WO2004055701A1

WO2004055701A1 - Method and system for tracking advertising

Info

Publication number: WO2004055701A1
Application number: PCT/AU2003/001693
Authority: WO
Inventors: Phillip David Talbot
Original assignee: Posetv Pty Ltd
Priority date: 2002-12-18
Filing date: 2003-12-18
Publication date: 2004-07-01
Also published as: AU2002953418A0

Abstract

A method of tracking advertising, the method comprising: providing an instance of advertising to a consumer, the instance of advertising relating to at least one product; providing a coupon to the consumer which is linked to the instance of advertising and the at least one product; receiving a request to purchase the at least one product from the consumer; determining whether the consumer has the coupon; and creating a coupon redemption record to indicate that the consumer has purchased the at least one product in response to the instance of advertising to thereby track the advertising.

Description

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR TRACKING ADVERTISING

Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a system and method for tracking advertising. The method and system of the invention have particular application to determining the effectiveness of advertising.

Background to the Invention

It has always been difficult to assess the effectiveness of advertising. Current techniques include conducting a survey of consumers or conducting a statistical analysis of sales figures following an advertising campaign. It will be appreciated that it is difficult for these techniques to measure direct effects of the advertising. Consequently, it is difficult to posit a direct causal relationship between the advertising and subsequent sales. Accordingly, an advertising technique which could link an instance of advertising to an actual sale would be inherently attractive to advertisers.

Summary of the Invention

Accordingly, in a first aspect, the present invention provides a method of tracking advertising, the method involving: providing an instance of advertising to a consumer, the instance of advertising relating to at least one product; providing a coupon to the consumer which is linked to the instance of advertising and the at least one product; receiving a request to purchase the at least one product from the consumer; determining whether the consumer has the coupon; and, if the consumer is determined to have the coupon, creating a coupon redemption record to the coupon to indicate that the consumer has purchased the at least one product in response to the instance of advertising to thereby track the advertising.

Typically, the method will involve the advertiser providing a plurality of instances of advertising, and providing a plurality of coupons whereby the advertiser is able to assess the worth of the advertising from the number of coupon redemption records .

Preferably, the method involves requiring the consumer to request issuance of the coupon. In which case, the method may involve maintaining a record of the number of coupons issued relative to the number of instances of advertising. The method may also require the consumer to initiate the instance of advertising.

In a particularly preferred embodiment, the method involves providing an advertising apparatus, having a display and a coupon issuer, at a commercial premises where the at least one product may be purchased, displaying the instance of advertising to the consumer on the display, and issuing the coupon in response to a consumer request.

In some embodiments, the method may involve linking the record to personal data for the consumer. For example, the method may involve providing a card reader as part of said advertising apparatus whereby said consumer may request the coupon by presenting a card identifying the consumer to the card reader.

Typically, the invention will involve issuing a physical coupon, however, in embodiments where personal data is collected, the method may involve issuing the coupon by updating a record associated with the consumer to include the coupon and determining whether the consumer has the coupon may involve checking the consumer's record.

It is preferred that the method also involves providing a benefit to the consumer upon receipt of the coupon and the request to purchase the at least one product. The benefit may be a discount on the purchase of the product, a discount on a future purchase (whether of the same product or a different one) , a predetermined number of rewards points, a gift of an additional product or any other suitable benefit. The instance of advertising may relate to a plurality of different products. For examples, the benefit may be related to the number of products from the list of products for which a request to purchase is received or specific benefits may be allocated to the different products.

In one particularly preferred embodiment, the coupon includes a list of products required for a recipe the subject of the instance of advertising. The coupon may also include the recipe. In some embodiments, the method may involve linking the record to personal data for the consumer. For example, the method may involve providing a card reader as part of said advertising apparatus whereby said consumer may request the coupon by presenting a card identifying the consumer to the card reader.

