KR20070056047A - Generating and/or serving local area advertisements, such as advertisements for devices with call functionality - Google Patents

Abstract

Sets of local (eg, online) advertisements obtain (a) sets of information about (eg, local) settings, each set containing business address information and / or telephone number. (B) for each of the sets, location is determined using at least one of at least a portion of the business address information and at least a portion of the telephone number, and (c) for each of the sets, the determined information By generating an advertisement that includes targeting information targeting the service of the advertisement in queries related to. A tray that accepts: removes at least one of the query containing information, i.e., the location of the client device, the targeting information targeting the location of the client device, may be determined.

Ad server, content server, search engine, email server, network

Description

Generating and / or serving local area advertisements, such as advertisements for devices with call functionality}

This application is directed to US patent application Ser. No. 10 / 880,868, incorporated herein by Shumeet Baluja, filed June 30, 2004, entitled "ADVERTISEMENTS FOR DEVICES WITH CALL FUNCTIONALITY, SUCH AS MOBILE PHONES." Partial continuous application.

The present invention relates to advertisements ("ads"), such as advertisements served in an online environment. In particular, the present invention relates to devices having a calling capability and / or limited capability to render web pages in a manner that satisfies a user (eg, due to small displays, slow communication connection speeds, and / or slow rendering). And to generate and serve location-related advertisements, such as advertisements for.

Advertisements using traditional media such as television, radio, newspapers, and magazines are well known. Unfortunately, even with demographic studies and reasonable estimates of a typical audience of various media outlets, advertisers recognize that a significant advertising budget is wasted. In addition, it is very difficult to identify and eliminate such waste.

Recently, advertisements through interactive media have become popular. For example, the explosion of the number of people using the Internet has made advertisers aware of the media and services offered over the Internet as a potentially powerful advertising method.

Interactive advertising provides opportunities for advertisers to target their ads to an audience. In other words, targeted ads are considered to be more useful to end users because they relate to the needs deduced from the activity of a user (e.g., to a user's search query to a search engine). , Related to the content of the document requested by the user, etc.). Query keyword-related ads were used by search engines such as the AdWords advertising system by Google in Mountain View, California. Similarly, content-related advertising systems have been proposed. For example, US Patent Application Serial No. 10, entitled "METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR SERVING RELEVANT ADVERTISEMENTS," filed December 6, 2002 by Jeffrey A. Dean, Georges R. Harik, and Paul Bucheit, both inventors. / 314,427 (see herein) and inventors filed February 26, 2003 by Darrell Anderson, Paul Bucheit, Alex Carobus, Claire Cui, Jeffrey A. Dean, Georges R. Harik, Deepak Jindal, and Narayanan Shivakumar 10 / 375,900 (referenced herein), entitled “SERVING ADVERTISEMENTS BASED ON CONTENT”, describes methods and devices for serving ads related to the content of a document such as, for example, a web page. The AdSense system by Google is an example of a content-related advertising system.

Unfortunately in online advertising delivery businesses, local establishment for online advertising has become a problem. The inventors believe that local settings are reluctant in online advertising for at least three main reasons. First, the local configuration may not want to devote resources to another advertising channel. Second, local settings may not be of interest in developing an online presence. Even if they are interested, they cannot have the skills to develop online presence. Third, people often want to talk to someone in a local setting (for example, ordering pizza, booking at a local restaurant, looking for a plumber, arranging for towing a car, estimating costs, making appointments, etc.). In general, the search of the World Wide Web (hereinafter simply referred to as the “web”) with a personal computer is often very useful for knowing about businesses and some websites facilitate setup and communication (e.g. email), The web is often not the ideal medium for users to communicate with local settings.

Some mobile phone service providers offer 411 services and support services. For example, with the support service provided by Sprint, the user can request an operator to follow the Palo Alto plumber and the operator finds the requested information for the user. Unfortunately, from a user's point of view, there may be a fee associated with such services. From a service provider's point of view, securing useful and courteous services may require the recruitment, training and retention of high quality staff.

With respect to these recognized shortcomings of online advertising by local settings, it is useful to improve an advertisement such as, for example, online advertising to meet the local settings and the needs of users. It is desirable to avoid the need and expense of recruiting, training and retaining useful and friendly staff.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention can be used to generate advertisements related to local search (eg, desktop devices, mobile devices, etc.). These advertisements are particularly relevant to wireless devices where queries about services that meet instantaneous needs are likely to be raised. Such embodiments obtain (a) sets of information regarding local settings, each set comprising at least one of business address information and / or telephone number, and (b) for each of the sets, the business Targeting using at least one of at least some of the address information and at least one of the telephone numbers, and (c) targeting each of the sets, targeting the service of the advertisement to queries related to the determined information. An advertisement containing information may be generated.

At least some embodiments consistent with the present invention may determine at least one of the generated advertisements that include targeting information that accepts a query including information regarding the location of the client device and targets the location of the client device.

In at least some embodiments according to the present invention, the information about the location of the client device included in the query includes the latitude and longitude of the client device, is derived from the global positioning satellite derived location of the client device, and the telephone of the client device. The area number of the number, or the access point from which the client device is registered.

In at least some embodiments according to the present invention, sets of information about local settings may be received from a data feed that includes information about yellow page listings.

Yellow page listing issuers and / or local settings may be billed to serve ads over a given period of time (eg, one year) or per advertisement impression, selection and / or conversion.

1 is a high level diagram illustrating parties or entities that can interact with an advertising system.

Figure 2 illustrates an environment in which the present invention may be operated.

3 is a Venn diagram illustrating a classification of user devices in accordance with the present invention.

4 is a flowchart of an exemplary method of generating local advertising information in a manner consistent with the present invention.

5 and 6 are diagrams of a mobile phone in which the present invention may be used.

7 illustrates an exemplary data structure for storing an advertisement request message in a manner consistent with the present invention.

8 is a flowchart of an exemplary method for performing advertising service operations in a manner consistent with the present invention.

9-13 illustrate exemplary advertising displays in accordance with the present invention.

14 is a flow chart illustrating an exemplary method for performing user advertisement selection in a manner consistent with the present invention.

15 is a block diagram of an exemplary device capable of performing various operations and storing various information in a manner consistent with the present invention.

The present invention may include new methods, device, message formats, and / or data structures for generating and / or serving local online advertisements. The following description is provided to enable any person skilled in the art to use the invention and is provided in the specific applications and their requirements. Accordingly, the following description of embodiments in accordance with the present invention provides examples and description but is not limited to the precise forms described. Various modifications to the described embodiments are apparent to those skilled in the art and the general principles described below can be applied to other embodiments and applications. For example, although a series of steps may be described with respect to a flowchart, the order of the steps may differ from other implementations when the performance of one step does not follow the completion of another step. In addition, independent steps may be performed in parallel. Unless explicitly described as such, elements, steps, or sequences used in the present description should be construed as not important or essential to the present invention. Also, as used herein, the term "one" is intended to include one or more items. If only one item is intended, the term "one" or similar language is used. Accordingly, the invention is not limited to the embodiments shown and the inventors regard the invention as any patentable subject matter described.

