Method allowing an advertisement publisher to compute the price billed to an advertising customer for publishing an advertisement or information in an offline media
Advertisements for products and services are distributed to consumers through many different on-line media, such as the Internet, or offline media such as newspapers, magazines, yellow pages, television, radio, movie theatres, posters on billboards, prospects distributed in the street, various techniques of direct marketing, and the like. Advertising customers, for example companies advertising their products or services or advertising agencies preparing advertisements for several companies, send advertising orders, for example computer text or graphic files, printing documents, on-line advertisement orders, etc. to an advertisement publisher 4: Thέ advertisement publisher 4 is for example a newspaper or magazine publisher; a ι television or radio broadcaster, a movie theater manager, etc. or an advertising management company which sells : advertising space or time in various offline media. ■ - .. ■
The price billed by the advertising publisher to the advertising customers for publishing advertisements in traditional (offline) media usually depends on the size, on duration, on graphical or technical characteristics (like colors, printing quality), position and/or time of the advertisement and on an a-priori evaluation of the effectiveness of the advertisement, based on various metrics such as:
■ Circulation and regular (quarterly, yearly, etc.) analysis of a potentially representative sample of readership for printed advertisements in newspapers and magazines.
■ Global penetration of medium, regular (quarterly, yearly, etc.) and/or permanent analysis (panels) of listeners / watchers for radio and TV advertisements.
■ Location and corresponding visibility for billboards.
■ Audience for movie theatres.
■ Geographical coverage, in particular for yellow pages.
■ Distribution zone for prospects.
The metrics used in those advertisement selling methods have various inherent problems:
■ They are mainly statistical: the advertising customer will only have a rough idea of the number and profile of the consumers who will actually see his advertisement.
■ Theyvare based on views but don't reflect the real* interest of the consumers: nobody knows how many of them will generate an effective contact lead for the advertising customer.
■ The effective return on investment (ROI) is hard to determine with those metrics. A strong requirement from advertising customers is about comparing the effective performance of the media included in their media mix over their various promotion campaigns.
■ Even more importantly, the price of advertisements, especially advertisements in offline media such as printed media, depends on metrics (parameters) which are hardly available in electronic form, including for instance the size of the advertisement, the number of colors, the position in the printed media, the publication date and time, the section in the printed media, and so on. Those parameters are usually not available in electronic form, or at least not in a single system, and must be measured, determined manually or with various measuring systems or devices, or transmitted from different computing systems. It is thus
difficult to compute entirely automatically the price of the advertisement. Billing is thus traditionally a labor-intensive task, which requires many computing operations to be performed manually and/or many parameters to be manually measured and entered in a computing system..
A first aim of the invention is to provide a method that answers those needs.
Another aim of the invention is to provide an automated method for computing the price billed to an advertising customer that can be performed automatically.
Another aim of the invention is to provide a price computing method which is based on new metrics or parameters, in order to be easily automated with technical means.
Another aim of the invention is to provide a new automated method for computing a price of advertisements which more accurately reflects the effectiveness of the advertisement, and wherein the method can be fully and efficiently implemented by a digital logic unit such as, for instance, a computer.
According to the invention, those problems are solved with a method allowing an advertisement publisher to compute the price billed to an advertising customer for publishing an advertisement in an offline media by using a return channel allowing consumers to react to the advertisement, for example in order to gather supplementary, personalized information, or even a sample of the advertised product. This information can be delivered by electronic means but also via traditional physical means like the post. It is also possible via this return channel to purchase the product via a single interaction. The price determination method of the invention uses those qualified interest-based interactions as a metric for determining the effectiveness of said advertisement. According to the invention, at least one component of the price billed for the advertisement
itself by the advertisement publisher to the advertising customer depends on the number of answers received to the advertisement.
The method thus uses new technical means in a new way for automatically receiving answers over a return channel, for assigning each answer to a particular advertisement, for counting in a digital logic unit the number of answers received for each advertisement, and for computing and billing a price as a function of this total.
The number of answers received over an electronic channel as a metric has the advantage that it can be computed without any manual operations, so that the computation of the price of the advertisement can be performed entirely automatically and in a much more efficient way than in the prior art.
The invention is particularly adapted for computing the price of interactive advertisements, i.e. advertisements* including an offline code allowing a consumer to react to the advertisement by sending to the advertisement publisher, directly or indirectly, as single or one out of many notified parties, an answer identifying said advertisement over an electronic return channel. In a preferred embodiment, the answer is sent with a consumer electronic equipment at the consumer's side and received by a digital logic unit at the advertisement publisher's side. According to the invention, the number of answers received in response to a specific advertisement is counted in the digital logic unit, and at least one component of the price of the advertisement depends on said count.
