WO2010147556A1

WO2010147556A1 - Method and apparatus for selecting active content and/or for selectively modifying an electronic message

Info

Publication number: WO2010147556A1
Application number: PCT/SG2009/000217
Authority: WO
Inventors: Tat Koy Chong
Original assignee: Pointintime Private Limited
Priority date: 2009-06-17
Filing date: 2009-06-17
Publication date: 2010-12-23

Abstract

A method for selecting active content and/or for selectively modifying an electronic message is disclosed herein. In a preferred embodiment, the electronic message comprises a message body and destination data, and is associated with a subject category and the method comprises the steps of determining (216) a list of active contents associated with the subject category; calculating (218) a broadcast rate of each active content; selecting (220) an active content from the list of active contents based on the broadcast rate; and modifying (224) the electronic message to include the selected active content. Apparatuses configured to performed such methods are also disclosed.

Description

Method and Apparatus for Selecting Active Content and/or for Selectively Modifying an Electronic Message

Background and Field of the Invention

This invention relates to method and apparatus for selecting active content and method and apparatus for selectively modifying an electronic message, particularly but not exclusively, such as an SMS (Short Message Service) message.

SMS has become widespread use by users of mobile devices, and it is known to use SMS as a means of broadcasting information to a plurality of end users, including appending an SMS message with an advertisement. However, more can be done to realise the business potential of using SMS as a mass communication tool.

it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for selecting active content, and/or a method and apparatus for selectively modifying an electronic message, which provide the public with a useful choice.

Summary of the Invention

A general expression of this invention relates to a method of selecting which active content from a list of active contents to append to an electronic message by calculating a broadcast rate of each active content; and selecting an active content from the list of active contents based on the broadcast rate to append to the electronic message.

A first specific expression of the invention provides a method of selectively modifying an electronic message for transmission to a communication device, the electronic message comprising a message body and destination data, and is associated with a subject category, the method comprising the steps of: determining a list of active contents associated with the subject category; calculating a broadcast rate of each active content; selecting an active content from the list of active contents based on the broadcast rate; and modifying the electronic message to include the selected active content.

Not only does the preferred embodiment of this invention maximises the potential usage of electronic messages (such as Short Message Service (SMS)) by incorporating active content such as commercial advertisement together with the electronic message, selecting which active content to broadcast/distribute based on the broadcast rate ensures that all advertiser advertisement are fairly and equally distributed. As a result, this changes the traditional approach in that commercial SMS is sent where advertisers sent specific advertising messages or user messages on a silo basis. By incorporating advertiser advertisement together with user electronic message (such as SMS), this greatly increases and improves SMS as a business communication tool. For example, if the selection may be based on the lowest broadcast rate, the ability to identify the lowest distribution/broadcast rate of each active content ensures consistency and fairness in the distribution of SMS advertisement among advertisers. The commercial advertisement within each user SMS message is targeted specifically may be based on the relevance of an event (by category), and this greatiy increases the commercial value and effectiveness. The relationship of a user SMS and commercial SMS advertising usage has taken a totally new perspective. Such SMS messages with commercial advertisement may be initiated or sent to contacts know by the user or sender of the SMS messages and this may eliminate unsolicited SMS messaging.

Preferably, the broadcast rate is calculated based on a maximum broadcast rate of each of the active contents and number of times each of the active contents has been previously broadcasted. The maximum broadcast rate may be based on amount of fee paid by distributors/advertisers of the list of active contents. The electronic message may be a SMS message or e-maϋ. !f both modes of communication are specified, it is envisages that only one is modified to include the selected active content.

The list of active contents may include advertising content, or other information.

Preferably, the subject category is selected by a sender of the electronic message. The method may comprise transmitting the modified electronic message to the communication device based on the destination data.

The method may further comprise the step of checking the availability of the electronic message to send at periodic intervals. The active content may be associated with more than one subject category.

This invention also relates to apparatuses for performing the above methods or features in the described embodiments.

Brief Description of the Drawings

An embodiment of the invention will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings in which,

Figure 1 is a communication network including a host processing system and a plurality of mobile terminals; and

Figure 2 is a flow chart depicting how an electronic message is modified and transmitted by the host processing system of Figure 1 to the plurality of mobile terminals.