The method may also involve tracking the time between the coupon being issued and redeemed. In a particularly preferred embodiment, the coupon may only be redeemed within a predetermined time period of being issued.

In another aspect, the invention provides a system for tracking advertising, the system including involving : an advertising apparatus having a display for displaying an instance of advertising relating to at least one product and a coupon issuer for issuing a coupon linked to the instance of advertising and the at least one product in response to a consumer request; a point of sale terminal for receiving a request to purchase the at least one product from the consumer, a coupon checker for determining whether the consumer has a coupon related to the at least one product; and a redemption routine for creating a coupon redemption record to indicate that the consumer has purchased the at least one product in response to the instance of advertising to thereby track the advertising.

The coupon issuer may be a coupon printer. In this embodiment, the coupon checker will form part of the point of sale terminal. The advertising apparatus of the system may include a card reader for reading personal data relating to said consumer. In this embodiment the coupon issuer may be a coupon routine which updates a record associated with the consumer to reflect the issuance of the coupon, and the coupon checker may be a checking routine which checks the consumer's record.

Brief Description of the Drawings

Various variations and additional features of the invention will become apparent from the following description of a preferred embodiment of the invention as illustrated in the accompanying drawing, Figure 1.

Description of a Preferred Embodiment

A system of a preferred embodiment of the invention is illustrated schematically in Figure 1. The system operates under the control of a control server 1. The control server 1 is used to control the instances of advertising which are provided to consumers and is used by an operator to load and remove advertising from the system.

In the preferred embodiment, the advertising is displayed at the premises where the advertised product may be bought, for example a supermarket. The advertising content which is to be displayed is downloaded from the control server 1 via the Internet 8 to an interactive kiosk 2 located at the supermarket. The content which is downloaded will include a series of instances of advertising but may include other content such as weather reports, news items etc.

The interactive kiosk 2 allows a consumer to select what advertising material they wish to view.

Typically this is achieved by a touch screen display 3 which also displays the advertising content following a consumer selection. For example, a menu may be displayed to consumer having the items "latest recipes" and "hot specials". The consumer uses the touch screen display 3, to select "latest recipes" . A new page appears on which a list of recipes is set out so that the consumer can select one. For example, the consumer may use display means 3 to select a "Thai green chicken curry" . The recipes include brand name ingredients so that the consumer is encouraged to buy specific brands for example, brand A chicken, brand B herbs and spices and brand C coconut milk. While recipes are conceived with a view to driving the consumption of specific brands, not all ingredients need to be brand name products, for example, some can be generic products such as rice or vegetables to accompany the dish.

Once the consumer selects the recipe, by means of touch display 3, the interactive kiosk 2 creates a coupon record which identifies the instance of advertising which led to the coupon being printed and prints a coupon in the form of a recipe using coupon printer 4. The coupon includes a unique identifier (typically in the form of a barcode) which identifies the coupon record. Thus, it will be appreciated that the coupon is linked not only to the instance of advertising but also to the products contained in the instance of advertising.

It is anticipated that a consumer will take the recipe printed by the coupon issuing printer 4 around the supermarket with them and gather the products on the recipe list in order to be able to cook the recipe at home. To this end, the coupon record is transmitted to point of sale terminal 5 so that when the consumer reaches the point of sale terminal 5 (ie. the checkout) , the consumer presents the coupon so that the barcode can be read and a coupon checking routine within the point of sale terminal 5 checks the coupon against the purchased goods to determine whether the consumer has purchased one or more of the products specified in the record. The point of sale terminal 5 then sends a coupon redemption record to data base 6 which identifies the instance of advertising and the products bought.