In the following, the operation of embodiments according to the present invention is described in 4.1. Then, exemplary embodiments according to the present invention are described in § 4.2. Examples of operations are described in 4.3. Finally, conclusions regarding the present invention are described in 4.4.

4.1 embodiment according to the invention which may be operated

§4.1.1 exemplary advertising environment

1 is a high level diagram of an advertising environment. This 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 in system 120 directly or indirectly. These advertisements may be in the form of advertisements that combine one or more elements of graphic advertisements, such as banner advertisements, text-only advertisements, video advertisements, audio advertisements, video advertisements, or any such element. These advertisements may also include embedded information such as machine executable instructions and / or links. The advertisement consumers 130 may provide requests for the advertisements to accept the advertisements and provide usage information to the system 120 in response to their request form. An entity other than the advertisement consumer 130 may generate requests for advertisements. Although not shown, other entities may provide usage information (eg, conversion or click-through associated with the generated advertisement) to the system 120. This usage information may include measured or observed user behavior related to the ads served.

Ad server 120 may be similar to that described in FIG. 2 of the '900 application. The advertising program may include information about accounts, campaigns, creatives, targeting, and the like. The term "account" relates to information for a given advertiser (eg, specific email address, password, billing information, etc.). A "campaign" or "ad campaign" relates to one or more groups of one or more advertisers and may include start date, end date, budget information, geo-targeting information, syndication information, and the like. For example, Honda may have one advertising campaign for the automobile line and a separate advertising campaign for the motorcycle line. A campaign for a car line can have one or more ad groups, each containing one or more ads. Each ad group includes targeting information (e.g., a set of passwords, a set of one or more topics, geolocation information, user profile information, user device characteristics, etc.) and price or offer information (e.g., maximum cost per selection or Cost, maximum cost per conversion or cost, etc.). Alternatively or additionally, each ad group may include an average cost (eg, average cost per selection, 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 described, each ad group may have one or more ads or "creatives" (ie, ad content that is ultimately rendered to the end user). Each advertisement may also include a link and / or telephone number to a URL (e.g., a web page associated with a particular product or server or a landing web page such as an advertiser's home page). In essence, the advertising information can include some information and can be organized in a number of different ways.

2 illustrates an environment 200 in which the present invention may be used. User device (also referred to as "client" or "client device") 250 is a browser facility (eg, Explorer and Pocket-PC Explorer browsers from Microsoft, Opera Web browser from Norwegian Opera software, AOL / Time) Navigator browsers from Warner, Firefox browsers from Mozilla, etc.), email facilities (eg, Outlook from Microsoft), and the like. Search engine 220 may allow user devices 250 to search collections of documents (eg, web pages). Content server 210 may allow user devices 250 to access documents. An email server (eg, hotmail from a Microsoft network, Yahoo Mail, etc.) 240 may be used to provide email functionality to the user devices 250. Ad server 210 may be used to serve advertisements to user devices 250. Advertisements may be serviced in connection with search results provided by search engine 220. However, content-related advertisements may be serviced in connection with content provided by content server 230 and / or email and / or user device email facilities supported by email server 240. Advertisements can be served by themselves without other content from other servers.

As discussed in the '900 application (described above), advertisements can be targeted to documents served by content servers. Thus, one example of an advertisement consumer 130 receives and receives requests for documents (eg, articles, discussion threads, music, video, graphics, search results, web page listings, etc.). A generic content server 230 that retrieves or otherwise serves the requested document in response to the request. The content server may provide a request for advertisements to the advertisement server 120/210. Such an ad request may include any number of advertisements as desired. The advertisement request may also include document request information. This information is part of the document request, the category or topic that corresponds to the document itself (eg pages), document content or document request (eg art, business, computers, art-movies, art-music, etc.) And all, content timing, content type (eg, text, graphics, video, audio, mixed media, etc.), geolocation information, document information, user device characteristics, and the like. This request may also include end user device characteristics.

The content server 230 may combine the requested document with one or more of the advertisements provided by the advertisement server 120/210. The combined information, including document content and advertisement (s), is then passed towards the end user device 250 requesting the document for presentation to the user. Finally, content server 230 may send information about the advertisements, and the advertisements may be rendered back to ad server 120/210 (eg, position, selected or non-selected, impression time, impression date, size). Information about the method, when and / or where the converted, non-converted, end user device characteristics, etc.) are transmitted. Alternatively or additionally, such information may be provided back to the ad server 120/210 by some other means.

Another example of an advertisement consumer 130 is a search engine 220. The search engine 220 may receive queries for search results. In response, the search engine may retrieve relevant search results (eg, from an index of web pages). Exemplary search engines include the article "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine" published by S.Brin and L. Page at the " Seventh International World Wide Web Conference " in Brisbane, Australia, and U.S. Patent 6,285,999 (both of which Reference is hereby incorporated by reference. Such search results may include, for example, lists of web page titles, snippets of text extracted from these web pages, and hypertext links to these 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. This request may include as many advertisements as desired. This number may depend on the search results, the amount of screen or page space occupied by the search results, the size and shape of the ads, and the like. In one embodiment, the number of ads desired is from 1 to 10 and preferably from 3 to 5. Requests for advertisements may also be associated with a query (entered or analyzed), information based on the query (e.g., geolocation information, the query is a subscription and the identifier of such a subscription, and / or a search query as described below and / or Or information related to or based on information derived from the derived information), user device characteristics, and / or search results. Such information may include, for example, identifiers associated with the search results (e.g., document identifiers or "docID"), scores associated with the search results (e.g., 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, snippets of text extracted from identified documents (eg, , Web pages), full text of identified documents, topics of identified documents, feature vectors of identified documents, and the like. This request may also include end user device characteristics.

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

Finally, search engine 220 may determine information about the advertisement and the advertisements to be rendered back to ad server 120/210 (eg, location, selected or unselected, impression time, impression date, size, conversion or non- Information about conversion, end user device characteristics, etc.). As described below, such information may include information (eg, strict or relaxed match, exact, phrase, broad match, etc.) to determine what the advertisement is based on. Alternatively or additionally, such information may be provided back to the ad server 120/210 by some other means.

Email server 240 may generally be considered as a content server where the document being served is simply an email. In addition, email applications (eg, Microsoft Outlook) can be used to send and / or receive email. Thus, email server 240 or application may be considered as advertisement consumer 130. Thus, emails can be considered as documents and targeted advertisements can be served in connection with such documents. For example, one or more advertisements may be serviced by email, under email, over email, or otherwise in connection with email.

Finally, client device 250 may provide a request for advertisements to the ad server 210. In this case, client device 250 may be considered as an advertising consumer.

Although the example described above serves as (i) requesting advertisements and (ii) combining them with content, one or both of these operations may be performed by a client device (eg, an end user computer).