Detailed Description of the Preferred Embodiment

Figure 1 shows a host processing system 100 communicatively coupled to a SMS service provider 102 and a communication network 104 linking the SMS service provider 102 to a plurality of destination stations, such as mobile devices 106. The mobile devices may be mobile phones, PDA's, smart phones, notebook computers etc. The host processing system 100 is configured to host a website on which a user creates an event message 108 and Figure 2 is a flow chart illustrating the process steps at the host processing system 100 to modify the event message 100, and thereafter broadcasting the modified event message 110 to the mobile devices 106.

At step 200, the user creates an event listing on the website which includes the event message 108. The user may also use a Contact function to create more contacts and their contacts details such as mobile telephone number and/or e- mail address etc. If the user includes a mobile telephone number, this indicates to the host processing system 100 that SMS messaging should be used. If an e- maii address is provided, then the message is sent by electronic mail. If both are provided, the host processing system would use both modes of transmission. At step 202, the user adds contacts to the event listing for broadcasting or notification of the event message 108. The user also includes his contact and in this embodiment, the contacts are in the form of mobile telephone numbers, which means that the event message is in the form of SMS messaging. The user also selects an event category from a list of predetermined or predefined event categories. The event categories are created and maintained by a system administrator of the host processing system 100. Each event category defines a type of advertisement which is associated with the event category. An advertisement may be associated with a number of event categories and an advertiser may pick or select which event categories are related to the advertisement. For example, the event category "Birthday" and "Fathers' Day" and "Wedding" may be associated with advertisements promoting cakes and pastry. On the other hand, the event category Obituary" is associated with advertisements listing offers by food caterers and undertakers. An advertiser dealing with flower may advertise and associate the advertisement with "Birthday", "Wedding", "Mothers' Day", "Fathers' Day", etc... or other categories. In this embodiment, the notification message which the user intends to transmit is "Andrew's 21^st Birthday".

Advertisers wishing to advertise also carry out a similar registration process by creating advertisement messages on the website and associating their advertisement messages with the appropriate event categories. For example, Advertiser A wishing to send the advertisement message "Best Cakes & Pastry! (call this number XXXXXXX)" would input this message during the registration process and may associate this with the categories "Birthday", "Wedding", "Father Day" and "Mother Day". When completed, the advertisement messages are stored in the host processor in association with the event category.

When the user has completed the event listing, at step 204, the user submits the event listing which is then stored in the host processing system 100 at step 206. The user's contact is saved in a database table queue called "EventAnnouncement" as a database record. The saved database record has boolean/bit values to indicate if the message is sent and if it is a SMS notification or not. Records with Message Sent flag set to 1 (true) are not picked up by the system (schedule job) again that sends out the message notifications. The host processing system 100 includes a scheduled job program which is scheduled to run at specified intervals as shown in step 208. Depending on the volume of event listings, the program may be set to any time interval (every min., hour/s, day/s). In this embodiment, the scheduled job program is scheduled to run at one minute time interval. The number of notifications to be sent at each scheduled interval can also be set, with the default set at maximum 20 message broadcasts per interval.

When the specified interval is not reached, the scheduled job program iterates in a loop as shown in step 210 until the time interval is reached and the flow branches to step 212.

At step 212, the host processing system 100 checks availability of the database records with Message Sent Flag set to zero and if the database records are present (i.e. users have created at least one event listing), the host processing system 100 prepares message notifications for transmission by branching to step 214. If no database record is present, the host processing system 100 loops back to step 208 to wait for the next scheduled interval.

If there are more than 20 database records, the host processing system 100 is configured to prepare 20 message notifications based on the timestamp of the database records i.e. based on first-in-first-out basis. This may mean that the SMS notifications are from different event categories. If less than 20 database records are present, then all are prepared for transmission. In this exemplary embodiment, there are three database records A, B, C which are associated with event category "Birthday".

At step 214, the host processing system 100 checks the indicated mode of transmission and in this case, SMS is the selected mode since at step 206 earlier, the user has indicated mobile telephone numbers as the contact medium.

At step 216, the host processing system 100 searches for active advertising records which matches the event category "Birthday", and found three active advertisement records D, E, F. D for example may denote the advertisement record "Best Gifts for all occasions! (call this number XXXXXXX)", E for example may denote the advertisement record "With complement from Bagawan Solo™" and F for example may denote the advertisement record "Flower for all occasions - Far East Floral™".

Each advertisement record has a cap which defines the maximum number of times the advertisement is to be sent and this cap is based on the amount of advertisement fee paid by the advertiser. Also, each advertisement record has a validity period to keep track of the currency of each record. Once expired, the advertisement record is not used. In this respect, active means that the advertisement record has not expired and not reached the cap and the advertisement fees has been paid. An "Active" flag may be used to track the status.

