Method and System for Dynamic Textual Ad Distribution Via Email
A system and method for providing dynamic pay-for-placement advertisements via graphics-enabled email that generates a display of advertisements when the email newsletter is opened so the advertisements displayed are based on rankings at the time the email is opened instead of when the email was generated and transmitted. In one embodiment, a graphical-content email having one or more embedded advertisement image references is provided to one or more email recipients. The advertisement image reference, in one embodiment, may include query string parameters indicating the context of the image reference and/or portion of the image reference (i.e., identifying the image reference as being part of a particular newsletter email), a position of the image reference in the email display, and the like. A URL reference also may be included with each advertisement image reference (.e.g., one URL for each advertisement portion of the image to be retrieved by the advertising image reference).
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This application claims priority to a provisional patent application, U.S. Patent Application No. 60/422,0844, filed Nov. 1, 2002, entitled “Method and System for Dynamic Textual Ad Distribution via Email,” still pending.
FIELD OF THE INVENTIONThis invention relates to systems and methods for providing dynamic graphical or textual advertisements via email or other stored electronic documents in pay-for-placement or similar advertising systems.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTIONOne form of targeted advertising often used in electronic media is a bid for placement in broadcast emails targeted to a specific group of recipients having one or more interests in common. For example, newsletter emails on a specific topic (e.g., parenthood) often include a number of Uniform Resource Locator (URL) listings to websites of advertisers catering to the specific topic (e.g., a toy store's website), whereupon the recipients of the newsletter email can “click” on the link to view the advertised website via a web browser (an event herein referred to as a “click-through”).
Advertisers may place a bid on the amount of money to be paid for any “click-through” resulting from the placement of an advertisement included in the targeted email. In fact, several advertisers may bid against each other for placement, with the highest bidder given priority over other bidders. For example, the highest bid for a newsletter email may be listed first and other bidder's advertisements can be listed in descending order based on their bid. Accordingly, as the cost per click-through (e.g., bid) for the advertising company increases, the closer that company's listing is to the most visible or prominent part of the newsletter email (e.g., the top of the newsletter email). Higher placement of the advertisement in a newsletter email often leads to more click-throughs for that advertisement and thus, more traffic to the advertiser's target web site.
While such pay-for-placement email advertisements provide benefit to advertisers seeking targeted advertising mechanisms, the email provider often does not experience the full revenue potential possible from the pay-for-placement advertising in the emails. Common pay-for-placement email advertising systems typically do not take into account variations in the relationship between the advertiser, the email provider, and the content of the newsletter emails. To illustrate, advertisers continuously change their bids for advertisement placement, relationships with new advertisers may be developed, relationships with advertisers may be ended, new advertisements may be available, etc.
While the relationship between an advertiser and the email provider may be fluid, a newsletter email typically is persistent, being delivered to recipients' mailboxes typically within minutes of being sent. The newsletter then may reside in a recipient's mailbox for an unknown period of time (e.g., for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, etc.) after it was originally delivered before the recipient views the newsletter email. During this variable time period, the relationship between the newsletter email provider and the advertisers having advertisements listed in the delivered newsletter email may have changed. For example, some or all of the listed advertisers' accounts may have been depleted of money, some or all of the listed advertisers may no longer have a relationship with the pay-for-placement email provider, the relative ranking of the bids by advertisers may have changed in the duration, and the like. Accordingly, the arrangement of the advertisement listings in the original newsletter email when sent may not reflect the arrangement of advertisement listings that is most advantageous to the email provider at the time that the newsletter email is opened by a recipient.
To illustrate, an advertiser, based in its bid, may be listed in the most prominent position at the time of transmission of a newsletter email. In the time period between the transmission of the email and the viewing of the email by a recipient, however, the advertiser terminated its relationship with the newsletter email provider and, therefore, no longer has a paying relationship with the email provider. Accordingly, any click-throughs to the terminated advertiser resulting from the recipient clicking the terminated advertisers listing in the newsletter email is, in essence, lost revenue for the email provider since the terminated advertiser receives these click-throughs for free. In a similar manner, any changes in the bids or rate of click-throughs for the advertisers since transmission would not be reflected in the advertising listings in the email as transmitted. As a result, the email provider may not realize its full revenue potential had the advertising listings in the newsletter email reflected the optimum advertising listing arrangement at the time the email was viewed by a recipient. Other drawbacks exist with current techniques for targeted advertising via email.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTIONEmbodiments of the present invention mitigate or solve the above-identified limitations in known solutions, as well as other unspecified deficiencies in known solutions. A number of advantages associated with the present invention are readily evident to those skilled in the art, including economy of design and resources, greater system flexibility, cost savings, etc.
