NO320883B1 - Method of payment per inquiry by classified advertisement - Google Patents

Abstract

Method of payment per inquiry by classified advertisement - "no cure, no pay". The advertiser's phone number is not in the ad, only our central number. The ad code is entered by dialing, and call forwarding is performed on the telephone network, routed by a database containing phone numbers and ad codes for each ad. The call is recorded and the advertiser is billed based on the call. Alternatively, SMS can be used where SMS is sent from a web-integrated solution. The form does not specify which number you want to send to, and the advertiser's number is hidden. Billing according to the same principle. Partners who want to publish our advertisers' ads receive commissions for the inquiries generated by look-ups in their advertising services. Then each ad is given a new ad code for each partner it is to be published to. The whole principle of taking paid per. Inquiry for classifieds is considered new, and here are a few solutions that will make this possible.

Description

Patent description

Method of payment per inquiry by classified advertisement.

Area of application:

The method will be applicable to all forms of classified advertising, as the term classified advertising is defined below.

Classified advertising is hereby defined as "advertisement of mainly individual items for sale or rent (possibly wanted to buy, wanted to rent, etc.\ usually used items, on a common market, which is usually categorized hierarchically by type of item". In such a market, often private individuals may be the main players, but the concept does not prevent traders from using the same channel. Services that are offered or desired to be performed will often also be represented on such a market, but the main emphasis is on objects.

The term classified advertising refers to classifying ads according to categorized/hierarchical ad groups. Classified advertising has its origins in newspapers, where space is limited and where the price of the ad depends on the number of column millimeters used. Advertisements with limited space are what we like to associate with classified advertising. However, the term is often also used for today's internet-based advertising media (e.g. FINN, ZETT, TV2-TORGET) which limit the use of land to a lesser extent, and where it opens up for more use of images and other additional information, as well as different "added value" for the users (check encumbrances, price comparison, financing etc.). It is such a broad definition of classified advertising that I wish to use here, however limited by the main principle as described in quotation marks above.

The method can also be used for contact advertising and within various contact systems, as well as for job searches. The latter will largely be considered classified advertising, but there are also extended services that will not be called classified advertising, where the method can still be useful when invoicing the service. It is also possible to think of other contexts where such a principle can be used.

Today, an advertiser who wants to place a classified ad for their used car, home, washing machine etc. is required to pay a fixed sum for a certain advertising period, unless the ad is free. The advertiser runs the risk of advertising, as there is no guarantee of either response or sales. Admittedly, different forms of "sales guarantees" and "response guarantees" are often given (if the car is not sold within a certain time, then you can, for example, continue to advertise until the car is sold). A real sales guarantee or response guarantee in the proper sense of the word, i.e. according to the principle "no cure, no pay", will however require objective measurement. It would not be reasonable to base such a guarantee on the advertiser's statement that the car has not been sold or that he has not received any inquiries. No measurability exists with this form of advertising, as we know it today. But with many years of experience in the industry, I know that "no cure no pay" is requested by advertisers very frequently.

State of the art:

The method is based on a newer principle of payment assignment in internet advertising for businesses: that the advertiser pays a third party (advertising medium) per action carried out by customers or potential customers. The principle is referred to as Pay Per Action/Acquisition (PPA) or Cost Per Action (CPA), possibly Cost Per Transaction (CPT), i.e. that the payment for the advertising is based on the actual sales or leads (relevant potential customers) that are generated with a direct connection to the advertising. Hence the more specialized terms Cost Per Sale (CPS) and Cost Per Lead (CPL) are actually also used. All this in contrast to an older principle called Pay Per View or Cost Per Impression (PPV, CPI), both of which refer to the principle of payment per impression of the ad, often invoiced per thousand impressions, i.e. Cost Per Mille impressions (CPM). A third principle with slightly fewer names is Pay/Cost Per Click (PPC, CPC), meaning that the advertiser pays for every time someone clicks on the ad. All these principles have arisen in systematic attempts to satisfy an important requirement in business, to increase and measure Return On Investment (ROI).

In a simplified context, we can talk about three main categories: Pay Per View (PPV), Pay Per Click (PPC) and Pay Per Action (PPA). Today, almost all advertising for businesses on the Internet is based on one of these aforementioned forms of payment assignment. PPV is the most used form. PPC is taking over increasingly large market shares. Quite a few succeed in offering PP A, and then within agreements that require a high degree of mutual trust between those involved, as the measurement methods at PPA have many sources of error. The most common measurement method requires cookie recognition. When viewing or clicking on an advertisement is registered, a cookie is distributed to the user's computer. This cookie can be registered when checking out through a payment solution in an online store or when downloading a promotional document or software, when submitting forms or price requests on the advertiser's website, etc.