Once the active advertisements are found and a list of these records created, the host processing system 100 picks up all sms advertising records that are assigned to the same event category as the event being broadcasted. It should be appreciated that the advertising records may not be associated with the same category. For example, the first three notifications may be from the same event listing, which in turn has the same event category, but the subsequent notifications may be from another event listing, which may be a different event category.

This example may help to clarify the relationship of an Event, Category and sms advertisement-

SMS advertisement A (assume company is a florist shop) - may want to associate only to event categories "Birthday", "Wedding", "Corporate Functions". SMS advertisement B (assume company sell all kind of gifts) - may want to associate only to event categories "Birthday" and "Wedding" SMS advertisement C (assume company is an Undertaker) - may want to associate only to event categories "Obituary".

At step 218, the host processing system 100 then computes the distribution/broadcast rate or frequency of each advertising record. The distribution/broadcast rate of each advertising record is derived by dividing the number of SMS messages previously sent with this advertising record (SMS Sent) by SMS Cap discussed earlier. For example, each of these records has a cap of 100 each.

Below is an example of how a distribution/broadcast rate is derived:- Examples of Active Advertisement Records and Broadcast Rates;-

In this embodiment, the host processing system 100 is configured to identify and pick out the advertisement record with the lowest broadcast rate at step 220 and in this case, the system 100 picks advertising record E with the message "Best Cakes & Pastry! (call this number XXXXXXX)" because it has the lowest delivery/broadcast rate of 0.25. If ever two or more records have the same delivery (broadcast) rate, it is just a toss up and one will be chosen (leaving the other next to be delivered). The use of the broadcast rate is used to ensure that the SMS messages sent with the advertisements are equally or fairly distributed among all advertisers.

If there are no "Active" advertising records that have matched the event category associated with the SMS messages, then the SMS messages are sent without the text ad appended i.e. the process proceeds to step 226.

As it can be appreciated, the host processing system 100 identifies and picks up the advertisement with the lowest "use/broadcast rate" and at step 224 appends the advertising message "Try Best Cakes & Pastryl (call this number XXXXXXX)" io the sms text template along with basic event details such as title and event code. Depending on the title of the event and advertising message, the final SMS message sent may look like the following with the variables (i.e. title of the event and advertising message) indicated as ## marks:-

"##EventCreator## invites u 2 an event, enter ##EventCode## at pointintime.com. sg ##Advertisement##"

Example of SMS message sent based on the "Birthday" category: - achong@... invites u 2 an event - Andrew's 21st Birthday, enter Sg7-? at pointintime.com. sg Ad: Best Cakes & Pastry!(call XXXXXXX)

Once the SMS message is modified by appending an advertisement message, the modified SMS is sent to destinations at step 226 using third party API, i.e. via the SMS service provider 102. The host processing system 100 transmits the modified SMS together with the destination mobile phone numbers to the SMS provided and the SMS service provider 102 is configured to transmit the modified SMS via SMS based on the phone numbers.

Once SMS has been sent, at step 228, the ad's SmsSent property (counter on how many SMS has been sent) increases by 1 and the EventAnnouncement (queue for event notifications) record will be now have a value of 'true' for IsSent flag.

After step 228, the host processing system 100 loops back to step 214 (i.e. Loop back to #6) until all notifications have been sent. Note: Loop back to #6 means going back to the step of getting another text ad and then sending the message (one message). This way, it evaluates which ad should be sent per sms. This will continue until all 20 (or less, if there are less than 20 notifications in queue) are sent,

The process of identifying and picking up the advertisement with the lowest

"use/broadcast rate" is repeated until all notifications have been sent.

As it can be appreciated, the preferred embodiment changes the traditional approach in which commercial SMS are sent where advertiser sent specific advertising messages/content through a service provider or user messages on a silo basis. By determining the lowest distribution/broadcast rate of each advertising record, the host processing system 100 may discriminate between different advertising records and select which one to broadcast and this provides consistency and fairness in the distribution of sms advertisement among advertisers. The commercial advertisement within each user sms message is targeted specifically based on the relevance of the event (by category) managed by the advertiser themselves, thus this greatly increases the commercial value and effectiveness. The users' sms event message with commercial advertisement are initiated or sent to contacts known by users and this reduces unsolicited sms messages.