At least one embodiment of the present invention provides a system and method for providing dynamic pay-for-placement advertisements via graphics-enabled email that generates a display of advertisements when the email newsletter is opened so the advertisements displayed are based on rankings at the time the email is opened instead of when the email was generated and transmitted. In one embodiment, a graphical-content email having one or more embedded advertisement image references is provided to one or more email recipients. The advertisement image reference, in one embodiment, may include query string parameters indicating the context of the image reference and/or portion of the image reference (i.e., identifying the image reference as being part of a particular newsletter email), a position of the image reference in the email display, and the like. A URL reference also may be included with each advertisement image reference (.e.g., one URL for each advertisement portion of the image to be retrieved by the advertising image reference).
When the email is opened in a graphics-enabled email client, the email client interprets instructions in the email to request the one or more referenced advertisement images from a advertisement system. The advertisement system, in one embodiment, is adapted to determine a preferred advertisement layout in response to the image request. The advertisements included in the preferred advertisement layout may then be based in part on the current relationships (i.e., at the time the email is opened) between the content provider and its pay-for-placement advertisers, the placement of the advertisement in the email display, or a combination thereof. The advertisement system then provides the email client with advertisement images that correspond to the preferred advertisement layout at the time the email is opened. In addition to providing the advertisement image or images requested by the email client displaying the transmitted email, the advertisement system also can be adapted to store a browser cookie at the email client, where the browser cookie stores a reference to the particular advertisement layout displayed in the email.
A referenced advertisement image in the email can include a graphical image, a graphical representation of text, or a combination thereof. Further, two or more advertisement listings can be grouped together under a single image with certain portions of the single image being associated with each of the advertisement listings using, for example, an HTML image map.
Upon receipt of the advertisement image(s), the email client displays the email content along with the supplied advertisement images as directed by the email. Should the email recipient “click” one of the displayed advertisement images, in one embodiment, the email client sends a request for the website referenced by the associated URL reference. The browser cookie reference to the particular advertisement layout may be included in the request. Upon receipt of the website request, the advertisement system directs the email client (or a web browser of the email recipient) to display the content of a corresponding advertiser's website. In one embodiment, the advertisement system identifies the corresponding website using the browser cookie reference included in the webpage request from the email client, a position indicator associated with the selected advertisement image, and the like. After the email client (or web browser) is successfully directed to the corresponding website of the selected advertiser, the advertisement system may record the “click-through” for billing purposes.
One embodiment comprises a computerized advertisement distribution and delivery system for dynamically delivering advertisements for inclusion in an electronic document delivered to and stored at a recipient system. The computerized advertisement distribution and delivery system comprises an advertisement image generation module that generates an image containing a plurality of advertisements related to a specific distribution subject based on a relationship between those advertisements and storing that image in association with a network-based locator as being the up-to-date image for the specific distribution subject. The system may also include an advertisement relationship determination module intermittently determining relationships between advertisements related to a specific distribution subject and if an existing relationship between advertisements related to a specific distribution subject changes, initiating the advertisement image generation module to generate as modified up-to-date image stored in association with the network-based locator and specific distribution subject.
In addition, the system comprises an electronic document transmission system that creates and transmits an electronic document containing content related to a specific distribution subject and a network-based locator associated with the image generated by the advertisement image generation module for the specific distribution subject. An advertisement image transmission system then receives a request for the image located at the network-based locator specified in the electronic document transmitted by the electronic document transmission module and transmitting the up-to-date image stored in association with the network-based locator at the time the request is received. All such systems may cooperate with an advertisement input receiving system for receiving at least one advertisement associated with a specific distribution subject and a bid representing an amount to be paid for click-throughs by end-user recipients to a target site associated with the advertisement.
