KR20060083201A - Determining and/or using location information in an ad system - Google Patents

Abstract

The usefulness, and consequently the performance, of advertisements (330) are improved by allowing businesses to better target their ads to a responsive audience. Location information is determined (or simply accepted) and used. For example, location information may be used in a relevancy (350) determination of an ad. As another example, location information (380) may be associated with price information, such as a maximum price bid. Such location information may be associated with ad performance information. Ad performance information may be tracked on the basis of location information. The content of an ad creative, and/or of a landing page may be selected and/or modified using location information. Finally, tools, such as user interfaces may be provided to allow a business to enter and/or modify location information such as location information used for targeting and location-dependent price information. The location information (380) used to target and/or score (350) ads may be include or define an area. The area may be defined by at least one geographic reference point (e.g., defined by latitude and longitude coordinates) and perhaps additional information. Thus, the area may be a circle defined by a geographic reference point and a radius, an ellipse defined by two geographic reference points and a distance sum, or a polygon defined by three or more geographic reference points.

Description

Determining and / or using location information in an ad system}

This application is filed September 3, 2003 by inventors Leslie Yeh, Sridhar Ramaswamy, and Zhe Qian, entitled "DETERMINING AND / OR USING LOCATION INFORMATION IN AN AD". SYSTEM US Pat. Claim the profit These applications are incorporated herein by reference.

The present invention relates to advertising. In particular, the present invention relates to improving advertising using location information.

Advertisements using conventional media such as television, radio, newspapers, and magazines are known. Unfortunately, even when preparing for demographic studies and very reasonable assumptions for a typical listener of various media outlets, advertisers recognize that many of their advertising budgets are simply wasted. Moreover, it is very difficult to identify and eliminate such waste.

Recently, advertising through more interactive media has been widely spread. For example, as the number of people using the Internet has grown dramatically, advertisers are evaluating the media and services offered over the Internet in a potentially powerful way to advertise.

Advertisers have evolved several strategies in an attempt to maximize the value of such advertisements. In one strategy, advertisers use a popular presence or means of providing interactive media or services (generally referred to herein as "Websites") in conduits that can reach many listeners. use. Using this first approach, advertisers can place ads on the homepage of the New York Times website, or the USA Today website, for example. In another strategy, an advertiser may attempt to target his advertisement to narrower specific listeners, thereby increasing the likelihood of an active response by the listener. For example, a travel agency that promotes tourism in the Costa Rican rainforest may be featured in Yahoo! 'S environmentally oriented tourism advertising. The advertiser will generally determine such targeting manually.

Regardless of the above strategy, website-based ads (also referred to as "Web ads") are sometimes in the form of "banner ads"-ie rectangular boxes containing graphical components. As expressed to their advertising listeners. When a member of an ad listener (generally referred to herein as a "viewer" or "user") selects one of these banner ads by clicking on it, the embedded hypertext links are typically To guide viewers to your website. This process is commonly referred to as "click-through" ("click-through" is intended to include any user selection) when the viewer selects an advertisement. The ratio of the number of clickthroughs to the number of impressions of the advertisement (ie, the number of times the announcement was displayed or otherwise rendered) is commonly referred to as the "click through rate" or "CTR" of the advertisement.

"Conversion" is known to occur when a user completes a contract associated with a previously served advertisement. Whatever you configure, the transition can vary from case to case and can be determined in a variety of ways. For example, when a user clicks on an ad, there may be a case where a conversion is referenced to the advertiser's web page to complete a purchase there before leaving the web page. Alternatively, the conversion may be defined as a user who saw the advertisement and made a purchase on the advertiser's web page within a predetermined time (eg, 7 days). In another alternative, the conversion is for example downloading a white paper, searching at least up to a given depth of a website, viewing at least any number of web pages, and consuming at least a predetermined amount of a website or web page. May be defined by the advertiser to be any measurable / observable user activity. Sometimes, if user activities do not indicate a completed purchase, they may indicate a preponderance of the sale, although the user actions that constitute the conversion are not limited thereto. Indeed, many other definitions of what constitutes a conversion are possible. The ratio of the number of conversions to the number of impressions of the advertisement (ie, the number of times the advertisement is displayed or otherwise rendered) is commonly referred to as the conversion rate. Where a conversion is defined to occur within a predetermined time due to the provision of an advertisement, one possible definition of the conversion rate may only be regarded as ads served in the past over the predetermined time.

Hosts of websites where advertisements are represented (referred to as "Websites hosts" or "ad consumers") are motivated to maximize their advertising income without compromising their users' experience. . Several website hosts have chosen to evaluate advertising incomes for users' interests. Such a website is "Overture.com" and its hosts, called "search engines", are responsible for returning ads that pretend to "search results" in response to user queries. Service. The Overture.com website allows advertisers to pay to place higher on their website (or target website) on the list of known search results. If such a way that the advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad (i.e. cost-per-click) is implemented, there is no need to pay unless the targeted poor ad is clicked, Advertisers lack motivation to effectively target their ads. As a result, high cost-per-click ads appear close or higher, but are not necessarily interpreted as actual income for the publisher of the ad because viewers do not click on them. Moreover, the relevance of the advertisements is compromised because the advertisements that viewers click on are far below the list or not at all on the list.

For example, search engines such as Google have enabled advertisers to target their ads so that they are rendered in relation to search results pages that answer speculatively relevant queries in the ad. Although search result pages can afford advertisers many opportunities to target their ads to a more acceptable listener, search result pages are merely fragments of page views of the World Wide Web.

Some online advertising systems include, for example, advertisement-related information and document content-related information (eg, concepts or topics, feature vectors, etc.) to "match" advertisements to documents containing content such as web pages. Etc.) can be used.

The ad serving systems are keyword-targeted systems (where the ads are targeted using terms found in the search query) and content targeted systems (where the ads use the content of the document). Targeted). Although keyword targeting and content targeted advertising systems improve the usefulness of the ads and consequently improve their performance (eg, in terms of click through rate, conversion rate, etc.), there is still plenty of room for improvement. Such improvement can be expected through better targeting.

The Google keyword ad server allows advertisers to specify (eg, for purposes of targeting) one or more countries in which their ads may be served. This allows advertisements to be served to specific users who speculatively speak and understand a particular language. Unfortunately, however, many businesses have only regional or regional scopes. For example, a restaurant may want to target ads only to potential consumers within 30 minutes' drive. A dry cleaner may want to target ads only to potential consumers in the same city, and possibly in some neighboring cities. As another example, a regional chain of pharmacies may want to target advertisements only to potential consumers living in their territory. If such businesses have advertisements related to a web page or search query, those advertisements will not be very useful and preferably if the end user viewing the search results web page or the content of the web page is outside the geographic scope of their business. Will not perform. If they generate income (eg, for the content owner or advertising system) only when the ads perform well (eg when they are selected), then in any case those ads will generate little income. .

