US-12621071-B2 - Methods and apparatus for optimizing station reference fingerprint loading using reference watermarks

US12621071B2US 12621071 B2US12621071 B2US 12621071B2US-12621071-B2

Abstract

Methods, apparatus, systems and articles of manufacture are disclosed selectively generating and storing hashed reference signatures. An example method disclosed herein determining whether watermark coverage of a first media segment satisfies a dropout constraint, the first media segment corresponding to a first monitoring time interval of a media source feed and, when the watermark coverage of the first media segment does not satisfy the dropout constraint hashing first media signatures associated with the first media segment to generate corresponding first hashed signatures and generating first reference data for the first media segment, the first reference data including the first hashed signatures and the first media signatures. The example method further includes, when the watermark coverage of the first media segment satisfies the dropout constraint, generating second reference data for the first media segment, the second reference data including the first media signatures.

Inventors

James Petro
Dan Nelson
Deborah Cross
Raghuram Ranganathan

Assignees

THE NIELSEN COMPANY (US), LLC

Dates

Publication Date: 20260505
Application Date: 20241125

Claims (20)

1 . An audience measurement computing system, comprising: at least one processor; and memory having stored therein machine readable instructions that, upon execution by the at least one processor, cause the audience measurement computing system to perform operations comprising: obtaining reference watermarks associated with a media source feed including a plurality of media segments, wherein each media segment corresponds to a respective monitoring time interval of the media source feed; making a determination that watermark coverage of a first media segment of the plurality of media segments corresponding to a first monitoring time interval failed to satisfy a threshold; and based on making the determination that watermark coverage of the first media segment failed to satisfy the threshold: (i) generating linear reference signatures associated with the first media segment, and (ii) storing the linear reference signatures.
2 . The audience measurement computing system of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise: hashing the linear reference signatures associated with the first media segment to determine hashed reference signatures associated with the first media segment; and storing the hashed reference signatures.
3 . The audience measurement computing system of claim 2 , wherein the hashed reference signatures are used to credit viewership of the first media segment based on matching a monitoring signature with at least one of the hashed reference signatures.
4 . The audience measurement computing system of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise: determining at least one watermark-extraction timestamp indicated by a given one of the reference watermarks extracted from a portion of the media source feed; determining at least one signature-generation timestamp associated with a given one of the linear reference signatures generated from another portion of the media source feed; and aligning the at least one watermark-extraction timestamp and the at least one signature-generation timestamp.
5 . The audience measurement computing system of claim 4 , wherein the operations further comprise: making the determination that watermark coverage of the first media segment failed to satisfy the threshold by determining, based on the aligned at least one watermark-extraction timestamp and at least one signature-generation timestamp that the first monitoring time interval corresponding to the first media segment does not include a threshold extent of extracted watermarks.
6 . The audience measurement computing system of claim 4 , wherein the operations further comprise: storing hashed reference signatures in association with the determined at least one signature-generation timestamp corresponding to the first monitoring time interval.
7 . The audience measurement computing system of claim 1 , wherein the threshold is a watermark dropout threshold indicating a threshold percentage of watermarks extracted from the media source feed during the first monitoring time interval.
8 . The audience measurement computing system of claim 7 , wherein the operations further comprise: extracting the reference watermarks from the media source feed, and making the determination that watermark coverage of the first media segment failed to satisfy the threshold by determining that a percentage of the reference watermarks extracted during the first monitoring time interval is less than the threshold percentage.
9 . The audience measurement computing system of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise: populating a reference database for the media source feed including, for the first media segment corresponding to the first monitoring time interval, hashed reference signatures, and, for at least one other media segment of the plurality of media segments, reference watermarks extracted from the at least one other media segment and linear reference signatures; and wherein the reference database is used in crediting media impressions to ones of the plurality of media segments based on monitoring information that matches corresponding portions of the reference database.
10 . A method comprising: obtaining reference watermarks associated with a media source feed including a plurality of media segments, wherein each media segment corresponds to a respective monitoring time interval of the media source feed; making a determination that watermark coverage of a first media segment of the plurality of media segments corresponding to a first monitoring time interval failed to satisfy a threshold; and based on making the determination that watermark coverage of the first media segment failed to satisfy the threshold: (i) generating linear reference signatures associated with the first media segment, and (ii) storing the linear reference signatures.
11 . The method of claim 10 , further comprising: hashing the linear reference signatures associated with the first media segment to determine hashed reference signatures associated with the first media segment; and storing the hashed reference signatures.
12 . The method of claim 11 , wherein the hashed reference signatures are used to credit viewership of the first media segment based on matching a monitoring signature with at least one of the hashed reference signatures.
13 . The method of claim 10 , further comprising: determining at least one watermark-extraction timestamp indicated by a given one of the reference watermarks extracted from a portion of the media source feed; determining at least one signature-generation timestamp associated with a given one of the linear reference signatures generated from another portion of the media source feed; and aligning the at least one watermark-extraction timestamp and the at least one signature-generation timestamp.
14 . The method of claim 13 , further comprising: making the determination that watermark coverage of the first media segment failed to satisfy the threshold by determining, based on the aligned at least one watermark-extraction timestamp and at least one signature-generation timestamp that the first monitoring time interval corresponding to the first media segment does not include a threshold extent of extracted watermarks.
