Promotions may be targeted to one or more device groups. A
promotion/device group set relation is maintained for each promotion
indicating the device groups to which each promotion should be sent. A
device group corresponds to a statistically categorized group of end node
devices (e.g. set top boxes) based on demographics or viewership history.
A device group may be further subcategorized to include one or more
transmission groups corresponding to the physical characteristics of the
end node devices (e.g. hardware, memory capacity). A promotion server
creates a package containing the promotion for each transmission group of
the device group. If a package for a particular transmission group is
already created and has sufficient available space, the promotion is
simply added to the package. Therefore, a package created for a
transmission group may hold promotions intended for different device
groups even though not all of the promotions are targeted for the same
devices. A schedule process then analyzes a set of packages, building a
schedule for each end node device, ultimately assigning promotion
identification, transmission times, port numbers, and/or multicast IP
addresses for specific device groups. Schedule messages are then send out
individually to each end node, so that the expected broadcast (multicast)
message time, port, and IP address information is known by each device
for each of the promotions which are intended for it to receive. The
packaged promotions are then sent via bulk data transmission to the end
nodes which is initiated by the generation and delivery of transmission
requests to bulk data servers on the network.