Such businesses sometimes advertise in local newspapers and phone books. While such conduits for advertisements are useful, they are limited. Such businesses may also advertise on local websites, but this requires a business to discover local websites and track and manage advertising on each of those websites.

In view of the above, there is a need to improve the usefulness of advertisements and consequently their performance. In particular, there is a need to allow businesses to better target their ads to responsive listeners.

The present invention improves the usefulness and thus performance of the advertisements. The present invention allows businesses to better target their ads to responsive listeners. The present invention can do so by determining and using location information such as country, region, metropolitan area, city or city, postal code, local telephone number code, and the like.

The present invention may also use location information when determining the relevant score of an advertisement.

The invention may also use location information in attribute (eg, coordinates) arbitration. Such location information may be associated with price information, such as a maximum price bid. Such location information may be associated with advertisement performance information.

The present invention can also track advertisement performance information based on location information.

The present invention may use location information to select or modify the content of the landing page and / or the content of the original advertisement. For example, location information may be inserted into the original advertisement. As another example, different landing pages with different content may be used for different locations.

The present invention may also provide tools such as user interfaces that allow a business to enter and / or modify location information, such as location information used for targeting and location dependent price information.

1 illustrates a high level parties or entities that can interact with an advertising system.

2 illustrates environments in which the present invention may operate.

FIG. 3 illustrates in bubble a variety of information that may be used and / or generated by the present invention and various operations that may be performed.

4 illustrates exemplary request information consistent with the present invention.

5 illustrates exemplary advertising information consistent with the present invention.

6 is a flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method of performing an advertisement selection operation in a manner consistent with the present invention.

7 is a flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method of performing a scoring operation in a manner consistent with the present invention.

8 is a flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method of performing an advertisement modification operation in a manner consistent with the present invention.

9 is a flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method of performing user behavior feedback operations in a manner consistent with the present invention.

10 is a flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method of performing advertisement information entry and / or management operations in a manner consistent with the present invention.

11 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary apparatus capable of performing various operations in a manner consistent with the present invention.

The present invention may include inventive methods, apparatus, message formats, and / or data structures for obtaining and using geographic location information in an advertising system. The following description is presented to enable those skilled in the art to make and use the invention and is provided in the context of particular applications and their needs. Various modifications to the disclosed embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art, and the generic principles described below may be applied to other embodiments and applications. Thus, it is intended that the present invention not be limited to the embodiments shown, and the inventors regard the present invention as a matter of any patentable subject matter described.

In the following, environments in which the present invention may operate are described in 4.1. Thereafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention are described in § 4.2. Finally, some conclusions concerning the present invention are described in 4.3.

§4.1 Environments in which the invention may operate

§4.1.1 exemplary advertising environment

1 is a diagram showing an advertising environment at a high level. The environment may include an ad entry, maintenance, and delivery system (simply referred to as an ad server) 120. Advertisers 110 may enter, maintain, and track advertisement information directly or indirectly within system 120. The advertisements can be in the form of so-called banner ads, text ads, image ads, audio ads, video ads, graphic advertisements such as any combination of one or more such components. The advertisements can also include a machine that can execute embedded information and / or instructions, such as a link. Advertisers consumers 130 may accept advertisements in response to their request from system 120 and may present requests for advertisements to provide usage information to system 120. An entity other than the ad consumer 130 may initiate a request for ads. Although not shown, other entities may provide usage information (eg, whether or not a conversion or clickthrough associated with the advertisement occurred in system 120). Such usage information may include measured or observed user behavior related to the served advertisements.

The ad server 120 is US Patent Application Serial No. 10 / 375,900, 2003 by inventors Darrell Anderson, Paul Bucheit, Alex Carobus, Claire Cui, Jeffrey A. Dean, Georges R. Harik, Deepak Jindal, and Narayanan Shivakumar. The name, filed Feb. 26, may be similar to that described in FIG. 2 of "SERVING ADVERTISEMENTS BASED ON CONTENT." The advertising program may include information relating to accounts, campaigns, creatives, targeting, and the like. The term "account" relates to information about a given advertiser (e.g., unique e-mail address, password, billing information, etc.) "campaign" or "ad campaign". "Refers to one or more groups of one or more advertisements, and may include start date, end date, budget information, geographic targeting information, syndication information, etc. For example, Honda may include one You can have an advertising campaign and have a separate advertising campaign for your own motorcycle line, a campaign for its car line has one or more ad groups, each containing one or more ads. Targeting information (eg, a set of keywords, a set of one or more topics, etc.), and price information (eg, a maximum cost (cost per click through, cost per conversion) Alternatively or additionally, each ad group may include an average cost (eg, average cost per click through, average cost per conversion, etc.), therefore, a single maximum cost. And / or a single average cost may be associated with one or more keywords and / or topics, as mentioned, each ad group may include one or more advertisements or " creatives " Each advertisement may also include a link to a URL (eg, a landing web page, such as an advertiser's home page, or a web page associated with a particular product or server). In accordance with the invention, the advertisement information may include geolocation targeting information, geoperformance information, and / or geolocation price information. Number, and it may be organized in a number of different ways.

2 is a diagram illustrating an environment 200 in which the present invention may be used. User devices (also referred to as "clients" or "client devices") 250 may be referred to as Explorer browsers by Microsoft, Opera Web browsers by Opera Software of Norway, Navigator by AOL / Time Warner, etc. Browser facilities, such as browsers, etc., e-mail facilities (eg, Microsoft's Outlook), and the like. Search engine 220 may allow user devices 250 to retrieve sets of documents (eg, web pages). Content server 210 can authorize user devices 250 to access documents. E-mail server 240 (such as Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc. of the Microsoft Network) may be used to provide e-mail functionality to user devices 250. Ad server 210 may be used to serve ads to user devices 250. Advertisements may be served in association with search results provided by search engine 220. However, content-related advertisements may be served in association with content provided by content server 230 and / or e-mail supported by e-mail server 240 and / or user device e-mail facilities.

As discussed in US Patent Application Serial No. 10 / 375,900, advertisements may be targeted to documents served by content servers. Thus, an advertisement consumer demand example receives requests for documents (eg, editorials, discussion threads, music, video, graphics, search results, web page lists, etc.) and in response to the request General content server 230 to search for published data or other services. The content server provides a request for ads to the ad server 120/210. Such advertisement request may include a number of advertisements as desired. The advertisement request may also include document request information. Such information may include the document itself (eg pages), the category or topic corresponding to the content of the document or document request, some or all of the document request, content lifetime, content type (eg text, graphics, video, Audio, mixed media, etc.), geographic location information, document information, and the like. In accordance with the present invention, the request may also include geographic location information, such as location information for the end user provided with the search query.