§4.1.1 definitions

Online advertisements can have a variety of unique features. Such features may be defined by the application and / or the advertiser. These features are referred to as " ad features " below. For example, in the case of text advertising, the advertising features may include a title line, advertising text, and embedded links. In the case of video advertising, the advertising features may include images, executable code, and embedded links. Depending on the type of online advertisement, the advertising features may then include one or more of text, links, audio files, video files, video 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 is served. These parameters are referred to as "service parameters" below. The service parameters may for example be followed by features of the document in which the advertisement is served (including information), search query or search results related to the service of the advertisement, user characteristics (eg, their geographic location, used by the user). Language used, type of browser used, previous page views, previous behavior, user account, any web cookies used by the system, user device characteristics, etc.), the host or subscription site making the request (eg, Americas) Online, Google, Yahoo), the absolute position of the ad on the page being served, the position of the ad relative to other ads served (spatial or temporal), the absolute size of the ad, the size of the ad relative to other ads, the color of the ad, A number of different ads served, types of other ads served, time of day served, time of week served, time of year served One can include more than one. Originally, there are other service parameters that can be used in the context of the present invention.

Although service parameters are non-essential for advertisement features, they may be associated with the advertisement as service terms or constraints. When used as terms of service or constraints, such service parameters are simply referred to as “serving constraints” (or targeting criteria.) For example, in some systems, an advertiser may not be lower than any location and only within a certain location. By targeting users to be served only on weekends, they can target their advertising service, as another example, in some systems, an advertiser can be defined to serve only if a page or search query includes specific keywords or phrases. As another example, in some systems, an advertiser may specify that a service to be served only if it contains specific topics or concepts, or to be placed under a particular cluster or clusters or any other class or classes. In some systems, an advertiser may be able to Finally, in some systems, an advertisement may be targeted to be served in response to a request sourced from a specific location or in response to a request regarding a particular location. Can be converted.

"Advertisement information" means information that may be derived from advertisement features, advertising service constraints, advertising features or service constraints (called "advertised information derived"), and / or information related to the advertisement ("advertising related information"). "As well as" as well as any combination of extensions of such information (eg, information derived from advertisement related information).

The ratio of the number of selections (eg, clickthroughs) of the advertisement to the number of impressions (ie, the number of times the advertisement is rendered) of the advertisement is defined as the "selection rate" (or "clickthrough rate") of the advertisement.

'Conversion' is said to occur when a user completes a transaction related to a previously served advertisement. What constitutes a conversion may vary from case to case and can be determined in various ways. For example, there may be cases where a conversion occurs when a user clicks on an advertisement called an advertiser's web page and completes a purchase there before leaving the web page. Alternatively, conversion may be defined as a user viewing an advertisement and making a purchase on an advertiser's web page within a predetermined time (eg, seven days). In another alternative, the conversion is for example downloaded by the advertiser, white paper, at least navigates to a given depth of the website, views at least a certain number of web pages, and at least a predetermined amount on the website or web pages. May be defined as any measurable / observable user behavior such as consuming time. Often, if user actions do not represent a completed purchase, they may represent a sales lead, but the user actions that make up the conversion are not limited thereto. Indeed, many other definitions of what constitutes 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 rendered) is called the "conversion rate". If it is specified that conversion may occur within a predetermined time after the service of the advertisement, one possible definition of the conversion rate may only consider ads that have been served over a predetermined time in the past.

"Document" should be construed 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. These files can be of any type such as text, audio, video, video, and the like. Parts of the document to be rendered to the end user can be considered as the "content" of the document. The document contains "structured data" containing content (words, pictures, etc.) and some indication of the meaning of the content (e.g., email fields and related data, HTML tags and related data, etc.). can do. Ad spots in the document may be defined with embedded information or instructions. On the Internet, a common document is a web page. Web pages often contain content and may include embedded information (eg, meta information, hyperlinks, etc.) and embedded instructions (eg, JavaScript, etc.). In many cases, a document has an addressable storage location so that it can be specifically identified by this addressable location. Universal Resource Locator (URL) is an address used to access information on the Internet.

"Document information" refers to any information contained in a document, information that may be derived from information contained in a document (called "document derived information"), and / or information associated with a document ("document related information"). ) As well as extensions of such information (eg, information derived from related information). Examples of document derived information are classes based on the textual content of documents. Examples of document related information include document information from other documents to which the instant document is linked, as well as document information from other documents to which the instant document is linked.

Content from the document can be rendered on a "content rendering application or device". Examples of content rendering applications include Internet browsers (eg, Explorer, Netscape, Opera, Firefox, etc.), media players (eg, MP3 players, RealNetNetworks streaming audio file players, etc.), viewers (eg For example, Adobe Acrobat Acrobat PDF Reader).

A "content owner" is a person or entity with certain property rights in the content of a document. The content owner can be the author of the content. In addition or alternatively, the content owner may have the rights to reproduce the content, to prepare derivative works of the content, to display or perform the content publicly, and / or to have exclusive rights in the content. The content server may be the content owner of the document content being serviced, but this is not necessary.

"User information" may include user behavior information and / or user profile information.

"Email Information" is any information contained in an email (also referred to as "Internet email information"), information that may be derived from information contained in an email and / or information related to an email, as well as extensions of such information ( For example, information derived from related information). An example of information derived from email information is extracted information or information derived from search results returned in response to a search query consisting of terms extracted from an email subject line. Examples of information relating to email information include email information about one or more other emails sent by the same sender of a given email or user information about an email recipient. Information derived from or related to the email information may be referred to as "external email information".

3 is a venn diagram illustrating a class of user device 300 in accordance with the present invention. Some user device 340 may have limited displays. Some user devices 350 may have limited communication connections. Most laptop computers 330 do not have limited displays or communication connections but some may have limited displays and / or limited communication connections. Similarly, most desktop computers 320 do not have limited displays or communication connections, but some may have limited displays and / or limited communication connections. As shown, most existing mobile phones 360 and personal digital assistants (PDAs) 370 have limited displays and limited communication connections. However, as indicated by the arrows, the displays and / or communication connections of such devices may be improved. Similarly, other devices (not shown), such as portable and / or wireless devices, may have limited displays and / or limited communication connections.

Limited or small displays may be considered to be unable to render a web page due to size and / or resolution in a way that meets a target set of users or most users. The 3 "diagonal display common to most current generation PDAs is an example of a limited display in most web page content created for personal computers. The 1.5" diagonal display common to most mobile phones is created for personal computers. Is another example of a limited display in the content of most web pages. Similarly, a low speed communication connection speed may be considered as too slow to load web pages in a manner that meets a target set of users or for most users. The 9.3 Kbps modem is an example of a slow connection speed in loading most web pages created for personal computers. Similarly, a low speed processor may be too slow (eg due to some combination of screen size, communication connection speed, and / or processor speed) so that a web page loaded in a way that meets the target set of users or most users It can be considered as not being rendered. Configuring limited user device, limited display, slow connection speed, and / or low speed processor may be defined as an advertiser, advertising service system, end user, or some combination of definitions from these parties and entities.

"Location" means a precise location (eg, latitude and longitude), region (eg, city, state, province, country, postal code, area code, within a county, on the body of water, etc.), a determinable area (Eg, buildings, complex buildings, etc.), and the like.

“Device Information” relating to a client device or end user device includes information about whether the device has a calling function, the home-base area code of the device, the area number of the device's current location, the access point to which the mobile device is currently registered, Qualitative and / or quantitative information regarding processor speed, display size, display resolution, communication speed, and the like.