It will be appreciated that in order to encourage the consumer to present the coupon, a benefit may be provided to the consumer in response to redemption of the coupon. A typical benefit will be a discount on the products which are subject to the recipe, for example, an additional 10% off the purchase price. Persons skilled in the art will appreciate that benefits may be provided in a number of different ways. For example, benefits may be cumulative depending on the number of products in the recipe which are bought or may be contingent on all items in the recipe being bought. In other embodiments, benefits such as frequent flyer miles or frequent flyer points may be awarded to the consumer. In the preferred embodiment details of all coupons which are issued are provided by interactive kiosk 2 directly to database 6. This allows report mechanism 7, to analyse the data to determine the number of products bought compared to the number of coupons issued as well as the specific instances of advertising to which they relate. That is, the number of times the coupons have been redeemed.

The interactive kiosk may also be provided with a barcode scanner for scanning in the details of a product and the interactive kiosk may then conduct a search to determine whether it can issue an appropriate coupon. For example, if the consumer scans in a chicken, the interactive kiosk 2 may produce the aforementioned Thai green chicken curry recipe. This mechanism can also be used to provide further information to database 6, enabling the analysis, for example, of requests relating to products for which there was no recipe. Thus, enabling the operator of the system to approach the owner of those products with an offer to run advertising content on the interactive kiosk. Persons skilled in the art will appreciate that many variations may be made to the invention without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.

In one particularly preferred variation, the method may involve linking the advertising system to an existing loyalties scheme. In this embodiment, the electronic kiosk 2 is provided with a card reader or other similar means for allowing a consumer to enter loyalty details. These loyalty details can be appended to the coupon record and used as a means to cause the coupon to print. Alternatively, the coupon can be issued electronically by updating a record in a data base associated with the consumer to indicate that the consumer has requested the instance of advertising. Then, at the point of sale, the consumer swipes their card again allowing the point of sale terminal to retrieve the electronic coupon and ratify it against the purchased product and create an appropriate coupon redemption record.

It will also be appreciated that while a recipe is appropriate for food products, other types of coupons may be used for other products. For example, the display may display that the product of the week is "Brand M' cleaning product and ask the user to touch the touch screen display if they would like to be issued with a coupon for the cleaning product, and if they do, the printer prints a paper coupon with the name of the cleaning product on it.

In a further variation, consumers are offered benefits if they register with the system. Users register typically by an Internet site of paper form in which they provide some personal details such as name, address etc. as well as an indication of the products in which they are interested. For example, the top 5 products of interest may be women's shoes, women's clothes and children's toys [THAT'S ONLY 3] Once this information has been gathered, it is stored in database 10 as indicated in Figure 2. In Figure 2, like numbers to use to Figure 1 are used to indicate that the same components are used and these will not be described in further detail in relation to this alternative embodiment. Once the details have been stored in database 10, the user is issued with a storage device such as a smart card or RFID tag. The storage device typically contains an identification number which can be used to identify the consumer. In this embodiment, interactive kiosks 2 are provided at located such as shopping centres or shopping malls. The kiosk 2 is connected to an electronic storage device reader 11. The reader reads the user's identification number from the storage device and passes it to kiosk 2 which checks the user's record in database 10 via Internet 8. In response ot the kiosk's query, the kiosk is provided with confirmation that the identification number is a valid ID and with preferences data. Based on the preferences data, the kiosk checks to see whether it has received any content from contents server 1 which matches the user's preferences. In the case of match, the kiosk displays an offer which corresponds to the user's preferences. For example, that there is a 20% discount on Brand G shoes at Shop H. This is displayed on display 3. If the user is interested in the offer, the user presses touch screen display 3 and holds the storage device next to reader/writer 11 which writes a coupon record to the storage device. A record of the coupon is then written to the database 6. If the user goes to Shop H, and decides to purchase the Brand G shoes, the user takes their storage devices and presents to storage device reader 12 at which point the user is offered the discount. Then the redemption record is created in the usual way.

Persons skilled in the art will appreciate that the use of a storage device to store the coupon can replace the printed coupons contemplated in earlier embodiments.

Persons skilled in the art will also appreciate that in this embodiment, the kiosk may be associated with a particular store for example, a department store rather than with a shopping centre.