The invention is also adapted for automatically measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns in offline media, included printed media, which proved difficult to estimate with prior art methods. Furthermore, the method thus allows to compute the price of advertisements with less labor, simpler technical means and less computing than prior art methods. The method thus allows to run technical systems, such as digital logic units, for computing advertisement prices in a faster and more efficient way than existing methods using other metrics.
The invention will be better understood with the description of an example illustrated by the following figures:
Figure 1 shows a system according to one embodiment of the present invention.
Figure 2 is a graph showing how the price of the advertisement is computed according to the invention.
Figure 3 is a graph showing how the price of the advertisement depends on the correlation between the targeted consumers and the consumers actually reached.
The invention is more specifically adapted for computing the price billed to advertising customers for publishing an advertisement in one or, several, off line media wherein a return channehis provided allowing consumers to react to the advertisement, for example in order to gather supplementary, personalized information about the advertised item sent electronically over any medium or physically via post.
It can even be possible to purchase the advertised items, possibly in an anonymous manner vis-a-vis the publisher and/or the advertising customer but via the intermediation of other actors. This anonymity, equivalent to a physical visit in a store to obtain document or proceed to a cash purchase, is sometimes necessary to maximize the efficiency of the media as point of sale or information for specific goods.
Interactive advertisement methods for supplementing the generic information (in advertising or editorial sections) of mass media by personalized one-to-one interactive services per se are already known. The patent application WO9828900, for example, suggests including a human- readable code that can be typed by the consumers reading the advertisement on the keypad of a mobile equipment so as to order the advertised product or to receive more information on it. The solution described applies to various media: print media (dailies and magazines.
etc.), billboards, yellow pages, TV, radio, cinema and various techniques of direct marketing (coupons, prospects, etc.).
Other systems have been described in which other kinds of codes are included in the advertisement, for example barcodes or barcode-like signs (standard UPC/EAN codes, bi-dimensional codes or any kind of proprietary graphical codes), invisible codes (graphic or audio watermarks), alpha-numeric codes, including phone numbers and e-mail addresses, electronic codes stored in a digital memory, and the like. In those solutions, the consumers who want to react to an advertisement often need appropriate recognition and transmission equipments for reading the code and transmitting it to the provider of the supplementary information. According to the chosen technique, the recognition equipment can be a standard or proprietary kind of barcode-reader, a scanner with an OCR (optical character recognition) program, an audior-recording equipment with appropriate (digital) signal processing capabilities to detect audio watermarks, a^camera coupled with appropriate image-recognition software to detect graphical watermarks, etc.
The answer including the code, detected via human capabilities or aided via an appropriate recognition device, can be transmitted with different kinds of transmission equipments, including:
■ A cellular mobile equipment using any type of network, such as GSM, GPRS, CDMA, UMTS, etc., integrated in or connected with the recognition equipment.
■ A wired or wireless link to a regular cellular phone, a personal computer itself connected to the Internet or to an ad hoc network, a personal digital assistant itself connected to the Internet or to an ad hoc network, a set- top box for interactive TV or any other appliance connected to any kind of wide area network.
The transmission equipment provides in real-time or in a deferred manner a return channel allowing the customer to react to the advertisement by sending an answer (a request) to the advertising company ("advertising customer") and/or to the advertisement publisher. The answer can be sent to an information database where the additional one-to-one information is provided. The additional information or product requested by the consumer can be sent through the same network as the requesting answer or through any other communication means, including fax, post, etc. This response can be instantaneous or deferred, in one or several parts, each possibly delivered over a distinct communication channel.
A preferred embodiment of a system according to the invention is illustrated in Figure 1. The system comprises.one or several advertising customerst2, for example companies advertisingcf.or, various products or services. The advertising customers 2 send advertising* orders 3, for example computer text or graphic files, printing documents, on-line- advertisement orders, etc. to an advertisement publisher 4 (arrow a). The advertisement publisher 4 is for example a newspaper or magazine publisher, a television or radio broadcaster, a movie theater manager, etc. or preferably an advertising management company selling, renting or leasing advertising space and/or time in various offline media.
The advertisement 51 is published by the' advertisement publisher, for example on a printed page 5 in a newspaper or magazine, as a television or radio spot, as a poster on a billboard, as an advertisement in yellow pages or as paper material distributed or mailed to consumers or companies. The advertisement 51 includes a code 52 defined by the advertising customer 2 or preferably by the advertisement publisher 4. In this example, the code 52 comprises an asterisk (*), a USSD service code between 100 and 150 (unstructured supplementary service data, in this example 141), a second asterisk (*), a request number corresponding to the advertisement 51 (in this example 062356) and a diesis (#). As already mentioned, other kinds of human- or machine-readable codes could be used in the frame of the invention.