Although the present invention can be used with any user device having a telephone call function, it is advantageous for use with user devices having a telephone call function but with small displays, low speed communication connections, and / or a low speed processor.

§4.2 Exemplary Embodiments

Exemplary embodiments for creating advertisements for local settings, serving such advertisements, and processing responses to such advertisements are described in the next chapter.

§4.2.1 create advertisements for local settings

4 is a flowchart of an exemplary method 400 for generating local online advertising information in a manner consistent with the present invention. The method 400 can be used to generate local online advertisements, for example, from a yellow page. This local online advertising information is needed before local requests can be serviced. Before the method 400 leaves (node 430), the method 400 may obtain local advertisement information (block 410) and associate each advertisement entry with location information and targeting information (block 420).

Referring to block 410, the yellow pages information may be a data source for online advertisements for local settings. This information can be conveyed in many forms. One form is a data feed having one or more but preferably all of the following fields.

-Business people

Address

-Phone number; And

A business-type listing (eg, "plumbers" or "painters" or "restaurants", etc.).

One or more additional fields, such as graphics (eg logos, etc.), business hours, related descriptive text, payment methods (eg visa, mastercard, American Express, bank check, etc.) Can also be provided.

Referring to block 420, in addition to collecting the listed field (s), each entry may also be associated with a location to which it applies. This location information may be or be derived from the available fields described above, such as the area code of the phone number of the setting, the postal code of the address of the setting, the general coverage area of the phone book (e.g., Queens, NY phone book), and the like. Can be. Targeting information (eg, targeting keywords) may be derived from yellow page listing information such as business type, business name, advertisement text, and the like.

If yellow page information is received as a data file, processing can begin immediately. If this information is not available as a data file, yellow page books can be scanned with document scanners and techniques such as optical carrier recognition (OCR) can be used to fill as many fields as possible. Most of the fields described above will be easy to fill if a fairly consistent formatting of phone books is provided. For example, sample heuristics for analyzing information fields in an advertisement may include one or more of the following.

Business names are shown in bold.

The address appears next.

The telephone number is listed in a specific format ###-###-####.

Business types are listed in a larger font format within the column.

The business type is listed in the page header.

Images and logos can be scanned into graphics and maintained as graphics and associated with an entry.

Business hours may or may not be filled depending on whether they are listed in a yellow page listing (in some embodiments they are not provided by default).

-The descriptive text can be read through the company performing OCR on an advertisement that can be placed on a yellow page.

-Payment methods can only be recognized from images by using simple image processing techniques, such as template matching, because there are only a limited number (visa, mastercard, etc.) recognized through OCR.

These heuristics are examples of types of rules that can be generated less than to automatically analyze a yellow page scanned with accurate data fields.

Once the data is collected, online advertisements for local settings are generated from it. For brevity, business type listings and related descriptive text and the like may be used when the "keywords" used specify what advertisement belongs. Invented by Georges Harik, filed on September 29, 2003, as inventor, described in US Patent Application 10 / 674,056, which is referred to herein as "GENERATING INFORMATION FOR ONLINE ADVERTISEMENTS FROM INTERNET DATA AND TRADITIONAL MEDIA DATA." The techniques may be used instead of or in combination with the techniques described in this application.

In many online advertising systems, one or more advertisements are displayed in association with a document such as, for example, a web page having content or a search results page. Typically, online advertisements are embedded information (e.g., for example) such that when an advertisement is selected by (e.g., user clicking on the advertisement), the browser loads a document (e.g., a webpage) associated with the advertisement. Links). Such documents are commonly referred to as "landing pages" of advertisements.

For example, use web pages such as those created in HTML or any other markup language, but with appropriate display monitors (eg, 13 ", 15", 17 ", 19", 21 ", or perhaps much more) Since landing pages are useful when a user uses a browser on a device with a small), using the same web pages as the landing page is much less useful when the user uses a device with a smaller and / or smaller resolution display. Similarly, using web pages as an advertising landing page allows the user device to have a web page with an appropriate communications connection to the Internet (e.g., a 56 Kbps modem, a higher speed digital subscriber line (DSL) modem, or a higher speed cable modem). This is useful when you have a proper processor to render the web pages into ad landing pages. Use is much less useful when the user device has a low speed communication connection (eg 9.6 Kbps) and / or a low speed processor, as can be seen from the above, advertisements rendered on mobile phones It must be sized and speeded up.

§4.2.2 mobile client devices

As mentioned above, rendering a linked landing web page upon ad selection according to a standard clickthrough model may not be suitable for devices with limited displays and / or limited communication connections, such as wireless browsers. For example, an advertiser's linked website or web page may not look good and may not actually function on a wireless phone with rendering capabilities. In such cases, attempts to render the ad landing page when rendering or an advertisement is selected may appear harmful and bad for the advertiser. As another example, making a connection and downloading another web page can be too slow for devices with limited communication connections. For example, Sprint's wireless network is only 9.6K baud. It may not be desirable for the user to make another delay before experiencing a potentially conventional experience. In addition, on devices with limited displays, it is more difficult to maintain their state, and making the user view the intermediate text page can act to exacerbate this difficulty. Even if the advertiser's landing web page and website features function well on devices with limited display and / or communication connections, such as mobile phones, the chance of conversion (e.g., a transaction completes) limits the mobile phone's input. Can be kept very small. For example, entering shipping information and credit card information with a mobile phone keyboard is slow and useless. Finally, even if the user device is not limited in terms of rendering the selected web page, such advertisements may nevertheless have a higher conversion rate than the ads that the landing web page is loaded in response to the selection. This may be useful to provide a selective calling function to the advertisement.

The present invention provides for (i) user information (e.g., whether the user device has a low speed display, a low speed communication connection, a low speed processor, limited user input, and / or call functionality in an advertisement request), (ii) user device information and user device; Advertisement selection and / or score using location, (iii) display or otherwise rendering advertisements with selective calling feature, and / or (iv) call origination in response to call selection. The present invention can be done in this manner using various techniques described below. As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, at least some of these techniques may be used alone or in combination.

Some example embodiments are described below in connection with a mobile phone. In some of the example embodiments described below, a select call “button”, such as, for example, a phone icon, is displayed as an advertisement (eg, within, adjacent, etc.). The select call button indicates that the call is made from the mobile phone when the user clicks the button (or perhaps other portions of the advertisement). These exemplary embodiments have a number of advantages. If the user is using a mobile phone, the user may not want to talk through the small screen. However, if the user can be connected to the advertiser by voice, if the button or hyperlink is used to make a telephone call, the user does not have to attempt to record or remember the telephone number. The sequences can be arranged without the user having to scroll through the various information and often enter information using limited keypads. Finally, advertisers are directly connected with advertisers, which is often desirable, especially in the context of local settings.

5 and 6 show a mobile telephone in which the present invention is used. Mobile phone 500 of FIG. 5 includes call indicator 505, earpiece 510, recording key 515, display screen 520, up / down side keys 525, soft left key 530, easy key. Key 535, transmit key 540, numeric keys 545, star key 550, active flip 555, antenna 560, hands-free connector 565, soft right key 570, navigation One or more of keys 575, end / power key 580, hash or pound key 585, and microphone 590.