In these systems, a variety of advertisement relationship determinations may be employed to determine which advertisements to provide in the image(s). In one iteration, the advertisement relationship determination module evaluates a grouping of advertisements based on the effective revenue efficiency of the grouping compared to other potential groupings of advertisements provided by advertisers for the specific distribution subject and determines the relationship for generating an image using the highest revenue efficiency grouping of a predetermined number of advertisements. More specifically, the system may generate a ranking of listings as a grouping, the grouping comprising the ranked list of advertisements with the highest effective cost per thousand impressions. Also or alternatively, the revenue efficiency value may be calculated by multiplying the number of click-throughs over a predetermined number of impressions times the bid amount for the advertisement. These relationships may be re-evaluated whenever a new bid is received (either a new advertiser or a modification to an existing bid) or when revenue efficiency calculations are made (e.g., every thousand impressions).
Moreover, the electronic document may include a target network-based locator for each of a plurality of advertisements included in the image and the system may thus provide a redirection server for receiving a request at the target network-based location and redirecting the request to a location associated with the advertisement associated with the target network-based locator in the electronic document.
One embodiment of an electronic document (e.g., email newsletter in HTML format) may comprise program interpreted code for instructing a recipient program to present content related to a specific distribution topic in a page when the electronic document is opened by the recipient program, to retrieve an image from a source network-based location and present that image in the page with the content related to the specific distribution topic when the electronic document is opened by the recipient program, to request a first web page from a first target network-based locator when a first portion of the image is selected, and to request a second web page from a second target network-based locator when a second portion of the image is selected. And, in one iteration, the first and second target network-based locators direct the recipient program to a location on the network where a first and second advertiser web page location respectively are stored.
In various iterations, the source network-based locator comprises a URL with an identifier related to the specific distribution subject. Also, it is possible to provide an electronic document in which the first and second target network-based locators comprises an address portion and a variable portion and wherein the address portion of the first and second target network-based locators is the same.
According to another embodiment, a computerized advertisement distribution and delivery system for dynamically delivering advertisements for inclusion in an electronic document delivered to and stored at a recipient system may provide an advertisement image generation module for generating a plurality of images corresponding to a specific distribution subject, ordering those plurality of images based on a relationship between those advertisements and storing those images in association with a plurality of network-based locators as being the up-to-date image grouping for the specific distribution subject. This embodiment's system may also provide an advertisement relationship determination module for intermittently determining relationships between advertisements related to a specific distribution subject and if an existing relationship between advertisements related to a specific distribution subject changes, initiating the advertisement image generation module to reorder the images and store the reordering information to generate a up-to-date image grouping stored in association with the plurality of network-based locators and specific distribution subject. The electronic document transmission system may create and transmit an electronic document containing content related to a specific distribution subject and at least two of the plurality of network-based locators associated with the up-to-date grouping of images generated by the advertisement image generation module for the specific distribution subject. Further, an advertisement image transmission module may receive a request for the up-to-date images located at the at least two of the plurality of network-based locators specified in the electronic document transmitted by the electronic document transmission module and transmitting the up-to-date images associated with the plurality of network-based locators stored in association with the network-based locator at the time the request is received. Other variations described above with respect to the first embodiment may also be employed.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art upon review of the descriptions and drawings provided.
The purpose and advantages of embodiments of the present invention will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art from the following detailed description in conjunction with the appended drawings in which like reference characters are used to indicate like elements, and in which:
Embodiments of the present invention deliver up-to-date and timely advertisements. One system embodying various aspects of the present invention is depicted in
In one embodiment, each advertisement image reference includes query string parameters that are used to identify the intended location of the advertisement image when displayed. Identifiers included in the query string parameters can include, for example, an identifier associated with the email (e.g., identifying the email as a “health” newsletter email sent on a certain date), a position identifier indicating the intended position of the advertisement image in the email display, and the like.
In one example, the email provider may generate an HTML-based email. In this example, the advertisement image may be stored at content/advertisement provider system 16/24 and associated with an identifier, such as a numeric or name identifier for the newsletter (e.g., 3614 or Sports or Parenting 56). The HTML-email may be generated with HTML-encoded content in any of a variety of forms and HTML that enables the operation of one or more image maps or images with corresponding target links. The HTML email may then be delivered to the email clients of some or all newsletter subscribers. Each HTML email may include images that present advertisements, including an embodiment in which a single image includes a plurality (e.g., three) advertisements with portion(s) of the image corresponding to each of the plurality of ads such that those portions may be selected. Upon selection, the end user's system may request a corresponding web page through a central server location at content/advertisement provider system 16/24, for example. In one iteration, the HTML image map may comprise a source image locator (e.g., URL of an advertisement image operated in affiliation with the content/advertisement provider system 16/24), HTML coding for designating a plurality of portions of the image and a plurality of target network-based locators corresponding to a portion of the image. An example of HTML coding to enable the image map to operate is depicted below:
This section of code includes an image reference at src=“http://z.about.com/sg/sg.gif?.cuni=3459”, an indication of the image's height (160), its width (600) and an instruction to generate and use an HTML image map named sgmap.