Content server 230 may combine the requested document with one or more of the advertisements provided by ad server 120/210. This combined information, including the document content and advertisement (s), is then forwarded towards the end user device 250 that requested the document for presentation to the user. Finally, the content server 230 may include information about the advertisements and how, when, and / or where the advertisements (such as geolocation information) will be rendered (coordinates, whether a click-through, exposure time, exposure date, size, Whether or not to switch), etc.) may be sent back to the advertisement server 120/210. Alternatively or additionally, such information may be provided back to the ad server 120/210 by some other means. In accordance with the present invention, the ad server 120/210 may store ad performance information based on geographic location information.

Another example of an ad consumer 130 is a search engine 220. Search engine 220 may receive queries for search results. In response, the search engine may search for relevant search results (eg, from an index of web pages). Exemplary search engines are described in US Pat. No. 6,285,999 (all incorporated herein by reference) and in Brisbane, Seventh , Australia International World Wide The article "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine" by Web Conference , S. Brin and L. Page. Such search results may include, for example, lists of web page titles, fragments of text extracted from such web pages, and hypertext links to such web pages, and includes a predetermined number (eg, 10 Can be grouped into) search results.

Search engine 220 may provide a request for ads to ad server 120/210. The request may include a number of desired advertisements. This number may depend on search results, the amount of page space or screen occupied by the search results, the size and shape of the advertisements, and the like. In one embodiment, the desired number of ads will be 1-10, with 3-5 being preferred. Requests for advertisements may also include a query (entered or parsed), information based on the query (such as geolocation information, whether the query originates from an identifier and an identifier of such series), and / or It may include information associated with or based on the search results. Such information may include, for example, identifiers related to the search results (eg, document identifiers or "docIDs"), scores related to the search results (eg, dot products of feature vectors corresponding to the query and document). information search ("IR") scores, such as (dot products), Page Rank scores, and / or combinations of IR scores and Page Rank scores), extracted from identified documents (eg, web pages) Fragments of identified text, full text of identified documents, topics of identified documents, feature vectors of identified documents, and the like. In accordance with the present invention, the request may also include geographic location information, such as location information for an end user for which a search query is provided.

The search engine 220 may combine the search results with one or more of the advertisements provided by the ad server 120/210. This combined information, including the search results and advertisement (s), is then forwarded towards the user for whom the search has been provided for presentation to the user. The search results are preferably kept separate from the advertisements so as not to confuse the user between paid advertisements and speculative neutral search results.

Finally, search engine 220 provides information about the advertisement and when, where (e.g., geographic location), and / or how the advertisements were rendered (e.g., coordinates, clickthrough, exposure time, exposure date, size). , Whether to switch, etc.) may be sent back to the advertisement server 120/210. Alternatively or additionally, such information may be provided back to the ad server 120/210 by some other means. In accordance with the present invention, the ad server 120/210 may store ad performance information based on geographic location information.

Finally, e-mail server 240 may be considered a content server, in which generally the served document is simply an e-mail. In addition, e-mail applications (eg, Microsoft Outlook) can be used to send and / or receive e-mail. Thus, e-mail server 240 or application may be considered as ad consumer 130. Thus, e-mails can be considered documents and targeted advertisements can be served in association with such documents. For example, one or more advertisements may be served internally, over, or otherwise in association with an e-mail.

Although the examples described above (i) request advertisements and (ii) describe servers that combine content with them, one or all of these operations are performed by a client device (eg, such as an end user computer). Can be.

§4.1.2 definitions

"Geolocation information" means one or more of one or more countries, one or more (national) regions, one or more states, one or more urban areas, one or more cities, one or more downtowns, one or more autonomous regions. Town, one or more areas with common postal codes, one or more areas with common telephone area codes, one or more areas served by common cable head end stations, one served by common network access points or nodes It may include information specifying one or more areas, one or more geographic areas defined by some other means, and the like. It may include latitude and / or longitude, or a range thereof. Thus, it may be or include an area defined by some additional information and geographic information point, for example a circular area of defined radius for a point defined by latitude and longitude coordinates. As another example, it may be an area defined by three or more geographic reference points such as, for example, a triangle, square, pentagon, or other polygon defined by multiple geographic reference points. It may include information such as an IP address from which user location can be estimated.

Online advertisements, such as those used in the example systems described above with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2, may have various unique features. Such features may be specified by the application and / or the advertiser. These features are referred to as "ad features" below. For example, in text advertising, the advertising features may include a title line, advertising text, and embedded links. In the case of an image advertisement, the advertisement features may include images, executable code, and embedded links. Depending on the form of the online advertisement, the advertising features may include one or more of text, links, audio files, video files, image files, executable code, embedded information, and the like.

When an online advertisement is served, one or more parameters may be used to describe how, when, and / or where the advertisement was served. These parameters are referred to as "serving parameters" below. Serving parameters may include, for example, features of the page (including information on which the advertisement was served), a search query or search results associated with the serving of the advertisement, user characteristics (eg, their geographic location, Under, the type of browser used, previous page views, previous behavior), the host or affiliate site from which the request originated (eg, America Online, Google, Yahoo), the absolute coordinates of the ad on the page on which it was served, the other served (Space or time) coordinates of an advertisement related to advertisements, the absolute size of the advertisement, the size of the advertisement in relation to other advertisements, the color of the advertisement, a number of other advertisements served, forms of other advertisements served, It may include one or more of the time of the day served, the time of the week served, the time of the year served, and the like. Of course, there are other serving parameters that can be used in the context of the present invention.

Although serving parameters may not be unique to the advertising features, they may be associated with the advertisement with serving conditions or constraints. When used as serving conditions or constraints, such serving parameters are simply referred to as "serving constraints" (or "targeting criteria"). For example, in some systems an advertiser may target the serving of its advertisement on a weekday by specifying that it is served for users in any geographic location, not lower than any coordinates. As another example, in some systems an advertiser may specify that its ad is served if only a page or search query can include certain keywords or phrases. As another example, in some systems an advertiser may be informed that if the served document only contains some topics or concepts, or if it corresponds to a particular cluster or clusters, or some other classification or classifications, then its advertisement is served. Can be specified.