6 is a block diagram of a mobile phone 600 in which the present invention may be used. Mobile phone 600 may include one or more processors 610, one or more user input facilities 620 (eg, keys and microphone), one or more user output facilities 630 (eg, display and speakers). ) And one or more storage facilities 640. These facilities can communicate with each other via one or more buses or networks 650. Storage facilities 640 may include additional applications 648 as well as applications supporting call functions 642, applications supporting data functions 644, applications supporting display functions 646. May include various applications 641. These data functions 644 may include browser functions. Finally, application program interfaces (APIs) may be provided, which allow data functions 644 to access the calling functions 642. '

Currently, some phones (eg, by looking for simple patterns ###-###-####, (###) ###-####, etc.) are short message service (SMS) Phone number information can be extracted from the messages. Therefore, the advertisement delivered in the SMS may include the telephone number to be recognized and may allow the telephone to dial the telephone number if selected. Microsoft installs the feature in Pocket-PC Explorer using the following syntax:

<a href="tel:12063722651"> call me </a>

This sets up a link that calls the phone number in the "tel:" tag by default when pressed.

Most phones that support data and voice modes typically involve a limited amount of conversations between the data and voice sides. However, dialing from a web page is possible by having an application on user device usage APIs that can be used on many mobile phones to dial phone numbers that are often exposed to the data side. Mobile client applications include, for example, Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW from San Diego, Calif.), Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME from Santa Clara, Calif.), Symbian, Smartphone, etc. It can be developed using commercially available platforms. BREW and J2ME allow commands such as initial voice-calling to be sent to applications for voice functions of the phone.

§4.2.3 Request for advertising

7 illustrates an example data structure 700 in accordance with the present invention for storing an advertisement request message. In particular, in information used, for example, for targeting relevant advertisements, the message 700 may include client device geolocation information 700 as well as client device type information. Such client device type information may include (i) whether the user device has a small display and / or size of the display, (ii) the user device has a low resolution display and / or a resolution of the display, and (iii) Limited communication connection and / or connection speed (which can be inferred), (iv) whether the user device has a low speed processor and / or processor speed, (v) the user device is limited in loading and renders a web page (vii) whether the user device has calling functionality, (vii) the user device has various authoring languages (e.g., HTML, SGML, XML, WAP, WAP 2.0, dHTML, xHTML, Java, Javascript, Etc.), (viii) the user device currently supports active (or terminated) phone calls, or (ix) the user device has restricted user input. Force, or (x) what type of user input is provided (eg, touch screen, stylus, limited keypad, full keyboard, pointers), and the like. Such user device information may be used to determine whether to serve particular advertisements or particular types of advertisements and / or how to score competing advertisements.

The client device “geolocation information” may include one or more countries, one or more (national) regions, one or more states, one or more large cities, one or more cities, one or more cities, one or more counties, one or more with common postal codes. Information defining regions, one or more regions with common telephone area numbers, one or more regions served by common cable head end stations, one or more regions served by common network access points or nodes, and the like. It may include. It may be latitude and / or longitude or include a range thereof. This may include information such as an IP address from which user location may be estimated.

In addition, the advertisement request information may include end user (or any other entity referred to herein simply as "end user") geolocation information, or information from which the end user geolocation is derived or removed. For example, end-user geolocation information can include country, region (e.g., Pacific Coast, Northeast, Central Atlantic, Southwest, etc.), state, metropolitan (e.g., San Francisco Bay Area, Columbia District, etc.) ), City, city, postal code, telephone area code, and the like.

Geolocation information can be encoded in various ways. For example, the country identifier may be a two letter code, such as a code determined by the International Organization for Standarization (ISO). This local identifier may be a six character code, such as a code determined by UTF 8. Thus, countries and regions can be encoded using ISO 3166-2 / 1999, which is a two letter country code preceding a "-" 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 regions may be assigned a numeric identifier attached to the endpoint. In an embodiment of the invention, more than 200 countries and 1300 regions are specifically identified. Metropolitan identifiers may be based on the DMA standard. In one embodiment, the big cities may span the main lines. Thus, in such an embodiment, the metropolis does not necessarily need to be "included" in the state. Since the same city or city name can be used for different cities or cities in different states, such information should be used in combination with state information to avoid ambiguity. Postal codes may be encoded as 5-digit integers or extended to four or more digits. Telephone area codes can be encoded as 3-digit integers. Other ways of encoding geolocation information are possible.

The present invention can be used to derive or estimate geolocation information from other information. For example, if the client device is a mobile phone with GPS capability, the client device geolocation may be provided by components in the mobile phone that provide GPS functionality. As another example, the present invention uses known techniques (such as GA, a technique used by the "NetAcuity" product from Digital Envoy, Norcross) to provide Internet Protocol ("IP") address and / or domain information. Map to geolocation information. As another example, Internet service providers may have many dial-in access servers, each associated with a telephone area code. As another example, the location of the end user may be inferred from the local term (eg, Hoagie, Hirolow, Grinder, Serve) input by the user. If multiple factors are used to infer geolocation but derive inconsistent positions that each do not have the desired confidence level, a more general match position can be used. Alternatively, the present invention may only accept geolocation information previously derived or provided. For example, the end user or client device used by the end user may have geolocation information provided voluntarily. As another example, the geolocation information may be derived and provided by a third party.

While some examples use the geolocation information used as the user's current location, the geolocation information may be the location of interest to the user.

Other methods of communicating or inferring a user autonomous type may be used and the present invention is not limited to the message data structures described above and is not limited to the listed information types.

§4.2.4 Selection and / or scoring of advertisements

8 is a flowchart of an exemplary method 800 of performing and servicing operations in a manner consistent with the present invention. As shown by block 810, different branches of the method 800 may be performed depending on the type of advertisement request. If the ad request type is (sourced) from a "normal" client device without calling functionality, then one or more local advertisements that link to documents (e.g., webpages) may be serviced before leaving this method 800 (node 860). (Block 820). Examples of such advertisements include keyword-targeted text ads. Ads can be serviced according to the ad score. The score of the ad is determined by (i) relevance to current user interest (e.g., inferred from a search query or document), (ii) relevance to user type, (iii) relevance to user, (iv) offer per impression, ( v) offer per user action (e.g., selection, conversion, etc.), (vi) performance parameters of the advertisement (e.g., selection rate, user rating, conversion rate, etc.), (vii) location targeting information, etc. It may be one or more functions. A "normal" client device is not a "limited" client device. For example, a normal client device may be one that has a normal connection speed and / or a normal display, such as for example a personal computer.