The image map coding identifies portions of the overall image (e.g., AREA shape=RECT coords=0,55,600,75) and associates each portion with a target network-based locator (e.g., URL) that links back to content/advertisement listings provider 16/24 to be redirected to a web site or web page selected by a particular advertiser (e.g., href=“http://x.about.com/sg/r/3459.htm?p=0&ref=specsportssl_sg”). In this example, the image map includes references to three portions and three URL's differentiated by the “p” number (or position) in the image map. The various three references direct a user's system to request a web page at the advertising system (here, at host server x.about.com) that redirects the request to a web page selected by the advertiser associated with the corresponding portion of the image map as explained below with reference to
Each advertisement in an image, in at least one embodiment, is associated with a URL reference. Accordingly, when a recipient of the email opens the email for viewing and “clicks” a portion of the image associated with the advertisement by the image mapping function, the email client interprets the HTML in the email and requests and displays the website referenced by the URL reference stored at the target site URL in the HTML email at that time. In one embodiment, as shown in the HTML coding above, the referenced URL may direct the email client to a server affiliated with the content/advertisement system 16/24, which in turn references a URL from the advertiser whose advertisement has been placed in the corresponding position in the image presented at the time of the selection. As discussed in greater detail below, in one embodiment, the actual website referenced by the URL reference is dynamically referenced at the time that the email is viewed by the email recipient rather than at the time of transmission of the email to the recipient.
In another embodiment, an advertisement section of the HTML email may be encoded to provide a plurality of images, each image comprising one or more advertisements. Therefore, the encoding described above for a single image map with three advertisement/portions/target network-based locators may be doubled, tripled, etc. to enable different numbers of advertisements/image maps. Also, the number of advertisements/portions/target network-based locators may be modified as desired. In addition, an image grouping may be based on a combination of single advertiser images and multiple advertiser image maps, with the grouping determined based on a revenue efficiency model, as described herein.
Also, an image may correspond to a single advertisement with a single target network-based locator and a plurality of such images may be utilized. Upon that HTML email being opened, each image in the grouping may be requested and the images provided may be based on the relationship available between advertisements for the specific distribution subject of the HTML email at the time of the email being opened.
After generating the email, email provider 50, in one embodiment, is adapted to transmit a copy of the email to the email clients of one or more intended email recipients over a network 14/22 (e.g., the Internet) using any of a variety of email protocols, such as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Upon receipt, email clients (depicted by email clients 28e-28g although any number of different email clients may be provided) typically place the received email in an “inbox,” where it is stored until the recipient directs the email client to open the email for display. It will be appreciated that the time period between the receipt of the email and the actual viewing by the email recipient can vary significantly. For example, one email recipient may view the email within minutes of receipt of the email, whereas other email recipients may allow the email to remain unviewed for hours, days, weeks, and even months.
As noted above, the email generated by email provider 50 (
As described above, the email, in one embodiment, includes one or more image references that reference a location on context provider 16/24 to retrieve a graphical advertisement or graphical representation of a textual advertisement. Accordingly, when the email client prepares the email content for display, email client 28 uses the image references to request the corresponding images from content provider 16/24. Upon receipt of the image request, the content provider may be adapted to dynamically select an advertisement image (e.g., representing a pay-for-placement advertiser) and provide the selected advertisement image to the email client for display as part of the email display. The steps of selecting and providing advertisement images in response to requests for the images from the email client may be repeated until the email client has received and displayed all advertisement images referenced in the email. It should be appreciated that such steps may occur simultaneously to speed in the delivery time.