15 . The method of claim 13 , further comprising: storing hashed reference signatures in association with the determined at least one signature-generation timestamp corresponding to the first monitoring time interval.
16 . The method of claim 10 , wherein the threshold is a watermark dropout threshold indicating a threshold percentage of watermarks extracted from the media source feed during the first monitoring time interval.
17 . The method of claim 16 , further comprising: extracting the reference watermarks from the media source feed, and making the determination that watermark coverage of the first media segment failed to satisfy the threshold by determining that a percentage of the reference watermarks extracted during the first monitoring time interval is less than the threshold percentage.
18 . The method of claim 10 , further comprising: populating a reference database for the media source feed including, for the first media segment corresponding to the first monitoring time interval, hashed reference signatures, and, for at least one other media segment of the plurality of media segments, reference watermarks extracted from the at least one other media segment and linear reference signatures; and wherein the reference database is used in crediting media impressions to ones of the plurality of media segments based on monitoring information that matches corresponding portions of the reference database.
19 . A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon computer-readable instructions that, when executed by at least one processor, cause performance of operations comprising: obtaining reference watermarks associated with a media source feed including a plurality of media segments, wherein each media segment corresponds to a respective monitoring time interval of the media source feed; making a determination that watermark coverage of a first media segment of the plurality of media segments corresponding to a first monitoring time interval failed to satisfy a threshold; and based on making the determination that watermark coverage of the first media segment failed to satisfy the threshold: (i) generating linear reference signatures associated with the first media segment, and (ii) storing the linear reference signatures.
20 . The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19 , wherein the operations further comprise: hashing the linear reference signatures associated with the first media segment to determine hashed reference signatures associated with the first media segment; and storing the hashed reference signatures.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS This patent is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 18/482,945, filed Oct. 9, 2023, which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 12,184,397, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/955,453, filed Sep. 28, 2022, which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 11,784,737, and which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/121,303, filed on Dec. 14, 2020, which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 11,469,841, and which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/232,509, filed Dec. 26, 2018, which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 10,868,620. Priority to U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 18/482,945; 17/955,453; 17/121,303; and 16/232,509 is claimed. U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 18/482,945; 17/955,453; 17/121,303; and 16/232,509 are hereby incorporated by reference herein in their entireties. FIELD OF THE DISCLOSURE This disclosure relates generally to media identification systems, and, more particularly, to methods and apparatus for optimizing station reference fingerprint loading using reference watermarks. BACKGROUND Some media includes embedded watermarks that allow subsequent detection of the media by decoding the watermarks in the presented media. For example, a broadcasting entity (e.g., a radio broadcaster, a television broadcaster, an internet streamer, etc.) may encode watermarks into media signals. A media monitoring entity may then detect the watermarks in the media signals during monitoring activities and accurately determine, based on identification information associated with the watermark, that the media (e.g., a television show, a film, a commercial etc.) corresponding to the media signals was presented to a user. Additionally or alternatively, a media monitoring entity can also generate audio signatures from a media signal. Audio signatures are a condensed reference that can be used to subsequently identify the media. These signatures can be hashed to allow faster matching in an audio signature database. In some examples, a media monitoring entity can monitor a media source feed (e.g., a television feed, etc.) to generate reference signatures representative of media presented via that media source feed. Such reference signatures can be compared to signatures generated by media monitors to credit viewership of the media. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an example environment in which the teachings of this disclosure may be implemented FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an implementation of the reference generator of FIG. 1. FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an implementation of the reference analyzer of FIG. 1. FIGS. 4A-4C illustrated example outputs of the reference analyzer of FIG. 3 based on input from media source feeds of FIG. 1. FIG. 5 is a flowchart representative of machine readable instructions which may be executed to implement the reference analyzer of FIG. 2. FIG. 6 is a block diagram of an example processing platform structured to execute the instructions of FIG. 5 to implement the reference analyzer of FIG. 3. The figures are not to scale. In general, the same reference numbers will be used throughout the drawing(s) and accompanying written description to refer to the same or like parts. DETAILED DESCRIPTION As used herein, the term “media” includes any type of content and/or advertisement delivered via any type of distribution medium. Thus, media includes television programming or advertisements, radio programming or advertisements, movies, web sites, streaming media, etc. Example methods, apparatus, and articles of manufacture disclosed herein monitor media presentations at media devices. Such media devices may include, for example, Internet-enabled televisions, personal computers, Internet-enabled mobile handsets (e.g., a smartphone), video game consoles (e.g., Xbox®, PlayStation®), tablet computers (e.g., an iPad®), digital media players (e.g., a Roku® media player, a Slingbox®, etc.), etc. In some examples, media monitoring information is aggregated to determine ownership and/or usage statistics of media devices, relative rankings of usage and/or ownership of media devices, types of uses of media devices (e.g., whether a device is used for browsing the Internet, streaming media from the Internet, etc.), and/or other types of media device information. In examples disclosed herein, monitoring information includes, but is not limited to, media identifying information (e.g., media-identifying metadata, codes, signatures, watermarks, and/or other information that may be used to identify presented media), application usage information (e.g., an identifier of an application, a time and/or duration of use of the application, a rating of the application, etc.), and/or user-identifying information (e.g., demographic information, a user identifier, a panelist identifier, a username, etc.). Audio watermarking is a technique used to identify media such as television broadcasts, radio broadcasts, advertisements (tel