DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 4/9/2026 has been entered.
Terminal Disclaimer
The terminal disclaimer filed on 3/12/2026 disclaiming the terminal portion of any patent granted on this application which would extend beyond the expiration date of US12069346 has been reviewed and is accepted. The terminal disclaimer has been recorded.
Response to Amendment
This office action is in response to communications filed 9/29/2025. Claims 21-33 and 38 are amended. Claims 1-20 are cancelled. Claims 21-40 are pending in this action.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 21-40 have been considered but are moot in view of new grounds of rejection.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 21, 23-24, 26-31, 33, 35-36, 38 and 40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kitts (of record) in view of Ebrahimi (of record), Berk (US20120002795, hereinafter Berk) and Yonezaki (of record).
Regarding claims 21, 33 and 38, Kitts discloses a computer-implemented method comprising:
generating, by a server, a model to predict advertisement effectiveness for a pairing of an advertisement and a media placement based on a first advertisement effectiveness measure (see Kitts, at least at [0165]-[0168], [0174]-[0178] and [0197]-[0199], Fig. 1A and Fig. 8, and other related text), and
combining the first advertisement effectiveness measure with a historical airing count to predict the advertisement effectiveness (see Kitts, at least at [0049]-[0053], [0066]-[0070], [0083], [0087]-[0094], [0165]-[0167], and other related text).
Kitts does not specifically disclose based on determining a prediction of the advertisement effectiveness, converting the prediction of the predicted advertisement effectiveness into native units including a percentage correlation between buyers and phone responses; or
placing the advertisement within the media placement based on the prediction of the advertisement effectiveness.
In an analogous art relating to a system for determining ad effectiveness, Ebrahimi discloses based on determining a prediction of advertisement effectiveness, converting predicted advertisement effectiveness into native units (see Ebrahimi, at least at [0050], and other related text).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective date of the invention to modify the system of the system of Kitts to include the limitations as taught by Ebrahimi for the advantage of more efficiently processing data.
Kitts in view of Ebrahimi does not specifically disclose units including a percentage correlation between buyers and phone responses; or
placing the advertisement within the media placement based on the prediction of the advertisement effectiveness.
In an analogous art relating to a system for determining ad effectiveness, Burk discloses units including a percentage correlation between buyers and phone responses (see Berk, at least at [0089]-[0093], and other related text).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective date of the invention to modify the system of the system of Kitts in view of Ebrahimi to include the limitations as taught by Berk for the advantage of more efficiently processing data.
Kitts in view of Ebrahimi and Berk does not specifically disclose placing the advertisement within the media placement based on the first advertisement effectiveness measure
In an analogous art relating to a system for optimized advertising, Yonezaki discloses a model to predict advertisement effectiveness for a pairing of an advertisement and a media placement based on a first advertisement effectiveness measure (see Yonezaki, at least at [0026]-[0030], and other related text); and
placing the advertisement within the media placement based on the first advertisement effectiveness measure (see Yonezaki, at least at [0026]-[0030], and other related text).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of Kitts in view of Ebrahimi and Berk to include the limitations as taught by Yonezaki for the advantage of efficiently presenting an ad to a user.
Regarding claims 23, 35 and 40, Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki discloses wherein the model is further generated based on a number of previously placed airings of the advertisement in the media placement, the number of previously placed airings being estimated based on a number of historical airings and co-viewing probabilities from set top box data (see Kitts, at least at [0129]-[0130], [0154] and [0166], and other related text).
Regarding claims 24 and 36, Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki discloses a weight for each media placement is based on one or more of a count of persons, and other data sufficiency statistics (see Kitts, at least at [0134]-[0136] and [0153], and other related text).
Regarding claim 26, Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki discloses applying the model to a plurality of media assets for a particular advertisement to assist in selection of one or more of the plurality of media assets for airing the advertisement (see Kitts, at least at [0154] and [0198], and other related text).
Regarding claim 27, Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki does not specifically disclose wherein the media placement is identified as having at least a predetermined number of observed viewers over an expected number of viewers for a predetermined time and a predetermined network.
However, the Examiner takes Official Notice that it is very well-known and common in the art to identify a media asset with a predetermined number of observed viewers, i.e., actual viewers, and an expected number of viewers for predicting ad effectiveness for the advantage of ensuring the most cost-effective placements of ads. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki to include the above limitations for the advantage of ensuring that the most cost-effective placements of ads is realized to maximize profits.
Regarding claim 28, Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki discloses creating, by the server, a media asset pattern of same-time-last-week; and calculating, by the server, an ad effectiveness measure for the media asset pattern (see Kitts, at least at [0165]-[0166], and other related text).
Regarding claim 29, Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki discloses wherein the media asset patterns include one or more of station, program, station-program, station-day-hour, station-day-hour-program-market (see Kitts, at least at [0151]-[0152], and other related text).
Regarding claim 30, Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki discloses wherein each ad effectiveness measure for media asset pattern predictor is standardized so that heterogeneous media asset patterns are directly comparable with each other (see Kitts, at least at [0101] and [0134]-[0138], and other related text).
Regarding claim 31, Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki discloses wherein the standardized ad effectiveness is predicted based on standardizing each advertisement effectiveness measure (see Kitts, at least at [0142]-[0148], and other related text).
Claims 22, 25, 34, 37 and 39 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kitts (of record) in view of Ebrahimi (of record), Berk (previously cited) and Yonezaki (of record), as applied to claims 1 and 15 above, and further in view of Natoli (of record).
Regarding claims 22, 34 and 39, Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki discloses the first advertisement effectiveness measure including one or more of phone responses, demographic similarity, set top box buyers, and web response (see Kitts, at least at [0064], [0130], [0140] and [0201], and other related text), but does not specifically disclose adjusting a value of the first advertisement effectiveness measure for the pairing of the advertisement and the media placement to a default value of the first advertisement effectiveness measure if a number of impressions for the pairing is below a minimum participation threshold for the first advertisement effectiveness measure.
In an analogous art relating to a system for optimized marketing, Natoli discloses adjusting a value of a predictor for an experiment to a default value if a number of impressions for the experiment is below a minimum participation threshold for the experiment (see Natoli, at least at [0021]-[0023] and [0180], and other related text).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki to include the limitations as taught by Natoli for the advantage of more efficiently satisfying the objectives of the mode.
Regarding claims 25 and 37, Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki, and further in view of Natoli discloses wherein the model disregards a predictor for an experiment responsive to a determination that a number of impressions for that experiment is below the minimum participation threshold (see Natoli, [0021]-[0023] and [0180]).
Claim 32 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kitts (of record) in view of Ebrahimi (of record), Berk (previously cited) and Yonezaki (of record), and further in view of Markey (of record).
Regarding claim 32, Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki discloses wherein the predicted standardized advertisement effectiveness is converted into the native units including buyers and phone responses (see rejections above), but does not specifically disclose the units being per million.
In an analogous art relating to a system for ad metrics, Markey discloses ad measurement units being units per million (see Markey, at least at [0228], and other related text).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective date of the invention to modify the system of the system of Kitts in view of Ebrahimi, Berk and Yonezaki to include the limitations as taught by Markey for the advantage of more efficiently processing data.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHENEA DAVIS whose telephone number is (571)272-9524 and whose email address is CHENEA.SMITH@USPTO.GOV. The examiner can normally be reached M-F: 8:00 am - 4:00 pm.
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/CHENEA DAVIS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2421
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