In at least one embodiment, the advertisements contained in the referenced image displayed as part of the email display are selected at the time the email is opened for display on the email client. The content provider can be adapted to select the advertisements in any particular image for display using any of a variety of factors. As mentioned above, in at least one embodiment, advertisers may place bids to have their advertisements placed in an email, and/or through other content delivery systems as explained below, where the bids preferably are based on click-throughs (e.g., the advertiser offers to pay $0.50 for each click-through to the advertiser's website resulting from an advertisement displayed in the email). When each advertiser submits a new advertisement for placement in an email, the content provider can be adapted to generate and store an entry in the ad database that includes the advertisement information, such as an advertisement image, an advertisement description (e.g., category keywords), the number of click-throughs already generated, bid information, and the like (more detail on embodiments of this aspect of the system is provided below). The entry also can include advertiser information (such as name, address, billing information).
Using the information stored in the ad database entries, the content provider can be adapted to select an optimum advertisement image in response to an image request from the email client. In one embodiment, the advertisement image can be selected based on bid value. For example, assume that ad #1 has a bid of $0.50 per click-through, ad #2 has a bid of $0.20 per click-through, ad #3 has a bid of $0.25 per click-through, ad #4 has a bid of $0.10 per click-through, ad #5 has a bid of $0.05 per click-through, and ad #6 has a bid of $0.30 per click-through. Accordingly, for a requested image to be displayed in the most prominent section of the email display, the content provider could select the advertisement image associated with ad #1. For a requested image to be displayed in the second most prominent section of the email display, the content provider could select the advertisement image associated with ad #6, and so on for the remainder of the image requests.
It will be appreciated, however, that the advertiser with the highest bid may not be the advertiser with the greatest number of click-throughs. Accordingly, rather than selecting advertisers for listing in the email solely on bid value, the content provider can be adapted to select advertisers for listing based in part on bid value in combination with the number of click throughs, as well as the relevance of the advertiser to the topic of interest of the email. For example, assume that ad #1 has a bid of $0.50 per click-through and an average of 20 click-throughs/day for the topic of the email (potential total of $10/day), ad #2 has a bid of $0.20 per click-through per click-through and an average of 100 click-throughs/day for the topic of the email (potential total of $20/day), ad #3 has a bid of $0.25 per click-through and an average of 10 click-throughs/day for the topic of the email (potential total of $2.50/day), ad #4 has a bid of $0.10 per click-through and an average of 250 click-throughs/day for the topic of the email (potential total of $25/day), ad #5 has a bid of $0.05 per click-through and an average of 5 click-throughs/day for the topic of the email (potential total of $0.50/day), and ad #6 has a bid of $0.30 per click-through and an average of 20 click-throughs/day for the topic of the email (potential total of $6/day). To maximize revenue, the content provider could select the advertisement image associated with ad #4 for a requested image to be displayed in the second most prominent section of the email display.
Moreover, the preferred set may be determined based on the optimum combined value of three advertisers set as a group. For example, it may be determined that a grouping of Ad #1, Ad #3 and Ad #5 generates the most revenue for content/advertising system 16/24 even though the bid values are not the highest individually.
The result set comprising the selected advertisement images and their intended position in the email display is referred to herein as the “preferred advertisement layout.” In at least one embodiment, the content provider is adapted to store a representation of the preferred advertisement layout in the ad database at a particular date and time because the preferred advertisement layout is subject to change as bids and click-through rates change. Similarly, the content provider, in one embodiment, is adapted to set a browser cookie at the email client (or web browser), where the browser cookie includes a reference to the preferred advertisement layout and the date and time of the advertisement.
Should a email recipient select one of the displayed advertisement images, the email client, in one embodiment, sends a request to the content provider for the website referenced by the URL reference associated with the selected advertisement image within the image of the preferred advertisement layout. As with the advertisement image reference in the email, in one embodiment the associated URL reference is not directed to a particular advertiser's website, but instead is a nonspecific URL reference that can be used to identify a particular advertiser's website based on the context in which the URL reference was selected. In our earlier example, the nonspecific URL was http://x.about.com/sg/r/3459.htm?p=0&ret=specsportss1_sg. Accordingly, in at least one embodiment, the email client is adapted to include the reference to the preferred advertisement layout included in the browser cookie stored at the client earlier. Using this preferred advertisement layout, the advertising system 24 may identify the advertiser website associated with the selected advertiser image being displayed in the user's email client at that particular moment. The advertising system 24 then may provide the content of the advertiser website to the email client (or other web browser) for display as a “click-through.” Once the content has been successfully displayed, the advertising system 24 may then record the click-through for billing purposes.