These and other variations will be apparent to persons skilled in the art.

Claims

CLAIMS :

1- A method of tracking advertising, the method comprising: providing an instance of advertising to a consumer, the instance of advertising relating to at least one product; providing a coupon to the consumer which is linked to the instance of advertising and the at least one product; receiving a request to purchase the at least one product from the consumer; determining whether the consumer has the coupon; and, if creating a coupon redemption record to the coupon to indicate that the consumer has purchased the at least one product in response to the instance of advertising to thereby track the advertising if the consumer is determined to have a coupon relating to the at least one product.

2. A method as claimed in claim 1, comprising providing a plurality of instances of advertising to a plurality of consumers, and providing a plurality of coupons whereby the advertiser is able to assess the value of the advertising from the number of coupon redemption records .

3. A method as claimed in claim 1, comprising requiring the consumer to request issuance of the coupon.

4. A method as claimed in claim 3, comprising maintaining a record of the number of coupons issued relative to the number of instances of advertising.

5. A method as claimed in claim 1, comprising requiring the consumer to initiate the instance of advertising.

6- A method as claimed in claim 1, comprising providing an advertising apparatus, having a display input means to accept a consumer request for a coupon, providing said instance of advertising by displaying the instance of advertising to the consumer on the display, and issuing the coupon by means of said coupon issue in response to receipt of a consumer request by said input means.

7. A method as claimed in claim 1, comprising linking the record to personal data for the consumer.

8. A method as claimed in claim 1, comprising providing input means in the form of a storage device reader whereby said consumer may initiate an instance of advertising by presenting a storage device to the storage device reader.

9. A method as claimed in claim 8, further comprising requesting a coupon by presenting said storage device to the storage device reader, and storing said coupon in said storage device.

10. A method as claimed in claim 1, comprising issuing the coupon by updating a record associated with the consumer to include the coupon and determining whether the consumer has the coupon may involve checking the consumer's record.

11. A method as claimed in claim 1, further comprising providing a benefit to the consumer upon receipt of the coupon and the request to purchase the at least one product.

12. A method as claimed in claim 1, comprising providing an instance of advertising relating to a plurality of different products.

13. A method as claimed in claim 12, comprising providing a benefit related to the number of products from the plurality of products for which a request to purchase is received.

14. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the coupon includes a list of products required for a recipe the subject of the instance of advertising.

15. A method as claimed in claim 1, further comprising a method tracking the time between the coupon being issued and redeemed.

16. A method as claimed in claim 15, further comprising controlling redemption of said coupon such that said coupon may only be redeemed within a predetermined time period of being issued.

17. A system for tracking advertising, the system comprising: an advertising apparatus having a display for displaying an instance of advertising relating to at least one product and a coupon issuer for issuing a coupon linked to the instance of advertising and the at least one product in response to a consumer request; a point of sale terminal for receiving a request to purchase the at least one product from the consumer, a coupon checker for determining whether the consumer has a coupon related to the at least one product; and redemption record creation means for creating a coupon redemption record to indicate that the consumer has purchased the at least one product in response to the instance of advertising to thereby track the advertising.

18. A method as claimed in claim 17, wherein said coupon issuer is a coupon printer.

19. A system as claimed in claim 18, wherein said coupon checker comprises a coupon reader linked to the point of sale terminal.

20. A system as claimed in claim 1, comprising a storage device for each consumer, said storage device storing data including at least a consumer identifier, said advertising apparatus comprising a storage device reader for reading said data relating to said consumer.

21. A system as claimed in claim 19, wherein the coupon issuer may be a coupon routine which creates a record in a database to reflect the issuance of the coupon, and the coupon checker is a checking routine which checks the record.

22. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said apparatus includes writing means for writing a coupon to said storage device and coupon reading means associated with said point of sale terminal for reading said coupon from said storage device.