WO2014014409A1

WO2014014409A1 - Method for targeted and viral advertising

Info

Publication number: WO2014014409A1
Application number: PCT/SG2012/000262
Authority: WO
Inventors: Yang Wai Alvin LEE
Original assignee: Lee Yang Wai Alvin
Priority date: 2012-07-20
Filing date: 2012-07-20
Publication date: 2014-01-23

Abstract

Consumers (mobile users) can input and change their selection of interests in a mobile application real-time. Advertisers (web users) can shortlist these consumers online, targeted to their specific current interest, with additional filtration based on the anonymous consumers' demographical information such as geo-location, gender, age, birth month and locality. The list can be further refined as the filtered list is lined as a queue of leads based on latest login first (hot) to the longest inactive last (cold). Advertisement is then sent to this highly targeted list of consumers through the mobile application, to be rated, reviewed and posted on social networks to achieve viral advertising.

Description

TITLE:

METHOD FOR TARGETED AND VIRAL ADVERTISING TECHNICAL FIELD:

The present invention relates to a computer method and system for targeted and viral advertising.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a process flow diagram illustrating an embodiment of the present invention.

BACKGROUND:

[0001] This advertising method facilitates advertising merchants to conduct direct advertising targeted at specific group of consumers based on selected criteria and to achieve viral advertising through social networks.

[0002] The current market is constantly inundated by mass-market advertisements on a daily basis. The source of such a phenomenon is the global throng of merchants in the consumer market crowding all media avenues to spread awareness of their products, services and offers. They create floods of advertisements incessantly, yet are unable to fully capture consumers' attention. They throw out deals, but often have to hit a large population base to draw the attention of the desired leads. They also lack the ability to discern true leads l from fiat leads, often missing out potential valuable opportunities. Although many of them adopt a variety of marketing plans, they are frequently stretched thin by the many types of media, constricted by the high costs of advertising, and most importantly, they lack a targeted base of leads.

[0003] The recipients of these overwhelming advertisements paradoxically face their own unique circumstances. Consumers seek knowledge constantly, but due to being inundated by an onslaught of excessive information on a daily basis, they have develop immunity and even nonchalance towards any advertising effort. They crave deals, but due to the myriad consumer commerce and the pace of modern society, they lack the ability and the time to find or even compare them. They often develop cynicism towards new and unqualified offers and actively seek to rely on peer reviews before making an informed decision.

[0004] Modern consumers are increasingly equipped with new mobile technology and are often seen engrossed in their mobile world, further reducing the effectiveness of advertising efforts. They have extensive online presence and hunger for self-actualisation and recognition by sharing qualified information while demanding for greater privacy of their personal online footprints.

THE WORDS OF MOUTHS PORTAL

[0005] The present invention is embedded in the Words of Mouths (WOM) portal. It is a self opt-in retail information and advertisement (info-ad) receiving community, where consumers are gathered throughout the world to create a massive online community, clustered by geo-locations, who are agreeable to receive retail information and advertisements through their personal account for an application on their mobile phones. It takes into consideration all the above observations and consumer traits to combine both existing and novel features so as to introduce an innovative targeted and viral marketing process.

TARGETED ADVERTISING FEATURE 1 : 2-TIER INTERESTS

SEGREGATED COMMUNITY

[0006] The first targeted advertising feature is a 2-tier Consumer Interest Index (WOMdex), developed to transform an inherently chaotic WOM community to an orderly, organised and well-segregated community. This is achieved by identifying all possible consumer interest categories to create in- depth market segments according to the identified interest categories and their sub-components, e.g. Sports -> Water Sports-Surfing.

[0007] By allowing each community member to have a real-time but limited selection of these identified interest categories, the community can be segmented accordingly. The primary supporting logic is that community members will select the categories that they are most interested in at that current time, and will change their selection any time when they develop new interests. This feature, offered to the merchants through their corporate account on a website, forms the first-stage sortation capability to filter the community by interest segments thus achieving the initial pivot point for targeted advertising.

TARGETED ADVERTISING FEATURE 2: LOCATIONAL &

DEMOGRAPHICAL SEGMENTS

[0008] WOM community members are required to furnish locational and demographical information such as geo-location, locality, gender, age and birth month as part of their registration into the community. This forms the next 2- stages of sortation capabilities for merchants to refine their target list further according to their preferred market audience based on specific locational and demographical statistics, and this achieves the second pivot point for targeted advertising.

TARGETED ADVERTISING FEATURE 3: TIME-TEMPERATURE BASED PRIORITY QUEUE

[0009] The third targeted advertising feature of WOM is a Time- Temperature Based Priority Queue that prioritises the community based on their last login time into the WOM portal. The supporting logic is that community members will access and utilise the WOM portal at different times of need, hence their interest in the unchanged or newly selected categories can be validated as current at that login time. This creates queue lines with hot leads in the front that gradually cools towards the cold ones at the back. This innovative time-based priority queue offers merchants the capability to differentiate the temperature of the consumer leads and to flexibly select the number of hot leads to sent the info-ad to, thus achieving the last pivot point for targeted advertising.

VIRAL ADVERTISING FEATURE 1 : INFO-AD SPECIFIC RATING & REVIEW CONVERSATION THREADS

[0010] The first feature to viral advertising is to enable WOM community members to communally-qualify the merchants, their products, services and offers. This is achieved by allowing WOM community members to rate and review each info-ad as an info-ad specific thread. However, each info-ad thread can only be rated and reviewed by those community members whom the merchant has shortlisted to send the info-ad, and other community members added subsequently into the thread through viral effect. [001 1] The info-ad specific ratings are based on a pre-defined set of criteria while the community members are free to offer their opinions and comments for their reviews. Such ratings and reviews are made available to all community members on the WOM portal as qualified information for communal benefit to make an informed decision about each merchant, its products, services or offers.

