Zapping index: Using smile to measure advertisement zapping likelihood

In marketing and advertising research, 'zapping' is defined as the action when a viewer stops watching a commercial. Researchers analyze users' behavior in order to prevent zapping which helps advertisers to design effective commercials. Since emotions can be used to engage consumers, in this paper, we leverage automated facial expression analysis to understand consumers' zapping behavior. Firstly, we provide an accurate moment-to-moment smile detection algorithm. Secondly, we formulate a binary classification problem (zapping/non-zapping) based on real-world scenarios, and adopt smile response as the feature to predict zapping. Thirdly, to cope with the lack of a metric in advertising evaluation, we propose a new metric called Zapping Index (ZI). ZI is a moment-to-moment measurement of a user's zapping probability. It gauges not only the reaction of a user, but also the preference of a user to commercials. Finally, extensive experiments are performed to provide insights and we make recommendations that will be useful to both advertisers and advertisement publishers

Key distribution technique for IPTV services with support for admission control and user defined groups

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

COST EFFICIENT PROVISIONING OF MASS MOBILE MULTIMEDIA SERVICES IN HYBRID CELLULAR AND BROADCASTING SYSTEMS

Uno de los retos a los que se enfrenta la industria de las comunicaciones móviles e inalámbricas es proporcionar servicios multimedia masivos a bajo coste, haciéndolos asequibles para los usuarios y rentables a los operadores. El servicio más representativo es el de TV móvil, el cual se espera que sea una aplicación clave en las futuras redes móviles. Actualmente las redes celulares no pueden soportar un consumo a gran escala de este tipo de servicios, y las nuevas redes de radiodifusión móvil son muy costosas de desplegar debido a la gran inversión en infraestructura de red necesaria para proporcionar niveles aceptables de cobertura. Esta tesis doctoral aborda el problema de la provisión eficiente de servicios multimedia masivos a dispositivos móviles y portables utilizando la infraestructura de radiodifusión y celular existente. La tesis contempla las tecnologías comerciales de última generación para la radiodifusión móvil (DVB-H) y para las redes celulares (redes 3G+ con HSDPA y MBMS), aunque se centra principalmente en DVB-H. El principal paradigma propuesto para proporcionar servicios multimedia masivos a bajo coste es evitar el despliegue de una red DVB-H con alta capacidad y cobertura desde el inicio. En su lugar se propone realizar un despliegue progresivo de la infraestructura DVB-H siguiendo la demanda de los usuarios. Bajo este contexto, la red celular es fundamental para evitar sobre-dimensionar la red DVB-H en capacidad y también en áreas con una baja densidad de usuarios hasta que el despliegue de un transmisor o un repetidor DVB-H sea necesario. Como principal solución tecnológica la tesis propone realizar una codificación multi-burst en DVB-H utilizando códigos Raptor. El objetivo es explotar la diversidad temporal del canal móvil para aumentar la robustez de la señal y, por tanto, el nivel de cobertura, a costa de incrementar la latencia de la red.Gómez Barquero, D. (2009). COST EFFICIENT PROVISIONING OF MASS MOBILE MULTIMEDIA SERVICES IN HYBRID CELLULAR AND BROADCASTING SYSTEMS [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/6881Palanci

DVB-NGH: the Next Generation of Digital Broadcast Services to Handheld Devices

This paper reviews the main technical solutions adopted by the next-generation mobile broadcasting standard DVB-NGH, the handheld evolution of the second-generation digital terrestrial TV standard DVB-T2. The main new technical elements introduced with respect to DVB-T2 are: layered video coding with multiple physical layer pipes, time-frequency slicing, full support of an IP transport layer with a dedicated protocol stack, header compression mechanisms for both IP and MPEG-2 TS packets, new low-density parity check coding rates for the data path (down to 1/5), nonuniform constellations for 64 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) and 256QAM, 4-D rotated constellations for Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK), improved time interleaving in terms of zapping time, end-to-end latency and memory consumption, improved physical layer signaling in terms of robustness, capacity and overhead, a novel distributed multiple input single output transmit diversity scheme for single-frequency networks (SFNs), and efficient provisioning of local content in SFNs. All these technological solutions, together with the high performance of DVB-T2, make DVB-NGH a real next-generation mobile multimedia broadcasting technology. In fact, DVB-NGH can be regarded the first third-generation broadcasting system because it allows for the possibility of using multiple input multiple output antenna schemes to overcome the Shannon limit of single antenna wireless communications. Furthermore, DVB-NGH also allows the deployment of an optional satellite component forming a hybrid terrestrial-satellite network topology to improve the coverage in rural areas where the installation of terrestrial networks could be uneconomical.Gómez Barquero, D.; Douillard, C.; Moss, P.; Mignone, V. (2014). DVB-NGH: the Next Generation of Digital Broadcast Services to Handheld Devices. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 60(2):246-257. doi:10.1109/TBC.2014.2313073S24625760