"Ad information" means information obtainable from any combination of ad features, ad serving constraints, ad features or ad serving constraints (referred to as "ad derived information"), and / Or information related to the advertisement (referred to as " ad related information ") as well as an extension of such information (e.g., information obtained from the advertisement related information).

"Document" can be interpreted broadly to include any machine readable and machine storable work product. The document can be a file, a combination of files, one or more files with embedded links to other files, and the like. The files may be in any form such as text, audio, image, video and the like. The portions of the document to be rendered to the end user may be considered "content" of the document. A document is structured data that includes both content (words, pictures, etc.) and some representation of the meaning of the content (e.g., e-mail fields and associated data, HTML tags and associated data, etc.). ) ". Advertisements in a document may be defined by embedded information or instructions. In the context of the Internet, a common document is a web page. Web pages sometimes contain content and may include embedded information (such as meta information, hyperlinks, etc.) and / or embedded instructions (such as JavaScript, etc.). In many cases, a document has a unique, addressable storage location and can therefore be uniquely identified by this addressable location. A universal resource locator (URL) is a unique address used to access information on the internet.

"Document information" means any information contained within the document, information obtainable from information contained within the document (referred to as "document derived information"), and / or related to the document. As well as information (referred to as "document related information") as well as extensions of such information (eg, information obtained from related information). An example of document acquisition information is a classification based on textual content of a document. Examples of document related information include document information from other documents having links to an instant document, as well as document information from other documents to which the instant document links.

Content from a document can be rendered on a "content rendering application or device." Examples of content rendering applications include Internet browsers (eg, Explorer or Netscape), media players (eg, MP3 players, Realnetworks streaming audio file players, etc.), viewers (eg, Adobe Acrobat pdf readers), and the like.

A "content owner" is a person or entity that has some property rights in the content of a document. The content owner may be the creator of the content. Additionally or alternatively, the content owner may have rights to play the content, rights to prepare for copying the content, rights to display or perform the content publicly, and / or within the content. May have other prohibited rights. Although the content server may be the content owner for the content of the documents it serves, this is not necessary.

"User information" may include user behavior information and / or user profile information. It may also include an estimate of the geographic location of the user, or of that user.

"e-mail information" means any information contained within an e-mail (also referred to as "internal e-mail information"), information obtainable from information contained within the e-mail; And / or extensions related to the e-mail as well as extensions of such information (eg, information obtained from related information). An example of information obtained from e-mail information is information extracted or otherwise obtained from search results returned in response to a search query made up of terms extracted from the e-mail subject line. Examples of information related to e-mail information include e-mail information for one or other e-mails sent by the same sender of a given e-mail, or user information for an e-mail recipient. Information related to or obtained from the e-mail information may be referred to as "external e-mail information".

Various exemplary embodiments of the present invention will now be described in § 4.2.

§ 4.2 Exemplary Examples

3 is a diagram illustrating various operations that may be performed by the present invention and various information that may be used and / or generated by the present invention in a bubble. The advertisement selection operation 310 can be used to generate a set of advertisement information 330 and request information 320. In an exemplary embodiment of the invention, the set of advertisements 340 may include advertisements related to the request information 320. For example, when request information 320 is associated with a search query, advertisements 340 may be associated with terms in the search query. Alternatively, advertisements 340 may be related to the content of the document when request information 320 is associated with the document to be served. In some events, request information 320 may include geographic location information. For example, request information 320 may include the geographic location (or some other entity such as a cable head end associated with the request, a network access point, etc.) or the geographic location information of the end user provided with the search query or document request. It may include information that can be obtained. Exemplary data structures and advertisement information 330 that may be used to store request information 320 are described in § 4.2.1 below with reference to FIGS. 4 and 5, respectively. Exemplary methods that can be used to perform the advertisement selection operation 310 are described in § 4.2.2 below with reference to FIG. 6.

With continued reference to FIG. 3, scoring operation 350 may be used to generate a set of advertisements 360 and associated scores using the first set 340 of advertisements and the advertisement information 330. Scoring operation 350 may take into account geolocation information such as, for example, geolocation performance information and / or geolocation price information of advertisements. Exemplary methods that can be used to perform the scoring operation 350 are described in § 4.2.2 below with reference to FIG. 7.

Ad modification operations 370 can be used to generate a location-specific landing page from a set of ads 380 and / or a set of ads 360 with location specific creative content. Although not shown, the ad modification operations 370 may use geographic location information. Exemplary methods that can be used to perform ad modification operations 370 are described in § 4.2.2 below with reference to FIG. 8.

The advertisement information 330 may include geographical location based performance information. Such information may be provided and / or tracked by user feedback operations 390. Exemplary methods that can be used to perform user behavior feedback actions are described in § 4.2.2 below with reference to FIG. 9.

Finally, advertisement information 330 may include geolocation targeting and / or geolocation price information. Such information may be entered and / or modified by advertisers or their representatives through advertisement information entry and / or management operations 355. Exemplary methods that can be used to perform these operations 355 are described in § 4.2.2 below with reference to FIG. 10.

The invention does not need to provide and / or use all of the operations and information described with reference to FIG. 3. The invention does not need to perform the operations in the order shown. Finally, the present invention may combine or separate the functions described in connection with various operations. For example, the selection or scoring operations 310, 350 may be combined in a single operation.

§ 4.2.1 Exemplary data structures

4 is a diagram illustrating exemplary ad request information 320 'consistent with the present invention. Ad request information 320 'may include information as described in § 4.1.1 above. In addition, the advertisement request information may include end user (or some other entity, referred to herein simply as " end user ") geographic location information, or information from which end user geographic location can be obtained or estimated. It may include. For example, end user geographic location information may include country, region (e.g., Pacific Coast, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southwest, etc.), state, urban area (e.g., San Francisco Bay Area, Columbia District, It may include one or more of a city, a city, a postal code, a local telephone number, and the like.

Geolocation information can be encoded in various ways. For example, the country identifier may be a two letter code, such as those determined by International Organization for Standardization ("ISO"). The area identifier may be a six character code, such as those determined by UTF8. Thus, countries and regions can be encoded using ISO 3166-2 / 1999, a two letter country code preceding "-" and 1-3 alphanumeric characters. The ISO 3166-2 / 1999 standard code may be mapped to a numeric identifier (eg, in the range of 20001-30000). New areas may be assigned a numeric identifier attached to the end. In one embodiment of the invention, more than 200 countries and 1300 regions are uniquely identified. The urban area identifier may be based on the DMA standard. In one embodiment, the city areas may intersect the main lines. Thus, in such an embodiment the urban area is not necessarily "contained" within the state. Since the same city or city name can be used for different cities or streams in different states, such information should be used in combination with state information to avoid ambiguity. Postal codes can be encoded as five numeric integers or extended through four or more digits. Local phone numbers can be encoded as three numeric integers. Other ways of encoding geolocation information are possible.