[0012] On the WOM portal, each merchant is given a web function on their account page to contribute their clarifications to community members reviews on each info-ad specific thread. This unique feature creates an info-ad centric conversational thread between those inclusive community members and advertising merchant, thereby allowing merchants to conduct real-time online customer service recovery.

VIRAL ADVERTISING FEATURE 2: INFINITE DEGREE OF VIRAL EFFECT THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKS

[0013] The second feature to viral advertising is to enable WOM

community members to post the info-ad onto their preferred social network(s), so that their family and friends can be aware of the benefits of the products, services or offers in the advertising merchant's info-ad.

[0014] The WOM portal further allows the community member's families and friends to claim the posted info-ad from such social networks onto their personal WOM account, so that they get to enjoy similar benefits from that info- ad. The supporting logic is that consumers will only claim info-ads that he/she is interested in therefore this will bring onboard new community members who have similar interest into the info-ad specific review conversation thread. [0015] As the newly included community members have the same ability to repost that specific info-ad onto their own preferred social network(s), the spread of the info-ad will achieve a multi-nodal rippling viral effect by continuously having newly included members (who can also rate, review and post) to spread to their own social network through the same broadcast mechanism. This effect will generate multiple cycles of rippling influx of communal ratings and reviews, thereby achieving an infinite degree of advertisements to the benefit of the community and the merchant!

CONCLUSION

[0016] In conclusion, this marketing process allows advertising merchants (web users) to target community members (mobile users) to their specific realtime interest, locations, demographics, and degree of time-temperature. Info-ad is then sent to this highly targeted list of consumers through the mobile application, to be rated, reviewed, posted, claimed and reposted on social networks virally, achieving literally 'WORDS OF MOUTHS' advertising!

Claims

TITLE: METHOD FOR TARGETED AND VIRAL ADVERTISING THE EMBODIMENTS OF THE METHOD IN WHICH AN EXCLUSIVE PROPERTY OR PRIVILEGE IS CLAIMED ARE DEFINED AS FOLLOWS: We claim:

1. A method of targeted and viral advertising comprising: Part 1 : Under control of a client system,

displaying the criteria for selecting the community members; and

defining the criteria to select a targeted group of community members; and sending a request to shortlist the targeted community members based on the defined criteria to a server system;

Part 2: Under control of the server system,

processing the request to shortlist the targeted community members based on the defined criteria; and

sending the quantity of the shortlisted community members to the client system; Part 3: Under control of the client system,

displaying the quantity of the shortlisted community members; and

attaching the visual and/or video materials for the advertisement (info-ad); and sending a request to advertise along with the advertising material links to the server system;

Part 4: Under control of the server system,

creating an info-ad identifier to contain the identifier of the advertising merchant, the list of identifiers of the selected community members and the advertising material links; and

generating an order to send the attached info-ad to the selected community members; and

fulfilling the generated order to send the info-ad to each selected community member's mobile client system; Part 5: Under control of a mobile client system,

displaying the info-ad and advertising merchant's information; and

rating the info-ad; and

reviewing the info-ad, thereby achieving a targeted advertising method; OR reviewing the info-ad; AND

sending a request to post the info-ad on selected social network(s) to the server system;

Part 6: Under control of the server system,

sending a request to post the info-ad to the selected social network application client system;

Part 7: Under control of a social network application client system,

posting the info-ad and a request link for third party(ies) on the social network to claim the info-ad; and

sending a request(s) [claim request(s) by third party(ies) on the social network] to claim the info-ad to the server system,

Part 8: Under control of the server system,

adding the identifier(s) of the third party member(s) (a non-member third party will be required to register into the community) to the list of identifiers of the previously selected community members under the info-ad identifier; and sending a request to post the info-ad to the mobile client system;

Thereby repeating Parts 5-8 cyclically, achieving a targeted and viral advertising method.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the defining and processing of criteria includes:

defining and processing specific time-temperature of community members.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the defining and processing of criteria includes:

defining and processing specific locations of community members:

AND, defining and processing specific time-temperature of community members.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the defining and processing of criteria includes:

defining and processing specific interest of community members;

AND, defining and processing specific time-temperature of community members.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the defining and processing of criteria includes:

defining and processing specific demographical information of community members;

AND, defining and processing specific time-temperature of community members.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the defining and processing of criteria includes:

defining and processing specific locations of community members:

AND, defining and processing specific interest of community members; AND, defining specific and processing time-temperature of community members.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the defining and processing of criteria includes:

defining and processing specific locations of community members:

AND, defining and processing specific demographical information of community members;

AND, defining and processing specific time-temperature of community members.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the defining and processing of criteria includes:

defining and processing specific interest of community members;

AND, defining and processing specific time-temperature of community members.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the defining and processing of criteria includes:

defining and processing specific locations of community members:

AND, defining and processing specific interest of community members; AND, defining and processing specific demographical information of community members;

AND, defining and processing specific time-temperature of community members.

10. The method of claims 2-9 wherein the processing of specific time- temperature of community members comprises:

Under control of the server system,

receiving the defined criteria; and

retrieving the community members' login time based on information previously stored; and

prioritising the community members in the increasing order of the amount of time lapse from their login time as compared to the current time instance; and shortlisting the community members based on the specific time cut-off as defined by the advertising merchant in the criteria.