Keyframe insertion : enabling low-latency random access and packet loss repair

From a video coding perspective, there are two challenges when performing live video distribution over error-prone networks, such as wireless networks: random access and packet loss repair. There is a scarceness of solutions that do not impact steady-state usage and users with reliable connections. The proposed solution minimizes this impact by complementing a compression-efficient video stream with a companion stream solely consisting of keyframes. Although the core idea is not new, this paper is the first work to provide restrictions and modifications necessary to make this idea work using the High-Efficiency Video Coding (H.265/HEVC) compression standard. Additionally, through thorough quantification, insight is provided on how to provide low-latency fast channel switching capabilities and error recovery at low quality impact, i.e., less than 0.94 average Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VMAF) score decrease. Finally, worst-case drift artifacts are described and visualized such that the reader gets an overall picture of using the keyframe insertion technique

Time Frequency Slicing for Future Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting Networks

“© © 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.”Time Frequency Slicing (TFS) is a novel transmission technique for the future of terrestrial broadcasting. TFS breaks with the traditional transmission of TV services over single RF channels.With TFS, services are distributed across several channels by frequency hopping and time-slicing. The bundling of several RF channels into a TFS multiplex provides important advantages. A capacity gain is obtained due to a more efficient statistical multiplexing of video content since more services can be encoded in parallel. Improved frequency diversity also provides a coverage gain since signal imbalances between RF channels can be smoothed. Enhanced robustness against static and time varying interferences can also be achieved. TFS was described, although not implemented, for DVB-T2 and was fully adopted in DVB-NGH. At present, it is proposed for a future evolution of DVB-T2 and will also be considered in the ongoing ATSC 3.0 standard. This paper investigates the potential advantages of TFS by means of field measurements as well as simulations and discusses practical implementation aspects and requirements regarding transmission and reception. Results demonstrate the interesting advantages of TFS to improve both coverage and spectral efficiency, which addresses the future necessity of a more efficient DTT spectrum usage.Gimenez Gandia, JJ.; Stare, E.; Bergsmark, S.; Gómez Barquero, D. (2014). Time Frequency Slicing for Future Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting Networks. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 60(2):227-238. doi:10.1109/TBC.2014.2315766S22723860

Essays on Customer Engagement Strategies and Tactics in Business and Consumer Markets

In the last decade, customer engagement has become a key topic for both practitioners and researchers. Classically, customer engagement deals with customer behavior beyond purchase and thus non-monetary contributions by the customer, such as Word-of-Mouth (WOM), feedback and online reviews, or participation in the innovation process. While previous literature largely focused on the conceptualization of customer engagement itself, only a few studies have investigated how managers can actually stimulate and/or facilitate customer engagement. However, the latter is of high importance since only a few customers are truly engaged and it is often left to the firm to take the initiative to engage the customer. Thus, marketers need to understand how to design and successfully implement customer engagement initiatives. Accordingly, this dissertation investigates customer engagement strategies and tactics. While customer engagement strategy pertains to the overarching plan to leverage customer engagement to achieve the firm’s goals, customer engagement tactics deal with single actions taken by the firm to facilitate customer engagement across the various touchpoints in the customer journey. Specifically, this dissertation includes three essays, each addressing distinct questions with respect to customer engagement over the customer journey. Specifically, the first essay is conceptual in nature and provides an analysis of the strategic relevance of customer engagement in business-to-business (B2B) markets. The second essay explores how industrial firms can leverage service touchpoints as opportunities to engage their B2B customers in the post-purchase phase by employing the field service force for cross- and up-selling. Finally, the third essay investigates how marketers can use executional content cues in their TV advertisings (e.g., informativeness, creativity, or branding) to engage consumers and mitigate zapping behavior. Both empirical studies are based on unique datasets of real-world engagement tactics and related customer behavior obtained from co-operating companies

A Comparative Study of Different Finish Media Attitude and Behavior toward Advertising Avoidance and Used Time

The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between media and attitudes towards informativeness, entertainment and credibility, and advertisement avoidance and used time (time spent per media). This study evaluated six media (TV, newspapers, magazines, radio, emails and social networks) in terms of attitudes and respondent behavior. A total of 402 respondents from Finland were approached with a self-administered questionnaire. The results of the hypothesis testing indicate that the attitudes of respondents differ depending on the media concerned. There are also differences between media and user behavior in terms of ad avoidance and used time. However, the relationships between the various media analyzed and ad avoidance appear to be media-specific as several of the media do not have a negative correlation between attitude and ad avoidance. Attitudes and used time on the other hand have a positive relationship with all the media except one, emails

Physical Layer Performance Evaluation of LTE-Advanced Pro Broadcast and ATSC 3.0 Systems

This work provides a detailed performance analysis of the physical layer of two state-of-the-art point-to-multipoint (PTM) technologies: evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS) and Advanced Television Systems Committee - Third Generation (ATSC 3.0). The performance of these technologies is evaluated and compared using link-level simulations, considering relevant identified scenarios. A selection of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for the International Mobile Telecommunications 2020 (IMT-2020) evaluation process has been considered. Representative use cases are also aligned to the test environments as defined in the IMT-2020 evaluation guidelines. It is observed that ATSC 3.0 outperforms both eMBMS solutions, i.e. MBMS over Single Frequency Networks (MBSFN) and Single-Cell PTM (SC-PTM) in terms of spectral efficiency, peak data rate and mobility, among others. This performance evaluation serves as a benchmark for comparison with a potential 5G PTM solution