There is very little available objective information about the PPA principle. When searching Google for the term "Pay Per Action" (in quotation marks) in Norwegian pages, you get 0 hits (as of 04.12.04). If you use "Cost Per Action" you get 3 hits. One of these meetings can give some insight into the principles that Ugger is based on, including with a comprehensive glossary. Here is the link to this page:

www. dime. no/ eliande1/ Tiertreklame/ cost. htnil

Internationally, the PPA/CPA phenomenon is discussed in many forums, but usually only in connection with actors marketing their own advertising units based on this form of payment. Here is a fairly objective description I found:

www. frugalmarketmg. corn/ dtb/ cost-per- action. shtml

For further elaboration of the state of the art, with regard to the services offered in classified ad markets today, I refer to patent US-A1 20020120506, which describes a tool for creating a classifieds ad market. This tool's options for customizing such a market can serve as a good summary of known features of a classified ad market in general.

There is a solution within classified advertising that must not be confused with the method I describe. There, the interested party can call a central office and "swap" the advertising code with a telephone number for the advertiser. However, this does not give the opportunity to charge the advertiser, as there is then no guarantee that the interested party will actually contact the advertiser. In other words, it is the interested party who pays the fee, by being charged a price for "swapping" an ad code with a telephone number. This is not PP A - the only similarity is that one central number is used for all advertisements. Here is a link to a player who today makes use of this principle, otherwise mostly based on distribution in paper form and with an "underground image": www. osmosis. no

By the old principle "Bill.mrk." you can contact the newspaper and ask for messages to be forwarded or to get contact information for the advertiser. Bill.mrk. does not normally require the interested party to pay to obtain contact information. Purpose of "Bill.mrk." is to protect the advertiser's anonymity, and you pay mainly for the publication of the ad, although some newspapers also charge for manual transmission of enquiries.

What is particularly achieved in relation to the state of the art:

The mentioned forms of payment arrangement (PPV, PPC, PPA) for advertising are used almost exclusively between a professional third party and a professional advertiser. In my case, the principle of PPA will be used mainly in the relationship between a professional third party (the provider of the advertising medium) and a private advertiser, although classified advertising is also used by e.g. used car dealers and estate agents. This way of thinking is in itself new, but would probably not be considered on its own as anything other than a logical continuation of the existing principle/method. However, the PPA principle is not directly transferable to classified advertising, as the measurable aspect is absent in important respects. In the case of classified advertising, the contact between provider and interested party will often not take place measurably within a closed electronic arena where you can "count" clicks, downloads or trades. Such contact will often take place by telephone, SMS, e-mail, fax or regular post.

With my method, cf. patent claims 1-3, it is achieved that it is practically possible to charge per inquiry through classified advertising, within the framework of the communication technology used between advertisers and stakeholders today. The method is largely based on hiding primary contact information from the advertisers. Primary contact information in the ads is replaced with secondary contact information or channel. • For voice inquiries, the call destination specified by the advertiser (e.g. telephone number) is replaced in the ad with a common call number/address as well as a unique ad code, cf. patent claim 2. When the interested party calls the switchboard, the person concerned can enter the advertisement code, and will then be forwarded to the advertiser's specified call destination. This inquiry can be logged in the central office, and thus invoicing can be done on the basis of it. • For electronic text inquiries, for example, SMS addresses/numbers and e-mail addresses can be hidden and replaced with an advertisement ID in a web interface where the interested party can write a message and send it, without knowing which address the message goes to, but only that it is forwarded to the advertiser, cf. patent claim 3. Hiding e-mail addresses to protect their advertisers from unwanted e-mail has been done before, but I do not know of any actor who has done this with a view to taking payment from the advertiser per inquiry.

Industrial utilization:

The form of publication for voice inquiries can be the same as we know from existing classified advertising media on teletext, paper/print or the Internet, but on the Internet several of the advantages can be exploited, also for text inquiries. The difference is therefore that primary contact information is not presented directly in the ad, but that the interested party instead actively uses an ad code for voice enquiries, or that such ad code is passively embedded in a web interface for text enquiries. A classified advertising market according to the described specifications can be created on almost any scale, local, regional, national or international, and within generalist or niche markets.

The measurement method requires a server, possibly several mirrored servers, with a continuously updated database with the links between primary contact information and the advertising codes. In order for the measurement method to work with voice enquiries, nothing else is required in principle than an IVR machine (interactive voice response) which forwards the call. Each call will be able to be registered on the relevant advertisement code and be the basis for invoicing the advertiser. In order to avoid the cost of the transfer being charged to the telephone subscription to the provider of the PPA solution, according to what I have been told from several quarters, you must leave the IVR platform. Otherwise, this could quickly prove not to be profitable, depending on the duration of the conversations.