Referring to block 810, if the advertisement request type is (sourced) from a "normal" client device with a calling function, one or more local advertisements may be serviced. The local advertisement (s) can be both the advertisement (s) that link to the documents, an advertisement with a “call selection” code, both (block 850). Thus, one or more local advertisements having a "select call" code are served or at least compete for the service. For example, even if a user device can load and render a web page in a way that meets the majority of users, a group of target users, such ads may have a higher conversion rate and / or to the advertiser. It can be useful to service a select call because it can be expected to generate more revenue for it. This higher conversion rate may be reflected in the score of the advertisements. As in the case of block 820 in the left branch, advertisements may be serviced according to the advertisement score. The score of the ad is determined by (i) relevance to the current user's interest (e.g., relevance to inferences from a search query or document), (ii) relevance to the user type, (iii) relevance to the user, and (iv) impressions. Per offer, (v) offer per user action (e.g., selection, conversion, etc.), (vi) performance parameters of the advertisement (e.g., selection rate, user rating, conversion rate, etc.), (vii) location targeting Information or the like. In addition, the score of the advertisement may be a function of how the advertisement performs (eg, in terms of selection rate, conversion rate, etc.) on a device having a calling function, limited and limited display, and / or limited communication connection.

Referring back to block 810, on the other hand, if the request type comes from a "limited" client device with calling functionality (eg, a client device with a small display, a slow connection rate, and / or a slow processing rate), The right branch of method 800 is performed. For example, one or more local advertisements with the select calling code may be serviced before leaving this method 800 (node 850) (block 830). As shown, one or more local advertisements that link to documents (eg, web pages) may also be serviced (block 840). As in the case of block 820 in the left branch, advertisements may be serviced according to the advertisement score. The score of the ad is determined by (i) relevance to the current user's interest (eg, relevance to inferences from a search query or document), (ii) relevance to the user type, (iii) relevance to the user, and (iv) impressions. Per offer, (v) offer per user action (e.g., selection, conversion, etc.), (vi) performance parameters of the advertisement (e.g., selection rate, user rating, conversion rate, etc.), (vii) location targeting Information or the like. In addition, the score of the advertisement may be a function of the method by which the advertisement is performed (eg, in terms of selection rate, conversion rate, etc.) on a device with calling functionality. In addition, the score of the advertisement may be a function of the calling function and how the advertisement is performed (eg, in terms of selection rate, conversion rate, etc.) on devices with limited displays and / or limited communication connections.

In an alternative embodiment, as long as the user device has a calling function, all types of advertisements may be considered, but the score of the advertisements takes into account the user device type. For example, the user device type can affect the performance parameters of the advertisement used to determine the score of the advertisement.

In each of the branches of the method 800, local advertisements may be serviced. This includes (i) determining where the client device is, (ii) finding advertisements related to the determined location, and (iii) scoring location-related advertisements. Examples of how these actions are performed are provided below.

Determine that the client device is done in a variety of ways. For example, if the client device has GPS information (eg, a phone enabled for GPS), this information can be provided upon request. Alternatively or additionally, the user provides such information in a search query (eg, the search query is "Plumbers zip = 94043" or "Palo Alto's plumbers"). Alternatively or additionally, the user provides the information in response to a request for such information (eg, either the current session or the previous session).

Determine that location-related advertisements can be done in a variety of ways. For example, the location targeting information of an ad (e.g., derived from a phone number in a yellow page listing, derived from an address in a yellow page listing, and / or inferred from the coverage area of a yellow page book containing the listing) May be matched with client device location information.

Scoring location related ads can be done in a variety of ways and (i) which advertisers have the largest ads on the yellow page (eg, they pay for graphics or boxes on the yellow pages, in which case advertisers are yellow). A preference may be provided if a payment model is used that is proportional to the payment of pages), (ii) how much the advertiser has to pay (or willingly pay) to have the ad served, (iii) the predicted selection rate Or conversion rate, (iv) predicted call-through rate, (v) relevance (eg, based on keyword or concept targeting, based on location targeting), and the like.

In addition, if the advertisement can be rendered in alternative formats (eg, text only, text plus graphics, video, audio, animation, video, etc.), then any of the alternative usage formats may be (i) Preference (eg, provided expressly by the user, inferred from the browser option setting, etc.), (ii) the characteristics of the client device (eg, can the browser of the calling phone display graphics), (iii ) May be determined as a function of one or more of the characteristics of the communication connection (eg, whether the connection is fast enough to support graphics).

§4.2.5 Example Advertising Displays

9-13 are exemplary advertising displays in accordance with the present invention. 9 is a text advertisement 900 that may include one or more of a setup name line 930, a setup address 940, and a setup phone number 950. For example, other information as described in the 868 application may be used instead of or in addition to such information. Typically, when such an advertisement is selected by a user clicking on the advertisement, the associated web page is loaded onto the user's browser. However, as mentioned above, this is not desirable for certain user devices. Thus, in at least some embodiments in accordance with the present invention, selecting an advertisement may cause a telephone call for the setting.

10 is a text advertisement 1000 that includes a select call function as indicated by icon button 1010. In some embodiments of the invention, a call (to a phone number associated with an advertisement) may be invoked when an icon button 1010 is selected (e.g., a pointer, keystroke, stylus, Is produced through the touch screen). According to an embodiment, if a portion of the advertisement 1000 other than the icon button 1010 is selected, the call may be triggered or alternatively the linked document may be rendered on the browser of the device.

11 is a text advertisement 1100 that includes a selected call function as indicated by icon button 1110 as well as a linked document function as indicated by icon button 1120. In some embodiments of the invention, the call (to the phone number associated with the advertisement) is rendered on the browser when icon button 1110 is selected and the linked button is selected. According to this embodiment, if a portion of the advertisement 1100 other than the icon buttons 1110 and 1120 is selected, a call may be invoked or alternatively the linked document may be rendered on the browser of the device.

12 is a text advertisement 1200 that includes a select call function as indicated by button 1210. In some embodiments of the invention, a call (to a phone number associated with an advertisement) is made when button 1210 is selected. According to an embodiment, if a portion of the advertisement 1200 other than the button 1210 is selected, a call may be made, or alternatively, the linked document may be rendered on the browser of the device.

13 is a text advertisement 1300 that includes a selected call function as indicated by button 1310 as well as a linked document function as indicated by button 1320. In some embodiments of the invention, a call (to a phone number associated with the advertisement) is invoked when button 1310 is selected and the linked document is rendered on the browser when button 1320 is selected. According to an embodiment, if a portion of the advertisement 1300 other than the buttons 1310 and 1320 is selected, a call may be invoked or alternatively the linked document may be rendered on the browser of the device.

Before, at the same time, or after a call is made, informational messages (eg, "YOU ARE NOW CALLING_") can be rendered on the phone.

Ads with both a call and linked document function may have different performance parameters associated with the different function. Alternatively or additionally, the advertisement may have different offers associated with different user actions (eg, a first offer for the call and a second offer for the linked document). Referring back to method 800, scoring of advertisements may take into account one or more of the different performance parameters and / or one or more of the different offers.

Various alternative functions of the advertisements described above may be performed in accordance with one or more of the default values of the ad server, advertiser preferences, user or user set preferences, content owner preferences, content owner group preferences, and the like.

Although text advertisements are shown in Figures 9-13, other types of advertisements as listed in §4.1.4 above may be used in a manner consistent with the present invention. In addition, various navigation methods are possible for (a) loading a document and / or (b) dialing a telephone number. For example, when a user selects an advertisement, they may be asked if they want to visit the advertiser's web page or talk to the advertiser.