The offline advertisement is then sent or broadcasted to consumers, for example to the readers of the newspaper 5 (arrow b). Consumers can react to the advertisement by sending an answer to the advertisement publisher 4. In the illustrated embodiment, consumers can react to the advertisement by entering the code 52 on the keypad of a mobile equipment 6 and transmitting it as a USSD message 7 through a mobile network (arrow c). In this example, in order to send the code "062356", the consumer composes *141 *062356#<seπd> on the mobile handset, where 141 is the service code for the advertisement return channel service.
The answer 7 prepared by the consumer comprises the USSD service code 70, the code 71 and consumer identification data 72. In a preferred embodiment, the consumer identification data 72 isrconstituted by the phone number (MSISDN, Mobile Station International Subscriber Dialing Number) of the consumer 6, which can be recognized automatically by the receiving party.
The one skilled in the art will understand that instead of USSD, SMS (Short Message System), e-mail, or any message carried using standard Internet protocol (such as surf, chat, mail, etc.) over a fixed or mobile telecommunication network could be used.
The answer 7 is conveyed, for example on the GSM, UMTS or ISDN signaling infrastructure, to a gateway 8, in this example a USSD gateway managed by the operator of the mobile network. The USSD gateway comprises or is connected with an anonymizer 80 which substitutes said identification data 72 with an anonymous alias 91. The correspondence between the identification data 72 and the alias 91 is preferably one-to-one and immutable. In a preferred embodiment, the alias is computed by encrypting the identification data by means of an immutable encryption algorithm.
The USSD gateway 8 forwards the possibly anonyrnized message 9 on the basis of a sorting according to the USSD service code 70, to a
digital logic unit 10 preferably managed by the advertisement publisher 4 (arrow d). The USSD gateway 8 and the anonymizer 80 are preferably managed by another entity as the digital logic unit 10, preferably by the operator of the mobile network. In this way, the advertisement publisher 4 operating the digital logic unit 10 has no means of knowing the real identity or MSISDN of the consumer 6.
The digital logic unit 10 answers the message 90 by sending to the consumer 6 through any kind of network, for example as SMS, e-mail, post, fax, etc., the requested supplementary information 12 or the ordered product or service (arrow e). If the message 9 has been anonymized, the response 12 is sent through the anonymizer 80 that deduces the address for routing to the Eonsumer.from the alias 91. In a variant embodiment, the answer 12 is determined or even prepared directly by the advertising customer 2.
The digital logic unit 10 can establish a consumer profile (possibly anonymous) stored in the profile database 100. The consumer profile contains information gathered from all the messages 9 (possibly anonymized) received from a consumer 6. The answer 12 sent to the requesting consumer may depend on his profile.
According to the invention, the digital logic unit 10 includes a cost determination unit 101, which counts the number of answers 9 to each advertisement 51 received over the return channel 6-9. This count is used as a metric for determining the effectiveness of the advertisement. The price billed by the advertisement publisher 4 to the advertising customer 2 for the publication of the advertisement 51 in the offline media 5 depends on this metric. In the case of advertisement aimed at direct good or service purchases, the metric of the number of answers can be combined with a fraction of, or any other mathematical function of, the price of the purchases or distribution of material information about this same good or service to derive the price of the advertisement. The media now being another distribution and direct marketing channel is, via this advertisement billing method, rewarded as such. The digital logic unit 10 counts the
number of answers 90 received over a predetermined time period that include the code, for example 062356, corresponding to the advertisement to be billed, computes the price of the advertisement as a function of this count, and prepares the bill 11 which is sent to the advertising customer 2 (arrow f). The bill can include a report indicating the effectiveness of the advertisement, for example the number of answers received, preferably grouped per media or per other criteria, for example over time or any other predefined criterion. Aggregated versions of the report can also be delivered.
The digital logic unit 10 consists for example of one suitably programmed computer, for example one server, or of a system of suitably programmed and interconnected computers. It comprises answer reception means, for example a hardware Internet connection and a suitable program for receiving and processing answers 9 from the gateway 8. The digital logic unit 10 preferably comprises arv internal memory into which a program 101 stored in a computer program product, such as a floppy, CD- ROM, DVD or hard-disk, has been loaded which can at least receive the answers 9, count the number of answers corresponding to an advertisement to be billed, prepare the bill, and preferably perform all the other steps of the method described. A database 100 is preferably stored in the internal memory or can be accessed by the digital logic unit for storing the profile of the consumers.
