CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This is a US continuation-in-part application of U.S. Ser. No. 17/072,491 entitled “System and Method for Identifying Cognate Image Sequences” filed on Oct. 16, 2020 that is in turn a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/389,957 entitled “System and Method for Media Segment Identification” filed on Apr. 21, 2019, that is a continuation-in-part US Patent application of now issued U.S. Pat. No. 10,271,095 entitled “System and Method for Media Segment Identification” that issued on Apr. 23, 2019, having been filed as U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/110,265 on Aug. 23, 2018, that in turn claims priority to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/852,389 filed on Dec. 22, 2017 entitled “System for the Augmented Assessment of Virtual Insertion Opportunities”, now U.S. Pat. No. 10,096,169 issued on Oct. 9, 2018, and to U.S. Provisional Patent Application 62/608,666 filed on Dec. 21, 2017 entitled “Augmented Virtual Video-Insertion”, the contents of all of which are hereby fully incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

(1) Field of the Invention

The invention relates to a system and method for obtaining remuneration for displaying digital content such as, but not limited to, an image substituted for an image sequence automatically recognized as cognate to a known image sequence, and more particularly, to calculating said remuneration, in part, proportional to an automatically obtained count of electronic viewing devices withing viewing range of the displayed images.

(2) Description of Related Art

The technical problems of calculating a reasonable remuneration for the display of content, or the failure to display content, and of obtaining that remuneration are inherit in the field of commercial video or television broadcasting and/or streaming.

It is generally accepted that reasonable remuneration takes into account factors such as, but not limited to, the quality, or desirability, of the content, the time at which the content is shown, the amount of content shown, and the size of the audience viewing the content.

Traditional methods of estimating audience size focus on the number of devices on which the content is being delivered. There are, however, situations in which merely knowing how many display devices are being used may be significantly misleading. Examples of such situations include, but are not limited by, the display of media at a sporting or concert stadium, the display of media within a bar or other entertainment location, and the display of media within a hotel lobby or airport lounge. In such situations it may be desirable to obtain a reasonable estimate of the number of people who are within viewing range of the device on which the media is being displayed, and have the remuneration reflect that number.

A further complication is of knowing what content was shown on the display device and when, or for how long, it was show. This is exasperated by the ability of venue owners to selectively substitute out and replace their own content on the display. This may be done for a number of reasons such as, but not limited to, not wanting to display content in a restaurant or bar that relates to rival products, or to content such as advertisements for alcohol that may be deemed inappropriate in a school auditorium or church hall.

Yet a further complication is the actual calculation of appropriate remuneration and the payment or receipt of the agreed remuneration.

It is therefore highly desirable to provide a system and method for remunerating a display of substituted content such as, but not limited to, cognate substitute images, that may base the remuneration of a reasonable estimate of the actual number of people viewing the content. It is also desirable that such a system may facilitate the actual payment of the remuneration by automatically facilitating transfers of assets.

The relevant prior art includes:

US publication 2021-0034879 entitled “System and Method for Identifying Cognate Image Sequences” that was published on Feb. 4, 2021 that describes a system and method of identifying cognate image sequences. The system examines significant frames of a stream of video images using an array of image indexes. The image index array includes image indexes obtained by at least two different image indexing methods. These are compared to a corresponding array of image indices of significant frames of known image sequences. An image quality indicator is used to determine which set of image index thresholds to use in making the comparison. These thresholds are more stringent for higher quality frames. Two image sequences are considered cognate when a string of sufficiently many sequential frame matches is established. In an alternate embodiment, image blurriness is also, or instead, used to determine the appropriate set of image index thresholds. The sets of image index thresholds are determined using machine learning on a curated set of representative images.

Various implementations are known in the art but fail to address all of the problems solved by the invention described herein. Various embodiments of this invention are illustrated in the accompanying drawings and will be described in more detail herein below.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

An inventive system and method for remunerating a display of a cognate substitute image is disclosed.

In a preferred embodiment, a stream of video images may be received by a digital processor en-route to a display device. The digital processor may use a cognate identifier module to automatically identify any sequences in the incoming stream that are cognate with any of a number of known video images sequences stored in a database accessible to the digital processor. If a cognate sequence is found, i.e., a sequence sufficiently similar to the known sequence that it may be reasonably assumed they both derive from a common source, the digital processor may use a substitution module to replace the identified cognate image sequence with a cognate substitute image that may be taken from another database accessible to the digital processer. In making the substitution, the digital processor may automatically create an alternative video image stream that may then be displayed on the display screen. The digital processor may also have a remuneration module that may calculate a reasonable remuneration for displaying the cognate substitute image. The reasonable remuneration may consider factors such as, but not limited to, the nature of the image displayed, the amount of time it was displayed for and the time of day or night it was displayed or some combination thereof. The remuneration module may then record an accumulated monetary charge related to the image display.

In a further embodiment, the system may also incorporate an electronic device detector calibrated to provide a count of electronic devices within a viewing range of said display device. What may be detected may be cellphones. A count of the cellphones within a viewing range may serve as a reasonable proxy for the number of people within viewing range. This count may, therefore, be used by the remuneration module in calculating said accumulated monetary charge. The charge may, for instance, be, in part, proportional to the count of electronic devices within the viewing range.

In yet a further embodiment, the remuneration module may be programmed to automatically transfer digital assets equal in value to the accumulated monetary charge from a client account to a provider account, or vice versa.

Therefore, the present invention succeeds in conferring the following, and others not mentioned, desirable and useful benefits and objectives.

It is an object of the present invention to provide a convenient system for both identifying and substituting out cognate image sequences, and for evaluating a reasonable remuneration based, in part of a count of electronic devices serving as a proxy for actual viewers of content.