In order for the call cost to be charged to the caller (the same rate as if the interested party called directly to the advertiser's telephone number), the forwarding must be done in the telecommunications network, preferably by an operator who has a license or right to do so. In that case, the database with associations between telephone numbers and advertising codes must also reside with this actor/supplier. Such a system will be referred to as an IN solution. IN-solutions is an abbreviation for the somewhat fluid term Intelligent Network solutions, and are therefore solutions that are created in the telecommunications network. Here, in other words, most creative solutions are opened up, preferably defined by the customer. Such services must supposedly be offered over an 8xx number, for example an 815 number which is charged at an approximate standard rate. Such details have little relevance to the actual principle I am describing. The technical description of what it means for a database to be established in the telecommunications network is also considered irrelevant to the actual method for which a patent is being sought. The method could also be used through a free 800 number, without it changing the main principle: that the advertiser pays per inquiry he receives on his telephone/call device. It would only mean that the provider of the service would have to pay the counter steps.

Dissemination of advertisements across several advertising media using the mentioned method

As payment is assigned to the registration of a response to the ad, and not to the space the ad occupies in an advertising medium, the ad becomes location-independent. The advertisement can therefore in principle be published in many different media at the same time, cf. patent claim 4. By assigning one and the same advertisement different advertisement codes for each new medium through which it is published, it will be possible to register where the interested party has seen the advertisement. As a result, partnership agreements can be entered into with many players who offer advertising markets that they themselves do not have the resources to maintain by replenishing new advertisements. Such partners will be able to receive a commission based on the response the advertiser receives through their publishing channels. This is considered completely new in relation to the state of the art. For this principle to work, it is required that the relevant advertising markets are set up with either regular or real-time updates in relation to a central database. In addition to this, it will be able to function as previously described. This may require individual adaptations in relation to each individual partner.

Drawing

It is considered that a drawing helps little to illustrate how the system works.

Claims (4)

1. Method of payment per inquiry through classified advertising, in the form of a computer system that registers predefined purchase or mteressesi<g>naliseren.de actions carried out by the requester within an electronic arena suitable for establishing contact between the offerer and the requester, with a view to allowing the actions to be a basis for demanding payment by the provider according to the number of pre-defined actions carried out by enquirers, and the character of the primary contact information, provided by the advertiser for contact with the interested party via electronic means of communication, is omitted (as with bill.mrk.) from the published classified ad and replaced with a unique ad identification (for example a number) as well as a reference to an anonymised and centralized electronic contact channel, which, when the stakeholder's inquiry is followed by advertisement identification, makes a lookup in a database with established relationships between advertisement identification and the advertiser's primary contact information, and then automatically forwards the inquiry to the advertiser by elp of primary contact information as well as register available details about the inquiry, such as time, sender/caller, answered/not answered, received/not received etc., and in the last paragraph let registered details of inquiries be the basis for demanding or not demanding payment from the advertiser for the inquiries. 2. Method of payment per inquiry for classified advertising according to claim 1, in that an anonymised and centralized electronic contact channel, if the inquiry is to be based on electronic transmission of voice, is a common telephone number for an automatic voice reception, which tells the caller to be forwarded to the advertiser by specifying the desired advertisement identification, after which the caller is forwarded to the telephone number provided by the advertiser, possibly after having been provided with numbered (1,2,3...) options which enable the caller to choose between several possible telephone numbers of the same advertiser, while available details about the call (caller ID, call duration, terrnuiration...) in the process are registered. 3. Method of payment per inquiry by classified advertisement, according to requirement 1, in that anonymized and centralized electronic contact channel, if the inquiry is to be based on electronic transmission of text, is presented to the interested party as an open text field in connection with the advertisement within an internet-based interface, where one can write in the text field a message that is sent via an operator to where the advertiser has indicated, without the interested party having to actively provide the advertisement identification, because this is embedded in the program code behind the internet-based interface, and the inquiry is registered directly in the database when the message is sent, possibly with subsequent deletion of the registration if the message is reported as unsuccessful by the operator. 4. Method of payment per inquiry in the case of classified advertising, according to requirements 1 -3, in that the same classified advertisement is published simultaneously in several (collaborating partners') publications, assigned a different advertisement identification for each publication, which enables the identification of which collaborative partner has contributed to establishing contact between the advertiser and interested party, which which in turn makes it possible to pay out remuneration to collaboration partners on the basis of the number of mediated inquiries (the interested party calls the same joint number as described in requirement 2 and uses advertisement identification that is unique to the collaboration partner's publication, and/or is presented with a corresponding open text field as described in requirement 3, where the advertiser's contact information is still not visible, but where the program code behind it forwards the message to the advertiser's provided primary contact information).