§4.2.6 Advertising choice response actions

14 is a flowchart of an exemplary method 1400 for performing user advertisement selection operations in a manner consistent with the present invention. As shown by block 1410, different branches of the method 1400 may be performed according to the user advertisement selection type (eg, recall the advertisements 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300 described above). ). If the user advertisement selection type is linked to the document, then the left branch of the method 1400 is performed, while if the user advertisement selection type causes a call, the right branch of the method 1400 is performed.

If the user advertisement selection is linked to the document, the advertisement selection (and type) may be logged (block 1420) and the linked document may be rendered on the user device prior to leaving the method 1400 (node 1460) (eg For example, loading into a browser) (block 1430). On the other hand, if the user advertisement selection causes a call, the advertisement selection (and type) may be logged (block 1440) and the call to the number associated with the advertisement may be raised before the method 1400 leaves (node 1460). (Block 1450). Although not shown, other user actions may be logged (e.g., the user ending the call, such as before conversion, setting up, or before a certain point).

§4.2.7 Example Device

15 is a block diagram of a machine 1500 that may perform one or more of the above described operations. The machine 1500 may include one or more systems to facilitate information communication between one or more processors 1510, one or more input / output interface units 1530, one or more storage devices 1520, and associated elements. Buses and / or networks 1540. One or more input devices 1532 and one or more output devices 1534 may be combined with one or more input / output interfaces 1530.

One or more processors 1510 may be machine executable instructions (e.g., Red Hat, C. or C ++, running on the Solaris Operating System available from Sun Microsystems, Palo Alto, Calif. Linux operating system, BREW or J2ME application platforms widely available from a number of vendors such as Microsoft, Symbian operating system available from Symbian in London, UK, Java, Assembly, Perl, etc.). Implement one aspect of the invention. At least some of the machine executable instructions may be stored on one or more storage devices 1520 (temporarily or permanently) and / or received from an external source via one or more input interface units 1530. .

In one embodiment, the machine 1500 may be one or more conventional personal computers, mobile phones, PDAs, and the like. In the case of a conventional personal computer, the processing units 1510 may be one or more microprocessors. The bus 1540 may include a system bus. Storage devices 1520 may include system memory, such as read only memory (ROM) and / or random access memory (RAM). Storage devices 1520 may also be a hard disk drive for reading from and writing to a hard disk, a magnetic disk drive, a compact disk, or other (magnetic) reading from (or removably) writing from a magnetic disk. And optical disk drives that read from or write to removable (magnetic) optical disks, such as optical media.

A user may enter commands and information into a personal computer through input devices 1532 such as, for example, a keyboard and a pointing device (eg, a mouse). Other input devices such as keypads, buttons, microphones, joysticks, game pads, satellite dishes, scanners, etc. may also be included (alternatively). These and other input devices are often connected to the processing unit (s) 1510 via an appropriate interface 1530 that is coupled to the system bus 1540. Output devices 1534 may include a monitor or other type of display device, which may also be connected to system bus 1540 via a suitable interface. In addition to (or instead of) the monitor, the personal computer may include other (peripheral) output devices (not shown) such as, for example, speakers and printers.

The machine 1500 may be a mobile phone, such as the phones 500 and 600 shown in FIGS. 5 and 6, respectively.

Referring again to FIG. 2, one or more machines 1500 may be used as an ad server 210, search engine 220, content server 230, email server 240, and / or user device 250. have.

§4.2.8 Alternatives and Extensions

The ad server can be compensated in a number of different ways. As an example, the yellow page publisher may be entered in a charge sharing arrangement with the ad server (yellow page publishers may charge a premium or subcharge for such additional services). Alternatively, the ad server may directly contact the local settings and attempt to initiate an agreement (eg, flat rate, impression, selection, value or maximum per conversion, etc.).

In at least some embodiments in accordance with the present invention, selective call advertisements are serviced only and / or have a choice to be enabled if the telephone number is a local telephone number. Such embodiments avoid long distance calls. This feature can be linked with the call plan of the user device.

Not all advertising links necessarily have phone numbers associated with them. In at least some embodiments according to the present invention, the user is provided with the option (either before or after the advertisement selection) to make a voice call and proceed to the web page. As shown in FIGS. 11 and 13 above, separate buttons for web page display or voice calls may be provided. Alternatively, the advertiser can determine this. As another alternative, whether to make a web page or make a voice call may be determined by existing user preferences.

To avoid user confusion, at least some embodiments consistent with the present invention may implement the use of a consistent user interface across all advertisements. Advertisers may allow ads to match this matched format when entering advertisements into the advertising system, or format conversion from a non-compliant format to a matched format may occur later.

Advertisers may be selected to provide different amounts for document (eg, web page) selection load and selection invocation. Performance parameters for each can be tracked separately.

The telephone number can be included as data and transmitted in various forms. This does not need to be interpreted in standard HTML browsers. This may be sent as metadata in the header of the returned page. Alternatively or additionally, this may be sent as comments in each advertisement. Alternatively or in addition, it may be transmitted as structured data. Alternatively or additionally, it may be sent as a "tel: XXX" tag. The first and second options may be useful in cases where the renderer is unknown (eg, when appearing in a browser that does not support tel links) or under the control of an ad server. In such cases, the telephone call function cannot exist and the telephone number will only be ignored. The third option is useful if the structured feed is returned to the user device. For example, search results may be returned to the mobile phone in an XML formatted feed. Ads and all related ad fields may also be formatted in XML (or any other structured language). XML is treated as a data feed and rendering is dedicated by the intelligence built into the client application on the user device.

In at least some embodiments according to the present invention, the selective calling telephone number may connect the client to an audio document (eg, a voice message) or a live operator according to the telephone number defined by the advertiser. Although not shown in FIGS. 9-13, different buttons can be used to indicate whether the call is placed in an audio document or a live operator.

In at least some embodiments consistent with the present invention, selecting an advertisement or a button on the advertisement may result in both a call and a document load. Call raising and document-loading can occur in parallel or in series. In another alternative embodiment according to the present invention, a restricted document with one or more select call links (eg, in terms of time of loading and rendering) may be loaded in response to advertisement selection. For example, rather than loading a large web page,

CLICK HERE TO PLACE A TAKE OUT ORDER

CLICK HERE TO ORDER DELIVERY

Indicates that CLICK HERE TO MAKE A RESERVATION can be loaded.

Although some of the exemplary embodiments describe the use of a browser, at least some embodiments consistent with the present invention may use some other content rendering application or device.

Instead of or in addition to the selective calling function and / or the link to the advertiser's webpage, a link to the advertiser's more detailed advertisement (eg, "full advertisement") may be provided. For example, if the original advertisement is text only and contains only business names, addresses, and phone numbers, such advertisements may contain actionable links to corresponding advertisements with graphical elements, descriptive text, hours of operation, and the like. It may include.

Although many exemplary embodiments have been described in terms of online advertisements, embodiments in accordance with the present invention may be used in other advertisements, for example, electronically storeable (text, video, audio, animation, video, etc.) advertisements. have.

§4.3 operating examples

The following examples illustrate the use of exemplary embodiments of the present invention. In the first example, assume that there are five location related advertisements having at least the following information.