The present invention can be used to obtain or estimate geolocation information from other information. For example, the present invention is a known technique (such as used by the product "NetAcuity" from the Digital Envoy of Norcross) to map Internet Protocol ("IP") address and / or domain information to geolocation information. Can be used. As another example, Internet service providers may have many dial-in access servers, each associated with a local telephone number. As another example, the location of an end user can be inferred from area terms (eg, hoagie, hero, grinder, sub) entered by that user. If multiple factors are used to infer geographic location but each represents inconsistent locations without the desired level of confidence, more general and consistent locations may be used. Alternatively, the present invention may simply accept geolocation information previously obtained or provided. For example, an end user or client device used by that end user may have voluntarily provided geolocation information. As another example, geolocation information may have been obtained and provided by a third party.

5 illustrates exemplary advertising information 330 'consistent with the present invention. Advertising information 330 'may include information as described in § 4.1.1 above. For example, the advertisement information 330 'may include unique advertisement identifiers, advertisement creative content (or pointers to such creative content), and / or landing page links, and the like. In addition, the example advertisement information 330 ′ may include at least one of geolocation targeting information and geolocation price information. Geolocation performance information (not shown) may track the advertisement and be associated with the advertisement.

Geolocation targeting information may include one or more countries, one or more territories, one or more states, one or more regions, one or more cities, one or more downtowns, one or more postal codes, and / or one or more local telephone numbers, or the like. It may include. Thus, while a business selling snow blowers targets its ads to states such as Maine and Minnesota, which have relatively significant snowfall, for example, a business selling irrigation systems is California, Nevada, It can target its ads in Arizona, and New Mexico. The professional sports team may target advertisements for tickets and / or merchandise in urban areas. The state shipping company can target its ads to the country. The geolocation targeting information may also be part of, for example, a circular area of defined radius for a point defined by latitude and longitude coordinates for an elliptical area defined by two geographic reference points and a defined distance sum or the like. It may be or include an area (or areas) defined by additional information and at least one geographic reference point. As another example, the geolocation targeting information may be an area (or areas) defined by three or more geographic reference points, such as a triangle, square, pentagon, some other polygon defined by a number of reference points, or It may include an area (areas).

Geolocation price information may include one or more countries, one or more territories, one or more states, one or more urban areas, one or more cities, one or more downtowns, one or more postal codes, and / or one or more local telephones. Price information for numbers and the like. Geolocation price information may also include price information for the region (or regions) defined using some additional information and at least one geographic reference point. The price information should correspond to geolocation targeting information.

In one embodiment of the present invention, geolocation targeting information may be inferred from geolocation price information. For example, if an advertiser provides a maximum bid per impression of $ 1.50 for a geolocation DC city center, it may be assumed that the advertiser wants to target its ads to end users in the DC city area. Similarly, if an advertiser provides a bid of $ 0.00 for a given week, it may be assumed that the advertiser wants to avoid serving its ads to end users in that week. For example, if an auto insurance provider is authorized to provide insurance in all states except New Jersey, and is not interested in signing less favorable policies in Florida, the following geolocation price information can be provided: .

US: $ 1.00 / impression;

New Jersey: $ 0.00 / exposure; And

Florida: $ 0.15 / exposure.

As described in greater detail below with reference to FIG. 7, scoring operation 350 may weight more specific geographic location price information than less specific geographic location price information.

§ 4.2.2 exemplary methods

6 is a flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method 310 'for performing an advertisement selection operation 310 in a manner consistent with the present invention. Request information and advertisement information are accepted (block 610). The request information may include end user geographic location information among others. The advertisement information may include geolocation targeting information among others. As indicated by loops 620-640, an operation is performed on each of the one or more advertisements. More specifically, the relevant measure of the advertisement is determined using at least geolocation information associated with the request information and geolocation targeting information associated with the advertisement (block 630). After each of the one or more advertisements have been processed, the method 310 ′ stops (node 650).

The relevance of the advertisement may be determined using keyword targeting information associated with the advertisement, advertisement related information associated with the advertisement, and the like. For any event, the relevance of the advertisement may be determined using at least the geolocation information of the request and the advertisement. The advertisement is more relevant at least with respect to location as the corresponding geolocation information is more accurate. Thus, for example, if an end user provided a search query from San Diego, assuming that all other relevant factors are the same, an ad with geographic targeting for San Diego may be more relevant than an ad with geographic targeting for California. And may further be associated with an advertisement with geographic targeting for the West Coast, and more with an advertisement with geographic targeting for the United States.

Of course, geolocation targeting may be just one of a number of related factors. For example, advertising-related may also include (a) comparison of the content of the requested document with advertising-related information, (b) advertising keyword targeting in relation to terms in search queries, (c) user demographic information, and (d) user behavior information. , (e) time / date / seasonal targeting information.

7 is a flowchart illustrating an example method 350 ′ of performing scoring operation 350 in a manner consistent with the present invention. The second score can be used to determine the relative presentation attributes (eg, size, coordinates, color, volume, etc.) of the advertisement. Ad information of the candidate advertisements is received (block 710). As indicated by loops 720-740, an operation is performed on each of the one or more advertisements. More specifically, the advertising score is determined using at least one of price information, geolocation price information (if available), performance information, and geolocation performance information (if available) (block 730). Once all of the candidate advertisements have been processed, the method 350 'stops (node 750).

There are a number of ways to determine an advertising score that matches block 730. Some example ways are described below. If the advertising system wants to maximize revenue, the score can be determined by multiplying the performance of the advertisement by the price per performance value. For example, cost per click * click through rate, or cost per conversion * conversion rate can be determined. Prices can be discounted or adjusted. The present invention may be advantageous to use geolocation information to improve profit estimates when available. For example, assume that the end user for whom the advertisement is to be guided is in San Diego. In addition, the same related advertisements have associated information shown in the following different ways:

Ad A: Maximum cost per click = $ 0.25;

Max Cost Per Click = $ 1.00 in San Diego;

CTR = 0.02 in the US;

CTR = 0.04 in California;

CTR = 0.20 in San Diego

Ad B: maximum cost per click = $ 0.50;

Maximum cost per click = $ 2.00 in Florida;

CTR = 0.07 in the US;

CTR = 0.02 in California;

CTR = 0.02 in San Diego.

