In a move that could quietly reshape how digital media advertising operates across the internet, FOX Entertainment Group has assigned a key intellectual property asset — covering customized billboard-style website advertisements — to Adeia Media Holdings Inc., a leading IP licensing powerhouse with a portfolio spanning more than 12,750 patents as of early 2025.
The transferred technology, describes a sophisticated system for delivering layered, prioritized billboard advertisements on websites — specifically for promoting media content. Though the patent's origins trace back to a provisional application filed in April 2010, its commercial relevance has grown substantially in the age of streaming, personalization, and cross-platform content discovery.
The Companies Behind the Deal
FOX Entertainment Group stands among the world's most recognizable media brands — a leading global creator of multi-genre content across broadcast, streaming, and emerging platforms. Known for its independent, innovative spirit and bold storytelling, the company takes a platform-agnostic approach to developing, scaling, and monetizing intellectual property worldwide.
FOX Entertainment operates through three core business units. The FOX Television Network, encompassing its flagship linear platform and streaming partnerships including Hulu and FOX One, is home to hit series such as The Simpsons, The Masked Singer, Doc, Memory of a Killer, Fear Factor: House of Fear, The Floor, Extracted, and Hell's Kitchen.
FOX Entertainment Studios produces scripted and unscripted content including Animal Control, Best Medicine, and The Faithful: Women of the Bible; houses award-winning animation studio Bento Box (Hazbin Hotel, Krapopolis); Studio Ramsay Global (Next Level Chef, Gordon Ramsay's Secret Service, Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars); entertainment platform TMZ; and independent film label Tideline. FOX Entertainment Global serves as the company's worldwide content sales and distribution arm.
As part of its evolution into a next-generation studio, FOX Entertainment is expanding its digital storytelling ecosystem through investments in vertical video (Holywater), experiential storytelling (Chain), podcasting (Meet Cute), publishing partnerships (HarperCollins), and creator-led formats via FOX Creator Studios.
Adeia Media Holdings Inc. is a key player in the intellectual property licensing arena. Operating primarily as an IP licensing firm, Adeia focuses on inventing, developing, and licensing fundamental innovations within the media and semiconductor sectors. Its core business revolves around its extensive patent portfolio — with approximately 85% of assets internally created — covering technologies crucial for media delivery, content processing, and user experience enhancement.
Adeia's business model centers on monetizing innovations through licensing agreements with a diverse range of customers, including multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), over-the-top (OTT) video service providers, consumer electronics manufacturers, and semiconductor companies. The company has also expanded into adjacent markets including automotive, e-commerce, gaming, and music streaming.
Industry leaders in the entertainment and digital space leverage our vast media portfolio for powering content search and recommendations for OTT streaming, pay-TV platforms, and more — including pivotal technologies such as content recommendation, digital advertising, and media search functionalities." (alert-success)
The Technology: What Was Transferred: At its core, the patent covers a system that intelligently controls how multiple billboard-style advertisements — each promoting a piece of media content — are layered and displayed on a website. Rather than a static or randomly served display, the invention introduces priority-based occlusion logic: one featured advertisement is shown in full, while others are partially hidden behind it, creating a structured visual hierarchy.
How the Technology Works:
1. Defining customization attributes: A server-side system defines a set of customization rules governing how multiple billboard advertisements should be displayed — including which ad takes visual priority, how much of the others are occluded, and what conditions trigger which configuration.
2. User accesses a website: When a user navigates to a website — such as a media company's content hub — the server transmits the webpage along with the associated advertisement payloads in a coordinated bundle.
3. Priority display without occlusion: The primary billboard advertisement — the one receiving the highest priority based on customization logic — is rendered fully visible, without any obstruction from surrounding elements.
4. Remaining ads partially occluded: The remaining billboard advertisements are displayed in a partially hidden state, peeking out behind the primary ad — indicating to the user that additional content is available, while keeping attention focused on the featured advertisement.
5. User interaction and rotation: Users can interact with the billboard stack, potentially cycling through advertisements — creating an engaging carousel-like experience that is controlled, intentional, and non-interruptive.
The practical result is a visually coherent, user-friendly ad format tailored specifically for media content promotion — offering an experience somewhere between a traditional web banner and an immersive content discovery widget. Given how central media promotion has become to streaming platforms and digital publishers, the patent's applications today are considerably broader than when it was first conceived.
Why This Transfer Matters: IP assignments of this nature rarely happen in isolation. When a content company like FOX transfers a digital advertising patent to an IP licensing specialist like Adeia, it typically signals a deliberate strategic calculation: monetization through licensing rather than direct operational use. For FOX, the transfer may represent a portfolio rationalization as the company increasingly focuses on content creation, streaming partnerships, and franchise building. For Adeia, it represents another brick in a formidable wall of media and advertising IP.
Adeia has a well-documented history of actively enforcing its patent rights. The company has pursued licensing agreements and litigation against major players including X Corp (formerly Twitter) and, more recently, resolved a high-profile patent dispute with Disney in late 2025. Acquiring a patent covering how media advertisements are displayed on websites places Adeia in a stronger position to approach digital publishers, ad-tech platforms, and streaming services with licensing demands.
Future Applications of the Technology
The patent's real-world relevance extends well beyond its original context of website billboard ads. In a media landscape characterized by streaming wars, advertising-supported video on demand (AVOD), and the collapse of traditional linear TV economics, the mechanics this patent describes — priority display, layered visibility, customization attributes — map directly onto emerging ad formats.
Streaming and Connected TV Advertising: As AVOD platforms like Tubi, Peacock, Pluto TV, and Amazon Freevee scale their ad-supported tiers, the challenge of serving contextually relevant, visually engaging ads becomes central. The billboard occlusion model described in the patent could underpin next-generation ad delivery interfaces on smart TVs and streaming apps — where showcasing multiple content promotions in a layered, non-disruptive interface is commercially valuable.
Personalized Content Discovery Interfaces: The patent's customization logic aligns closely with AI-driven content recommendation systems. As media platforms invest in personalization — serving each user a unique front page of suggested shows and films — the ability to present featured content with visual hierarchy (one item dominant, others partially visible) maps directly to how modern content discovery interfaces are designed. Licensing this patent could affect how streaming home screens are structured across the industry.
Mobile and Vertical Video Formats: The rise of short-form vertical video — through platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and FOX's own investment in Holywater — has created entirely new canvases for media promotion. The concept of a primary ad displayed without occlusion while supplementary content peeks at the edges mirrors swipeable story interfaces already familiar to billions of users. As ad formats evolve for mobile-first environments, this patent becomes a relevant reference point.
Interactive and Shoppable Advertising: The next frontier of digital advertising integrates commerce directly into the ad unit. Billboard-style ads that stack and surface media content could extend to merchandise, pay-per-view events, or subscription prompts — all areas where FOX, its streaming partners, and third-party publishers are actively innovating. Adeia's growing presence in e-commerce patent licensing suggests an intent to capture value across these converging spaces.
Industry Impact: Who Should Be Watching