Also assume that the advertising score is the product of offers per selection and the selection rate. Finally, if the end user requesting an advertisement has a limited display, the score _doc is based on (the selection rate for selecting an advertisement with a linked document is much less on a device with a limited display than on a device with a normal display). Suppose that is reduced by 20 factors.

Assume that the local advertisements (Ads 1-5) fit the first request from the personal computer (estimated normal display) without calling function. Local advertisements may be scored and ranked as shown in Table 1.

Table 1

Note that because Ads 4 and 5 do not have linked documents and the requesting user device does not have a calling function, otherwise suitable advertisements are not scored (or provide a default score of 0.0000, for example). In some embodiments, such advertisements are not serviced such advertisements to avoid user confusion and confusion and to divert the user's attention away from advertisements 1-3.

Suppose now that local advertisements Ad 1 through Ad 5 are adapted to the second request from a mobile phone (limited display) that supports the selective calling function. Local advertisements may be scored and ranked as shown in Table 2.

TABLE 2

The overall score may be a function of one or both of the score _doc and the score _call . For example, the overall score may be MAX {score _doc , score _call }. Alternatively, the overall score is score _doc + score _call Can be. In this example, assume that the overall score is the maximum of the score _doc and the score _call . The ranks of local ads from highest to lowest are Ad 4, Ad 3, Ad 2, and Ad 5. Even if Ad 3 does not have selective call offers and functionality, its document score is still better than Ad 5's call score.

Finally, assume from now on that the local ads (Ads 1-5) fit the third request from a laptop computer (estimated to be a normal display) with support for selective calling functionality. Local advertisements may be scored and ranked as shown in Table 3.

TABLE 3

Note that in this case, because the user device has a full display, the document scores are not reduced. The final ranking depends on how the overall score is determined using one or both of score _doc and score _{c a ll} . For example, these scores may or may not be weighted (e.g., as defined by the advertiser, as defined by the advertising service system, as defined by the advertiser, and / or the user for optional calls and document-selected load ads). Behavioral consideration).

In addition to the location used to determine relevance, location targeting information of ads and location information from the request can be used when scoring ads.

§4.4 conclusions

As can be seen from the foregoing, the present invention makes local settings to advertise online quickly and efficiently. These types of advertisements are particularly valuable for queries executed on mobile phones, which are types that require instant (and many local) responses (eg dinner venues, pizza ordering places, nearest service). Station, which plumber calls, etc.). The invention also relates to small displays on such displays, low speed communication connections and / or processors on such devices, and / or on such devices due to limitations of user input on such devices. Allows the ad server to price searches and document requests, such as searches and document requests on devices such as mobile phones that support selective calling functionality while avoiding poor user experiences. In addition, the cost per call generates higher offers and revenues than the cost per selection (due to the ad landing web loaded upon selection), in such a way that the cost per selection generates higher offers and revenues than the cost per impression. The reason is that local settings can talk directly to potential customers.

Claims (27)

In a computer-implemented method, a) acquiring sets of information relating to settings, each set comprising at least one of address information and a telephone number; b) for each of the sets, determining a location using at least one of at least a portion of the address information and at least a portion of the telephone number; And c) generating, for each of the sets, an advertisement comprising targeting information targeting the service of the advertisement to queries related to the determined location. The method of claim 1, d) accepting a query that includes information about the location of the client device; And e) determining at least one of the generated advertisements comprising targeting information targeting a location of the client device. 3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the information about the location of the client device included in the query includes the latitude and longitude of the client device. 3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the information about the location of the client device included in the query is derived from a global positioning satellite derived location of the client device. 3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the information about the location of the client device included in the query includes an area code of the telephone number of the client device. 3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the information about the location of the client device included in the query is derived from an access point to which the client device is registered. The method of claim 2, f) ordering at least a portion of the determined at least one advertisement of the generated advertisements. 8. The method of claim 7, wherein ordering at least a portion of the determined at least one advertisement among the generated advertisements comprises: (i) relevance to current user interest, (ii) relevance to user type, (iii) Relevance, (iv) offer per impression, (v) offer per user selection, (vi) offer per user conversion, (vii) performance parameters of the advertisement, and (viii) location targeting information Scoring each of the determined at least one of the generated advertisements using at least one of the at least one of the generated advertisements. The method of claim 2, f) serving at least one of the determined at least one advertisement; And g) billing settings associated with the served advertisement for at least one of (A) impression of the advertisement, (B) selection of the advertisement, and (C) conversion of the advertisement. Way. The method of claim 2, f) serving at least one of the determined at least one advertisement; And g) billing the settings associated with the advertisements over a given time period. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein obtaining the sets of information about the settings comprises accepting a data feed comprising information about yellow page listings. The method of claim 11, d) accepting a query that includes information regarding the location of the client device; And e) determining at least one of the generated advertisements comprising targeting information targeting a location of the client device; f) serving at least one of the determined at least one advertisement; And g) billing the publisher of the yellow page listings associated with an ad served for at least one of (A) impression of the advertisement, (B) selection of the advertisement, and (C) conversion of the advertisement. , Computer-implemented way. The method of claim 11, d) billing the issuer of the yellow page listings to service advertisements corresponding to the listings over a period of time. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining sets of information about the settings comprises scanning yellow page listings to generate scans and processing the scans to extract information about the advertisement. , Computer-implemented method. 15. The computer-implemented method of claim 14, wherein the extracted information includes a name of the setting and an address of the setting. 15. The computer-implemented method of claim 14, wherein the extracted information includes a name of the setting and a phone number of the setting. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining the location uses a postal code of the business address information. 2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining the location uses an area code of the phone number. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the advertisements has a selective calling function. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the advertisements has a user selectable link to a more detailed advertisement related to the same setting. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the advertisements has a user selectable link to a web site associated with the same setting. In a computer-implemented method, a) obtaining sets of information about settings from yellow page listings; b) for each of the sets, determining a location using an area serviced by the yellow page listings; And c) generating, for each of the sets, an advertisement comprising targeting information targeting the service of the advertisement in queries corresponding to the determined location. The method of claim 22, d) accepting a query that includes information regarding the location of the client device; And e) determining at least one of the generated advertisements comprising targeting information targeting a location of the client device. The method of claim 23, f) ordering at least a portion of the determined at least one advertisement among the generated advertisements. 25. The method of claim 24, wherein ordering at least a portion of the determined at least one advertisement among the generated advertisements comprises: (i) relevance to current user interest, (ii) relevance to user type, (iii) with user Generated using at least one of relevance, (iv) offers per impression, (v) offers per user selection, (vi) offers per user conversion, (vii) performance parameters of the advertisement, and (viii) location targeting information. Scoring the determined at least one of the advertisements. a) means for obtaining sets of information about settings, each set comprising at least one of business address information and a telephone number; b) for each of the sets, means for determining a location using at least one of at least a portion of the business address information and at least a portion of the telephone number; And c) means for generating, for each of the sets, an advertisement comprising targeting information targeting the service of the advertisement to queries corresponding to the determined location. a) means for obtaining sets of information about settings from yellow page listings; b) for each of the sets, means for determining a location using an area serviced by the yellow page listings; And c) means for generating an advertisement comprising targeting information targeting a service of an advertisement in queries corresponding to the determined location.

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