Without geolocation scoring, the simple product score for Ad A would be 0.0050 (= 0.25 * 0.02) while for Ad B is 0.0350 (= 0.50 * 0.07). Through geolocation scoring, a simple product score for Ad A would be 0.20 (= 1.00 * 0.20) while that for Ad B is 0.01 (= 0.50 * 0.02). Thus, without geolocation information, Ad B will score higher than Advertisement A, but with geolocation information, Ad A will score higher than Ad B. For example, advertisement A may be for a restaurant in San Diego, while advertisement B may be for a pool construction company with a large presence in Florida. By using geolocation information, the present invention may be advantageous to serve Ad A with some preferences against Ad B, since it may be generally more useful for end users in San Diego.

In one embodiment of the invention, when more specific geographic location price information is not available, more general geographic location price information may be used to determine the score. Similarly, when more specific geolocation performance information is not available, more general geolocation performance information may be used. Thus, for example, an advertisement with only geolocation price and performance information for California may compete with an advertisement with geolocation price and performance information for Sacramento when serving an ad request with Sacramento geolocation information.

8 is a flow diagram illustrating an example method 370 ′ of performing an ad modification operation 370 in a manner consistent with the present invention. Advertisement information and / or requested geolocation information is received (block 810). The requested geolocation information may be provided within the creative content of the advertisement, and / or the advertisement may provide geolocation dependent content (eg, one of a number of candidate advertising marketing messages is selected using geolocation information). (Block 820). Alternatively or additionally, the requested geolocation information may be provided in the content of the landing page and / or geolocation dependent content may be provided in the ad landing page (eg, one of a number of candidate landing pages is geo May be selected using location information (block 830).

Referring again to block 820, the content of the ad creative may be modified by selecting one of the plurality of candidate texts or modifying the text. For example, suppose that an advertisement request indicates that it is in Tampa, Florida, and that an advertisement for a Honda car dealer is targeted to Tampa, Florida. A typical advertising creative might read "I'll let car buyers know ... best prices." The revised advertising creative can read "I'll inform Tampa car buyers ... The best prices in Tampa." Geolocation information may simply be added to, or replace a portion of, the ad creative. The geographic location information can be used to select a plurality of candidate advertising creatives.

Referring back to block 830, one of the plurality of ad landing pages may be selected based on geographic location information. For example, if the geolocation information of the request indicates that the end user is near, the retailer may have a landing page highlighting the message "Visit our local showroom to see the latest product." Conversely, if the geolocation information of the request indicates that the end user is remote, the retailer may have a landing page that highlights "free shipping by the end of July. Best prices on the web."

Alternatively or additionally, in addition to, or alternatively to generating targeted creative content (eg, "find this in the office garage on San Antonio Road / El Camino") towards a specific location, ad attributes may use location information to Can be determined. For example, the price may be determined using "local" competition, local demographics (eg, income by postal code), or local purchasing habits. Prices and / or products may be location specific (eg, a query for "NYC" yields an advertisement "S199 to JFK $ 199").

Thus, by using geolocation information, the present invention can be used to adapt a marketing message to the location of an end user for recognizing an advertisement.

9 is a flowchart illustrating an example method 390 ′ of performing user behavior feedback operation 390 in a manner consistent with the present invention. Returning to scoring operation 350, geolocation specific performance information may be used to determine a score for the advertisement. The method 390 ′ of FIG. 9 is one way to track such information. As each advertisement is served, such an event may be identified by a unique process identifier (eg, advertisement server IP address, date and time). The process identifier may be associated with any geolocation targeting information used when serving geolocation information of the advertisement or related request. The advertisement may be served via its process identifier (block 910). As indicated by event block 920, different branches of method 390 ′ may be performed in response to different events. For example, if user behavior information is received, the received user behavior information is used to process the process identifier (and in some cases the first time an ad is served) before the method 390 'branches back to the event block 920. Geographical location information). If the conditions for updating the performance information are met (e.g., receiving performance information, receiving any amount of performance information, timeout due to a recent update, absolute time / date, etc.), the advertising performance information is determined by the method 390 '. Before branching back to event block 920, the location targeting information or geolocation request information associated with the ad serving process is updated (block 940).

Thus, the method 390 ′ may be used to track advertisement performance information describing geographic location information that may have been used when serving an advertisement. Various alternative ways of associating performance information with geolocation information are possible.

10 is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary method 335 'for performing advertisement information entry and / or management operations in a manner consistent with the present invention. Returning to FIG. 5, the advertisement information 330 ′ may include one or more of geolocation targeting information and geolocation price information. The method 330 ′ accepts authenticated and / or approved user input (block 1010). As indicated by event block 1020, various branches of method 335 may be performed in response to various input forms. If the user enters geolocation price information, geolocation price information is added or updated (block 1030). The associated geolocation targeting information may also be calibrated or resident according to the price information (block 1040). For example, such information may be added if the user entered a maximum price per click of $ 0.80 for California, and if the advertisement does not include geolocation targeting for California. If the user later changes the maximum price per click for California to $ 0.00, the geolocation targeting for California may be turned off or removed. Returning to block 1020 again, if the user enters geolocation targeting information, the geolocation targeting information is added or updated (block 1050). Associated geolocation price information may be requested (block 1060) but need not be provided.

In one embodiment of the invention, the advertiser user interface may be at a specific location.

In one embodiment of the invention, when an advertiser enters geo location targeting information, it may be desirable to have the removal location modifiers used in keyword targeting.

In one embodiment of the present invention, advertisers may be limited to the number and / or combination of types of geolocation information entered.

Other features of the advertiser user interface may be provided to more conveniently enter and / or manage advertisement information. For example, if an advertiser has an existing campaign, but wants to add a geo-targeted campaign, bulk revenue support may be provided so that the advertiser does not have to re-enter common advertising information. The help features may be used to suggest additional geolocation information (more identical form, more specific, more general, etc.) in response to the entered geolocation information. For example, if an advertiser enters a postal code they may provide one or more streams, areas, and the like.

§ 4.2.3 Example device

11 is a block diagram illustrating, at a high level, a machine 1100 capable of performing one or more of the operations discussed above. The machine 1100 is basically one that facilitates the communication of information between one or more processors 1110, one or more input / output interface units 1130, one or more storage devices 1120, and connected elements. The above system buses and / or networks 1140. One or more input devices 1132 and one or more output devices 1134 may be connected with one or more input / output interfaces 1130.

One or more processes 1110 may be used to accomplish one or more aspects of the present invention (e.g., a Solaris operating system available from Sun Microsystems Inc of Palo Alto, California, or a number of applications, such as Red Hat, Inc. of Durham, North Carolina). C or C ++) machine executable instructions that run on a widely available Linux operating system from a supplier. At least some of the machine executable instructions may be stored (temporarily or more permanently) on one or more storage devices 1120 and / or may be received from the outside via one or more input interface units 1130.

