Providing Personalized Ads Based on General Information

You can use the Windows Media Services SDK and the WMS Download Data Source plug-in to send personalized ads from an ad provider to the client. This is illustrated by the following diagram. Assume that the content provider, the content distributor, and the ad service provider are in different domains. Therefore, the client's cookie cannot be sent to the ad provider.

Diagram that shows personalized ads being sent to clients.

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All playlists and digital media files are stored on a Windows Media server that is administered by a content distributor. In this scenario, the content distributor uses the WMS HTTP Download Data Source plug-in to request that the ad service provider create and download a playlist that references the appropriate ads. The ad provider can use the title of the requested ASP page to determine what playlist to create. Also, the content provider can append a query string to the request to identify the IP address or user name of the client, and the ad provider can use these as a filter. For more information, see Downloading a Playlist from a Web Server. The steps in the following list correspond to the diagram.

  1. The client connects to the content provider and requests a Web page.

  2. The content provider sends the Web page to the client. The page contains a link to a playlist stored on a Windows Media server administered by a content distributor.

  3. The client clicks the link and is connected to the content distributor.

  4. The content distributor requests that the ad service provider create and download a playlist that references the appropriate ads.

  5. The ad provider uses the title of the requested ASP page, or additional information sent in the query string by the content distributor, to personalize and download a playlist.

  6. The content distributor sends the content referenced in the playlist to the client.

Note

See Also

Concepts

Playlist Reference

Scenarios

Using XML to Define Playlists

Using the Server Object Model to Define Playlists