Streaming Content Request Tracking via Intermediary State Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
Media streaming applications face inefficiencies in tracking content delivery due to their stateless nature, which hinders the ability to accurately monitor impressions or downloads, leading to challenges in reconciling payment and advertisement metrics for content providers.
Innovation Solution
A content processing system that generates unique reference identifiers for content requests within a defined time window, allowing for the association and tracking of subsequent requests, thereby facilitating the generation of content request usage information and improving reconciliation for both content providers and delivery services.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If media streaming applications use a stateless architecture, then system simplicity and ease of operation are improved, but the ability to track content delivery metrics and reconcile payments deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a content delivery service as an intermediary between the media streaming application and the content provider. This intermediary maintains state information about content requests, segments, and delivery status, allowing the stateless streaming application to track metrics without modifying its core architecture. The intermediary correlates segment requests with parent content requests and maintains delivery state information.
2Productivity
If content is delivered as multiple segments, then transmission efficiency and bandwidth utilization are improved, but the complexity of tracking and reconciling content delivery deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments content into multiple smaller units (content segments) that can be independently requested and delivered. Each segment request includes a content identifier and segment number, allowing systematic tracking. The content delivery service correlates individual segment requests with the parent content request, maintaining relationships between segments and their parent content without requiring complex state management in the streaming application.
3Measurement precision
If content delivery tracking is implemented at the application level, then measurement precision is improved, but the strain on computing resources and system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The content delivery service acts as an intermediary that handles the complexity of tracking multiple segment requests and correlating them with parent content requests. This offloads the tracking burden from the media streaming application, maintaining measurement precision while reducing system complexity. The intermediary maintains delivery state information and provides aggregated metrics to the streaming application.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for tracking and identifying of a series of user requests in media streaming applications. Traditional media streaming requires a set of sequential, stateless user requests for content and do not support cookies or other user identification methods. The present application provides a framework for associating sequences of user media requests falling within a prescribed time window using multiple inputs to download requests for purposes of identifying and reconciling individual downloads.