stored in memory to determine which advertisements should be displayed. Those advertisements determined to be displayable based upon the comparison are then displayed.

主权项

1. A method for targeting advertisements to a user of an interactive system, the method comprising:
receiving a user input associated with a video program at a first time period, wherein the video program is associated with a demographic characteristic; determining whether the received user input is a first or a second type of function of a plurality of different types of functions of the interactive system, wherein:
each of the plurality of different types of functions performs a different type of function of the interactive system with respect to the video program and each of the plurality of different types of functions is associated with a weight value quantifying the user's affiliation with the demographic characteristic associated with the video program,a first weight value of the first type of function is larger than a second weight value of the second type of function indicating that the first type of function indicates a stronger user affiliation with the demographic characteristic associated with the video program than the second type of function, anda memory stores a first association between the first weight value and the first type of function and a second association between the second weight value and the second type of function; in response to determining that the received user input is the first type of function, retrieving, from the memory, based on the first association, the first weight value associated with the first type of function; calculating, using a processor, a user demographic modification value, based on the retrieved first weight value by weighting the demographic characteristic associated with the video program by the first weight value; modifying a user demographic value based on the user demographic modification value; storing the user demographic value at the interactive system; comparing the user demographic value to a plurality of demographic criteria associated with a plurality of advertisements to identify an advertisement associated with a demographic value that corresponds to the user demographic value; and selecting the identified advertisement of the plurality of advertisements based on the comparing.