With the proposed arrangement, it allows an advertiser to send messages to their potential customers or target recipients conveniently and easily based on selected event categories, regardless of their mobile phone operators since all SMS are sent via a third party SMS service provider. In addition to meeting the need of having an efficient communication and marketing solution, such a scheme is also an extremely cost effective service without the need of any infrastructure investment on advertiser part since there is no need to set up your own system infrastructure and target audience may be fully based on event category with small cost for each SMS. Interested advertiser can create your own SMS Advertisement in minutes with ease.

With the system's ability to identify the lowest distribution/broadcast rate of each advertising record, advertisers are assured that that the sending of messages are fairly distributed among all sms advertisers.

The described embodiment should not be construed as limitative. For example, in addition to SMS, e-mails may be also indicated by the user as a mode of contact at step 202 , and the host processing system 100 is configured to send the e-mails to a number of destination terminals 112, such as PC's or a mobile phone. In this case, at step 214, the host processing system 100 would be informed that both modes are to be used and for SMS, steps 216 to 228 are performed for the SMS messages as explained above. Concurrently, for e- mails, the host processing system 200 performs steps 230 to 234.

As for email, the system makes use of the built-in Microsoft .NET email functionality or any suitable generic library for sending of email notifications. It is done or called at the same time when the scheduled job is called. Before an email is send, the host processing system 100 formats the email message by incorporating the relevant event details into the email text template. The final email message sent may look like the following with the variables are enclosed with ## marks.

Example: "Hi,

Your friend (with email address ##EventCreatorEmail##) would like to share an event posting with you. Event Details

What? - ##EventTitle## When? - ##EventDate##

To know more about this event, please follow this link:

##EventLink##

Thank you, PointlnTime"

It is also envisaged that a user may only submit e-mails addresses of his contacts at step 202, and thus, the host processing system 100 is configured to process steps 216 and 224 in a similar manner but the advertisements are appended to e-mails instead of SMS messages. After step 224, the host processing system then jumps to step 230 so that the modified e-mails (i.e. appended with the respective advertisements) are processed in accordance with this step and steps 232 and 234, and for the process to loop back again step 214. It is also envisaged that if both e-mail and SMS contacts are available, the host processing system 100 appends the selected advertisements to both types of messages for transmission to the contacts. This may not be preferred since the contacts may receive the same advert via SMS and e-mail, which means him receiving the advertisement twice. Having now fully described the invention, it should be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art that many modifications can be made hereto without departing from the scope as claimed.

Claims

1 . A method of selecting which active content from a list of active contents to append to an electronic message, the method comprising the steps of: calculating a broadcast rate of each active content; and selecting an active content from the list of active contents based on the broadcast rate to append to the electronic message.

2. A method of selectively modifying an electronic message for transmission to a communication device, the electronic message comprising a message body and destination data, and is associated with a subject category, the method comprising the steps of: determining a list of active contents associated with the subject category; calculating a broadcast rate of each active content; selecting an active content from the list of active contents based on the broadcast rate; and modifying the electronic message to include the selected active content.

3. A method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the broadcast rate is calculated based on a maximum broadcast rate of each of the active contents and number of times each of the active contents has been previously broadcasted.

4. A method according to claim 3, wherein the maximum broadcast rate is based on amount of fee paid by distributors/advertisers of the list of active contents.

5. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein the electronic message is a SMS message or e-mail.

6. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein the list of active contents include advertising content.

7. A method according to claim 2, wherein the subject category is selected by a sender of the electronic message.

8. A method according to claim 2 or 7, further comprising the step of transmitting the modified electronic message to the communication device based on the destination data.

9. A method according to claim 2, 7 or 8, further comprising the step of checking the availability of the electronic message to send at periodic intervals.

10. A method according to any of claims 2, 7 to 9, wherein the active content is associated with more than one subject category.

1 1. Apparatus for selecting which active content from a list of active contents to append to an electronic message, the apparatus configured to calculate a broadcast rate of each active content; and select an active content from the list of active contents based on the broadcast rate to append to the electronic message.

12. Apparatus for selectively modifying an electronic message for transmission to a communication device, the electronic message comprising a message body and destination data, and is associated with a subject category, the apparatus configured to determine a list of active contents associated with the subject category; calculate a broadcast rate of each active content; select an active content from the list of active contents based on the broadcast rate; modify the electronic message to include the selected active content; and transmit the modified electronic message to the communication device based on the destination data.