In one embodiment, the machine 1100 may be one or more conventional personal computers. In this case, the processing units 1110 may be one or more microprocessors. The bus 1140 may include a system bus. Storage devices 1120 may include system memory, such as read only memory (ROM) and / or random access memory (RAM). Storage devices 1120 also read from and write to the hard disk, such as a disk drive, a magnetic disk drive that reads from and writes to (eg, a removable) magnetic disk, and a compact disk or other (magnetic) optical media. And an optical disk drive that reads from or writes to a removable (magnetic) optical disk.

A user may enter commands and information into a personal computer through input devices 1132, such as a keyboard and a pointing device (eg, a mouse). Other input devices such as a microphone, joystick, game pad, satellite dish, scanner, etc. may also be included (or alternatively). These inputs and other input devices are sometimes connected to the processing unit (s) 1110 via an appropriate interface 1130 that is connected to the system bus 1140. The output devices 1134 can include another form of display device or monitor, which can also be connected to the system bus 1140 via a suitable interface. In addition to (or instead of) the monitor, the personal computer may include other (parallel) output devices (not shown), such as speakers and printers.

§ 4.2.4 alternatives

Different geographical location information may have different ranges, and some geographical location information may include different geographical location information. In general, for purposes of determining advertisement relevance, a more specific geographic location information match (eg, city) may be weighted more severely than a less specific geographic location information (eg country). In general, for purposes of advertising scoring, the most specific geolocation price and / or performance information that matches will be used. That is, if the advertisement has price and performance information for both San Diego and California, if the requested geolocation information indicates an end user in San Diego, then San Diego price and performance information will be used. Conversely, if the requested geolocation information indicates an end user in Sacramento, California price and performance information will be used. If the requested geolocation information indicates end users in Ohama, Nebraska, it will not be used in both.

There are many different ways to score advertisements. Some examples include (a) using the distance between the advertiser and the presence of the end user, (b) using the regional availability of the item surveyed by the end user, (c) advertiser attributes (eg, The location of the retail outlet closest to the advertiser). Advertisements can be sorted and / or priced using language standards (eg, query / display language, information obtained about the user's language or user, such as the user's location in downtown Japan).

Although some of the above examples used geographic location information, such as the user's recent location, the geographic location information may be a location of interest to the user. For example, if the search query includes a postal code, it may be inferred that the user is interested in or located within the postal code defined by the postal code. If the search query includes city name, region name, and / or state name, it may be inferred that the user is interested in the location defined by such name (s). Thus, for example, a user may be interested in an area that may be the same as or different from the latest area of the user. Targeting, scoring, content, and / or performance tracking of advertisements may be affected using the location of interest.

§ 4.3 Conclusion

As described above, the present invention allows more relevant advertisements to be served by using location information.

Claims (52)

