Abstract: A method and system for making and optimizing offer selections targeted to particular recipients or groups improves selection quality by combining and aggregating quantitative and qualitative data to capture recipient needs and provider expectations and intentions. Offer descriptions are first received. Distribution variables for application to offer descriptions and recipients are then selected. Distributions are then assigned to offer descriptions, and distributions appropriate to the recipient are determined and assigned to the recipient. Distributions can incorporate demographic, psychographic and behavioral variables. Offer description distributions and recipient distributions are combined for each offer description, resulting in a ranking for each offer description. Offer descriptions are automatically selected based on the rankings, using, for example, simple ordering or roulette wheel selection. Offer descriptions are instantiated as offers, and finally offers are output to the recipient.

Abstract: An automated network merchandising system provides a platform for delivering relevant retail offers to interested consumers online. A backend content pipeline analyzes and processes delivered catalog content into a merchandisable universe of products (MUP). On a user-facing end, corner stores—ad units appearing on pages of publishers' web sites—display offers from the MUP. Publishers deploy store scripts to their web pages. The script runs in the user's browser, causing display of an interactive ad unit featuring product offers. An adaptive targeting engine produces targeted product offers based on the ad's display context, including at least user data, page analysis and geographic location. A targeting console allows marketers to specify campaigns targeted to particular corner store ad contexts. Campaigns are defined by combinations of product categories, merchants, price ranges and key words. A store builder allows publishers to specify campaigns to be displayed to web site visitors.

Abstract: A method of network merchandising incorporates contextual and personalized advertising with human input to deliver relevant retail offers to interested online consumers efficiently and intelligently. Catalog content from retailers is downloaded, semantically analyzed and merged. The merged content is filtered using machine- and human-generated specifications to produce a merchandisable universe of products (MUP). Marketers and publishers create and modify corner store ad units and specify product offers from the MUP to display in those units. Publishers deploy the ad units on their web pages. Compensation of publishers by retailers can use a pay-for-performance model. Users visit the publisher's pages, viewing the product offers in the rendered ad unit.

Abstract: A system and method for performing domain-specific knowledge based metasearches. A metasearch engine is provided for accessing a searching text-based documents using generic search engines while simultaneously being able to access publication based databases and sequence databases as well as in-house proprietary databases and any database capable of being interfaced with a web interface so as to produce search results in text format. A data mining module is also provided for organizing raw data obtained by unsupervised clustering, simple relevance ranking, and categorization, all of which are done independently of one another. The system is capable of storing previous search data for use in query refinement or subsequent searches based upon the stored data. A search results collection browser may be provided for analyzing current browsing patterns of the user for developing weighting factors to be used in ordering the results of future searches.

Abstract: A system and method for performing domain-specific knowledge based metasearches. A metasearch engine is provided for accessing a searching text-based documents using generic search engines while simultaneously being able to access publication based databases and sequence databases as well as in-house proprietary databases and any database capable of being interfaced with a web interface so as to produce search results in text format. A data mining module is also provided for organizing raw data obtained by unsupervised clustering, simple relevance ranking, and categorization, all of which are done independently of one another. The system is capable of storing previous search data for use in query refinement or subsequent searches based upon the stored data. A search results collection browser may be provided for analyzing current browsing patterns of the user for developing weighting factors to be used in ordering the results of future searches.