Figure 2 illustrates a possible relation between the number n of answers 9 received in reaction to a specific advertisement 51 and the price p billed for the advertisement. In this example, the price p is a linear function of the number n of answers 9 received:
p = a + b n
where a is a fixed part and b indicates the variable additional price billed to the advertising customer for each answer received. In this example, the maximal price of the advertisement is limited to a value pmax- In an embodiment, when the maximum amount pmax is reached, the
interactive channel can be interrupted and the subsequent answers will not be forwarded, answered or billed anymore. The one skilled in the art will understand that in an alternative embodiment, instead of a first degree polynomial function, any linear or non-linear function p = f(n) could be used for deriving the price of the advertisement from the number of answers received. Furthermore, in the case of direct purchase, the function may depend on the price of the sold item.
In a preferred embodiment, the fixed part a of the price p depends on the selected media, on the size and position of the advertisement in this media, on the publication date or time, and on other factors conventionally used for billing advertisements. As the penetration of. the reading equipments 6 and the familiarity of the targeted public with the return channel increase, the part of this interaction-unrelated component can be decreased until the advertisement is sold purely on the number of answers 9: the corresponding price? moves then from a statistical basis to a performance-based price that much better reflects the real value of the media for a given campaign of a given advertiser. So, the fixed part a of the pricing becomes inversely proportional to the penetration of the recognition-transmission equipments 6 or of their use in the general public or in a more specific target group.
In the simplest embodiment, the proportional coefficient b is fixed. However, if the return channel uses equipments 6 which are not yet widely available among the consumer target group, the number of answers received as a reaction to an advertisement may strongly depend on the availability of those equipments among the consumers and on the familiarity of the consumer target group with those equipments and/or with the electronic return channel. In this case, the coefficient b is preferably adapted in function of said availability and/or familiarity. The adaptation may be performed manually, for example monthly or on another periodical basis, or automatically by the digital logic unit 10 if the familiarity and availability factors are available in an electronic form.
The number of answers received to an advertisement may also depend on the familiarity and acquaintance of the readership or audience of the selected media. It is for example likely that an advertisement in a magazine targeted at a young or technophile readership will generate more electronic answers than a similar advertisement in a more traditional newspaper. In order to really reflect the effectiveness of the advertisement, the proportional component b may thus depend on the selected media.
In a preferred embodiment, as illustrated in Figure 3, the amount b billed to the advertising customer 2 for each answer 90 depends on the profile of the answering consumer stored in the possibly anonymous profile database 100. In the illustrated example, a first, high amount b1 is billed for answers 90 received from a first consumer. group 61 in the main target group aimed at by the advertisement. A second, lower amount b2 is applied for answers from a larger, less directly targeted consumer group 62. A third, still lower coefficient b3 is applied to answers from consumers that are neither in the group 61 nor in the group 62.
The groups 61, 62 may be proposed by the advertisement publisher 4 or may correspond to criteria indicated by the advertising customers 2. In a preferred embodiment, the price computed for the advertisement 51 depends on the correlation between the desired profile (age, gender, social and professional situation, consuming habits, residing zone, etc.) of the consumers targeted by said advertisement and the actual profile of the consumers reacting by an answer to said advertisement.
The variable coefficient b may depend on other criteria, including for example one or more of the following:
■ The media in which the advertisement has been published.
■ The specific position (time, size or space) in this media. Different codes 52 can be used for each appearance in the same media.
■ The image, service or product being advertised, or its price in the case of a purchase.
■ A weighting factor corresponding to the average effectiveness (among all campaigns) of the selected publication time or position.
■ The time of the year at which the code appeared or at which the consumer interacted (printed matters, recorded videos, etc.).
■ The geographical location of the consumer at the time of answer, for example if the consumer is a mobile subscriber in a mobile network in which his location is known.
The geographical coverage of the media or the scope of its distribution.
■ The sophistication or bandwidth of the equipment 6 with which the consumer could interact with the publisher.
■ The form / sophistication / impact of the answer delivered back to the consumer: pure text versus multimedia content for example.
■ The profile of the consumer stored in the database 100. This profile consists of a description of the consumer acquired / approximated through his answers to several advertisements from one or several advertising customers (age, gender, social and professional situation, consuming habits, residing zone, etc.)
■ The repetition of the same or similar codes by the same consumer.
Some components of the variable coefficient b may be adapted periodically, for example monthly, by the advertisement publisher, whereas other components will be computed by the digital logic unit 10 after reception of the answers 9.
Non-linear relations between the number n of answers received to an advertisement and the cost billed for this advertisement can be used in the frame of the invention.
The one skilled in the art will understand that the price computed by the digital logic unit 10 for the publication of the advertisement 51 in the media should not be confused with the price of the supplementary information, service or product 12 requested by the reacting consumer or with the price for the transmission of the answer 7 through the telecommunication network - although several or even all components could be billed to the consumer 6 or to the advertising customer 2, or even aggregated in a single compound service with a corresponding fee.