In a method of determining the relevancy of an ad to a request, a) accepting geolocation information associated with the requests; b) comparing the received geolocation information associated with the request with geolocation targeting information associated with the advertisement to generate a comparison; And c) determining at least the relevance of the advertisement using the comparison; And wherein the geo location targeting information associated with the advertisement is defined by at least one geographic reference point. The method of claim 1, The request further includes search terms, Determining the relevance of the advertisement further uses a comparison of the keyword and keyword targeting associated with the search terms. The method of claim 1, The request further includes document related information, Determining the relevance of the advertisement further uses a comparison of advertisement-related information with the document-related information. The method of claim 1, And the geographic location targeting information corresponds to a circular area having a radius for a particular geographic reference point. The method of claim 1, And wherein the geographic location targeting information corresponds to an area defined by at least three geographic reference points. The method of claim 5, wherein And the region defined by at least three geographic reference points is a polygon. In the method of determining the score of an advertisement, a) accepting geographic location information associated with the request; b) determining whether the advertisement has geolocation price information corresponding to the accepted geolocation information; And c) if it is determined that the advertisement has geographic location price information corresponding to the received geographic location information, determining the score using at least the geographic location price information; And the geo location price information associated with the advertisement corresponds to an area defined by at least one geographic reference point. The method of claim 7, wherein And the area comprises a circular area having a radius for a particular geographic reference point. The method of claim 7, wherein And the area comprises an area defined by at least three geographic reference points. The method of claim 9, And the area defined by at least three geographic reference points is a polygon. In the method of determining the score of an advertisement with respect to a request, a) accepting geographic location information associated with the request; b) comparing the received geolocation information associated with the request with geolocation targeting information associated with the advertisement to generate a comparison; And c) determining a score of said advertisement using at least said comparison, And the geographic location information is a postal code included in the request. The method of claim 11, Wherein the request is a search query. In the method of determining the score of an advertisement with respect to a request, a) accepting geographic location information associated with the request; b) comparing the received geolocation information associated with the request with geolocation targeting information associated with the advertisement to generate a comparison; And c) determining a score of said advertisement using at least said comparison, Wherein the geographic location information is at least one of a city name, a state name, an area name, and a country name included in the request. The method of claim 13, Wherein the request is a search query. An apparatus for determining the relevance of an advertisement to a request, a) means for accepting geographic location information associated with the requests; b) means for comparing the received geolocation information associated with the request with geolocation targeting information associated with the advertisement to produce a comparison; And c) means for determining relevance of the advertisement using at least the comparison; And the geographic location targeting information associated with the advertisement is defined by at least one geographic reference point. The method of claim 15, The request further includes search terms, And the means for determining relevance of the advertisement further uses a comparison of keyword targeting associated with the advertisement and the search terms. The method of claim 15, The request further includes document related information, And means for determining relevance of the advertisement further uses a comparison of advertisement related information and the document related information. The method of claim 15, And the geographic location targeting information corresponds to a circular area having a radius for a particular geographic reference point. The method of claim 15, And the geographic location targeting information corresponds to an area defined by at least three geographic reference points. The method of claim 19, And the area defined by at least three geographic reference points is a polygon. In the apparatus for determining the score of the advertisement, a) means for receiving geolocation information associated with the request; b) means for determining whether the advertisement has geolocation price information corresponding to the received geolocation information; And c) means for determining the score using at least the geolocation price information if it is determined that the advertisement has geolocation price information corresponding to the accepted geolocation information; And the geographic location price information associated with the advertisement corresponds to an area defined by at least one geographic reference point. The method of claim 21, And the area comprises a circular area having a radius for a particular geographic reference point. The method of claim 21, And the area comprises an area defined by at least three geographic reference points. The method of claim 23, wherein And the area defined by at least three geographic reference points is a polygon. An apparatus for determining a score of an advertisement with respect to a request, a) means for accepting geolocation information associated with the request; b) means for comparing the received geolocation information associated with the request with geolocation targeting information associated with the advertisement to produce a comparison; And c) means for determining a score of said advertisement using at least said comparison, And the geographic location information is a postal code included in the request. The method of claim 25, And the request is a search query. An apparatus for determining a score of an advertisement with respect to a request, a) means for accepting geolocation information associated with the request; b) means for comparing the received geolocation information associated with the request with geolocation targeting information associated with the advertisement to produce a comparison; And c) means for determining a score of said advertisement using at least said comparison, And the geographic location information is at least one of a city name, a state name, an area name, and a country name included in the request. The method of claim 27, And the request is a search query. In a method of determining the relevance of an ad to a request, a) accepting geographic location information in a country associated with the request; b) comparing geolocation information in the accepted country associated with the request with geolocation targeting information associated with the advertisement to generate a comparison; And c) determining the relevance of the advertisement using at least the comparison. The method of claim 29, The request further includes search terms, Determining the relevance of the advertisement further uses a comparison of the keyword and keyword targeting associated with the search terms. The method of claim 29, The request further includes document related information, Determining the relevance of the advertisement further uses a comparison of advertisement related information and the document related information. The method of claim 29, The geographic location information in the country may include (a) at least one area, (b) at least one state, (c) at least one urban area, (d) at least one city, (e) at least one city, ( f) at least one postal code, and (g) at least one local telephone number. In the method of determining the score of an advertisement, a) accepting geographic location information associated with the request; b) determining whether the advertisement has geolocation price information corresponding to the accepted geolocation information; And c) if it is determined that the advertisement has geolocation price information corresponding to the received geolocation information, determining the score using at least the geolocation price information. 34. The method of claim 33, wherein the geolocation information comprises at least one of: (a) at least one country, (b) at least one area, (c) at least one state, (d) at least one urban area, (e) at least one At least one of a city of: (f) at least one stream, (g) at least one postal code, and (h) at least one local phone number. In the method of determining the score of an advertisement, a) accepting geographic location information associated with the request; b) determining whether the advertisement has geolocation performance information corresponding to the received geolocation information; And c) if it is determined that the advertisement has geographic location performance information corresponding to the received geographic location information, determining the score using at least the geographic location performance information. 36. The method of claim 35 wherein The geo-location information may include (a) at least one country, (b) at least one area, (c) at least one state, (d) at least one urban area, (e) at least one city, (f) At least one of at least one stream, (g) at least one postal code, and (h) at least one local phone number. In a method of serving an advertisement, a) accepting geographic location information associated with the request; b) determining whether the advertisement has geolocation ad creative information corresponding to the received geolocation information; And c) if it is determined that the advertisement has geolocation creative information corresponding to the received geolocation information, serving the advertisement with the geolocation creative information. 38. The method of claim 37, wherein the geolocation information comprises at least one of: (a) at least one country, (b) at least one area, (c) at least one state, (d) at least one urban area, (e) at least one At least one of a city of (f) at least one stream, (g) at least one postal code, and (h) at least one local phone number. In the method of serving an advertisement, a) accepting geographic location information associated with the request; b) determining whether the advertisement has geolocation landing page information corresponding to the received geolocation information; And c) if it is determined that the advertisement has geolocation landing page information corresponding to the accepted geolocation information, serving the advertisement with a link to the geolocation landing page. The method of claim 39, The geo-location information may include (a) at least one country, (b) at least one area, (c) at least one state, (d) at least one urban area, (e) at least one city, (f) At least one of at least one stream, (g) at least one postal code, and (h) at least one local phone number. An apparatus for determining the relevance of an advertisement to a request, a) input for accepting geographic location information in a country associated with the request; b) means for comparing geolocation information in the accepted country associated with the request with geolocation targeting information associated with the advertisement to produce a comparison; And c) means for determining the relevance of the advertisement using at least the comparison. 42. The method of claim 41 wherein The request further includes search terms, And the means for determining relevance of the advertisement further uses a comparison of the keyword and keyword targeting associated with the search terms. 42. The method of claim 41 wherein The request further includes document related information, And means for determining relevance of the advertisement further uses a comparison of advertisement related information and the document related information. 42. The method of claim 41 wherein The geographic location information in the country may include (a) at least one area, (b) at least one state, (c) at least one urban area, (d) at least one city, (e) at least one city, ( f) at least one postal code, and (g) at least one of at least one local telephone number. In the apparatus for determining the score of the advertisement, a) input for accepting geographic location information associated with the request; b) means for determining whether the advertisement has geolocation price information corresponding to the received geolocation information; And c) means for determining said score using at least said geolocation price information if it is determined that said advertisement has geolocation price information corresponding to said received geolocation information. The method of claim 45, The geo-location information may include (a) at least one country, (b) at least one area, (c) at least one state, (d) at least one urban area, (e) at least one city, (f) And at least one of at least one stream, (g) at least one postal code, and (h) at least one local phone number. In the apparatus for determining the score of the advertisement, a) input for accepting geographic location information associated with the request; b) means for determining whether the advertisement has geolocation performance information corresponding to the received geolocation information; And c) means for determining the score using at least the geolocation performance information if it is determined that the advertisement has geographic location performance information corresponding to the received geographic location information. The method of claim 47, The geo-location information may include (a) at least one country, (b) at least one area, (c) at least one state, (d) at least one urban area, (e) at least one city, (f) And at least one of at least one stream, (g) at least one postal code, and (h) at least one local phone number. In the apparatus for serving an advertisement, a) input for accepting geographic location information associated with the request; b) means for determining whether the advertisement has geolocation advertisement creative information corresponding to the received geolocation information; And c) means for serving the advertisement with the geolocation creative information if it is determined that the advertisement has geolocation creative information corresponding to the received geolocation information. The method of claim 49, The geo-location information may include (a) at least one country, (b) at least one area, (c) at least one state, (d) at least one urban area, (e) at least one city, (f) At least one of at least one stream, (g) at least one postal code, and (h) at least one local phone number. In the apparatus for serving an advertisement, a) input for accepting geographic location information associated with the request; b) means for determining whether the advertisement has geolocation landing page information corresponding to the received geolocation information; And c) means for serving the advertisement having a link to the geolocation landing page when it is determined that the advertisement has geolocation landing page information corresponding to the received geolocation information. The method of claim 51, wherein The geo-location information may include (a) at least one country, (b) at least one area, (c) at least one state, (d) at least one urban area, (e) at least one city, (f) At least one of at least one stream, (g) at least one postal code, and (h) at least one local phone number.

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