Classifications

• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING OR CALCULATING; COUNTING
  • G06Q—INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES; SYSTEMS OR METHODS SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
  • G06Q30/00—Commerce
  • G06Q30/02—Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Definitions

• the present invention relates to the distribution of advertising to users of a data network, and more particularly to the selective distribution of advertising according to user profile information.
• Information might include reference information as might be found in a library, or commercial information such as flight schedules or the price and availability of goods.
• Services might include the purchase of goods, or the purchase of accommodations according to information, such as the purchase of tickets for a particular flight itinerary selected from a presentation of flight schedules.
• a user typically employs a terminal device connected via some communication means to a service provider (e.g., in a fixed station such as a desktop computer connected via a copper telephone line, or a mobile station such as a laptop computer, mobile telephone device or a palmtop device connected via a wireless connection) .
• the service provider then provides information and services to the user, either from the service provider's own resources or from the resources of yet other providers to which the user's service provider connects via communications links (said other providers being referred to herein as "external providers" ) .
• the establishment and operation of the providers and underlying communication means incurs costs. Typically, these costs are met largely by imposing subscription charges upon users for access to service providers.
• a service provider may partially defray these costs by including advertising messages in the information displays provided to users, and charging advertisers for presenting their advertising . Advertisers hope to maximize the return on such charges .
• One way they seek to do this is to target advertising to groups of users identified as more likely to purchase the goods or services advertised.
• an advertiser of a product suitable for consumption by a particular demographic group e.g., young single men
• An object of the present invention is to present in the displays furnished to users of information systems advertisements specifically targeted to their needs and interests.
• a service provider node captures profile information for each user reflecting the user's interests and probable needs.
• the profile information is summarized into predetermined categories.
• the summary is provided to advertisers, who operate advertiser nodes connected to the service provider nodes.
• the advertiser nodes transmit advertising messages targeted to particular groups of users according to the profile information.
• advertiser nodes transmit to service provider nodes advertising messages each associated with a tag specifying the nature of the advertising message.
• the service provider node forwards advertising messages selectively to users according to correspondence between the tag and a user's profile .
• Fig. 1 depicts a system embodying the present invention
• Fig. 2 depicts a system containing an alternative embodiment of the present invention. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PRESENTLY PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS
• Fig. 1 depicts an information system.
• One or more user terminals 200 may connect to a service provider
• users at terminals 200 may enter requests for information or services; provider 100 may respond to such requests from its own resources, or may contact certain ones of external providers 300 to obtain responses from the external providers' resources; responses are typically provided to users on display screens on terminals 200.
• One or more of the external providers 300 may be advertisers 300a.
• provider 100 may accept advertising from advertisers 300a for presentation to users at terminals 200, and may charge advertisers 300a for this service. According to the present invention, provider
• profile information 400 for users, indicating the areas of interest or need for each user. Such information may be obtained according to such factors as : 1. Kinds of service or information to which the user has subscribed. Those skilled in the art realize that this typically creates data structures for guidance of provider 100 ' s software, from which user profile data 400 may be readily extracted .
• Questionnaire information provided by the user at time of subscription may be inserted directly into user profile information 400.
• Information inferred from a user's actions on the system may be captured on the fly and recorded in user profile data 400 (e.g., a user who makes several information searches pertaining to classical music may be deemed to be a likely purchaser of recordings; a user's commuting or travel routines may be inferred from recurring patterns of locations at which a user originates or accepts calls) .
• User profile data 400 may be inferred from a user's intent (e.g., a user who maintains an appointment calendar with provider 100 and who indicates therein that he has scheduled a vacation may be deemed interested in transportation services; a user who purchases transportation to a particular locale may deemed interested in tourist services m that locale) .
• a user's intent e.g., a user who maintains an appointment calendar with provider 100 and who indicates therein that he has scheduled a vacation may be deemed interested in transportation services; a user who purchases transportation to a particular locale may deemed interested in tourist services m that locale
• provider 100 includes profile summarizer 110, which derives group profile information 450 from user profile information 400.
• profile information 400 may be summarized according to the number of users who fall into each of several predetermined groups.
• a profile group file 450 might indicate, inter alia, that a provider 100 has among its users 872 men, 843 women, 152 people interested in classical music, and three people interested in paleontology. (A particular user might be reflected in several of the groups.) Copies of group profile information 450 are then provided to advertisers 300a.
• An advertiser 300a in response to profile group information 450, might transmit to provider 100 advertising messages targeted to particular groups (e.g., a message for all the men and a message for all the classical music devotees) . Each advertising message thus reaches only those users predicted to be most likely to respond positively to it.
• Profile group information 450 may be sold to advertisers 300a for a flat rate, or advertisers 300a may be may be billed incrementally for actual advertisements, or the billing may be according to a combination of both.
• Billing rates may be indexed to the anticipated efficacy of advertisements according to the population reflected in the profile group information 450. Bill rates under such an indexing scheme may be determined by service provider 100, or by market forces by auctioning profile group information 450. It is not necessary to divulge to advertisers the identities of users to practice the invention, since whole groups are identified but not individuals .
• provider 100 can have means of dealing with situations where more messages are targeted for a particular user than can be displayed to him at once, as by queuing messages, or by discarding some messages with a corresponding adjustment to the charges billed to the advertiser .
• An alternative embodiment of the invention is depicted in Fig. 2. As in the embodiment shown in Fig. 1, provider 100 maintains user profiles 400. In this embodiment, however, no profile information is provided to an advertiser 300a. Advertiser 300a transmits to provider 100 advertising messages each of which has associated with it one or more tags descriptive of the content of the advertising message.
• Provider 100 in this embodiment includes an advertising message dispatcher 150.
• dispatcher 150 dispatches each message only to those users who are qualified according to predetermined rules. It will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art how to correlate advertising message tags with user profile information to dispatch advertising messages selectively to users. Advertisements may thus be routed to particular users or groups of users without disclosing user's identities to the advertiser.
• an advertiser 300a is typically billed for advertisements sent to subscribers 200.
• Billing rates may be a flat rate for the right to send advertisements, or an incremental rate for advertisements actually sent. The rate may be set by service provider 100, or by market forces by auctioning the right to send advertisements among a plurality of advertisers 300a.

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• Business, Economics & Management (AREA)
• Strategic Management (AREA)
• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Accounting & Taxation (AREA)
• Development Economics (AREA)
• Finance (AREA)
• Economics (AREA)
• Game Theory and Decision Science (AREA)
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation (AREA)
• Marketing (AREA)
• Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• General Business, Economics & Management (AREA)
• General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
• Management, Administration, Business Operations System, And Electronic Commerce (AREA)
• Information Transfer Between Computers (AREA)

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• 2001
  • 2001-03-14 EP EP01910089A patent/EP1287440A2/de not_active Withdrawn
  • 2001-03-14 WO PCT/IB2001/000366 patent/WO2001071530A2/en not_active Ceased
  • 2001-03-14 AU AU2001237672A patent/AU2001237672A1/en not_active Abandoned

Non-Patent Citations (1)

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