If the preferred advertisement layout for a particular newsletter changes, the image referenced in the email is changed along with the advertiser URL's related to each of the nonspecific URL's stored in the database in association with the image. Therefore, without having to modify any code stored in the email on the email client, different advertisements may be displayed dynamically to the user as the preferred advertisement layout changes.
Moreover, as a result of requesting the current image containing the preferred advertisement layout when the email is opened each time, advertisers or advertisements that are stale or no longer participating are not displayed. Such advertisers thus do not get “free”referrals and the advertisement system does not lose out on an opportunity for revenue from the click-through to a no-longer-participating advertiser.
The content/advertisement system 16/24 may comprise a number of components, as shown below with reference to
Also, a target redirection server 46 may be provided to receive a request for a web page upon selection of a portion of an image corresponding to an advertisement. The target redirection server 46 may receive a request at a specified network-based location and use the parameters to determine the corresponding advertiser.
To provide the functionality of elements 42-46, database 18 may store images and target websites all indexed to a specific distribution subject identifier, such as a number or name. Ad listing generation module 32 may intermittently (based on time, new bids, changes in bids, etc.) update the order of ranking of advertisements for a specific distribution subject and therefore, update the image to be provided and the advertisement URL's (including changing the position of the URL's based on re-ordering that may occur) to which target redirection server 46 may redirect the email client when the corresponding advertisement is selected.
Specifically, the flow of steps depicted according to one method of the present invention is shown in
Step 2214 may occur at the advertisement system 24 to determine the preferred advertisement image associated with the reference received from the email client. As indicated above, because the preferred combination of advertisers in a single image may change, this is done dynamically and at the time of the request. So, for example, based on the numeral or name designator, a specific image may be generated. Once the correct image has been determined, in step 2214, the advertisement system 24 may transmit the advertisement image back to the email client for display to the user in step 2216. In addition, the advertising listing system 24 may deliver a cookie to the email client to be stored on the email client's computer in step 2218. As discussed above, the cookie may contain a number of pieces of information, including an indication of time and date placed and the various information about the image and the image map delivered to the user. In step 2220, it is determined whether each dynamic advertisement in the email has been received and if so, the process of steps 2210, 2212, 2214, 2216 and 2218 are repeated. If all such advertisements have been displayed, then in step 2222, a recipient may select one or more of the links depicted within the image delivered to the user in step 2222. Specifically, the image may display what appears to be links, although each is actually a portion of the image map that may be selected as depicted above in the illustrated image map example. If the recipient selects a link, then in 2224 the email client transmits a request back to the advertisement system at the URL specified in the image map coding as discussed above. And at that point, in step 2224, the user is re-directed to an advertiser associated with the portion of the image map that the user selected. In addition, for purposes of recording click-throughs and other database recordation techniques, in step 2226, the click-through is recorded.
An example of an email advertisement and the associated click-through portions may be shown in
Here, the advertisers have been selected based on a grouping that is determined to generate the most revenue for the advertising system: the first advertiser has bid 25 cents per click through, the second 21 cents per click through, and the third 24 cents per click through, but this combination is better than the combination in which one of the advertisers may bid 26 cents per click through, for example. Here, an underlined portion is depicted to show the user that they may select that portion of the image to link through to information about that particular advertiser. As described above, upon selecting a portion of the image map, a URL associated with that portion is activated by the email client, redirected back to the advertising listing system and then directed from there to the advertiser ABC, for example, associated with this particular advertisement.
As will be appreciated, whereas the current grouping of ABC, GHI, and DEF may be the present arrangement of advertisers for this particular email newsletter, in one week from now, it is possible that ABC will stop participating in advertisement through the advertising listing system. Accordingly, if the present image were delivered each time the user opened the email, it is possible that the user will be redirected to a web site for ABC and ABC would thus not have to pay or that there would be a “broken link” when requesting information from ABC. The present system as described above prevents that situation by delivering the image each time the email is opened so that each of the advertisers included in the image are active advertisers that are participating in the system and to which the advertising listing system has an active link for redirecting users requesting further information from that advertiser and therefore are capable of generating the revenue from the click through arrangements as described in greater detail below.
As noted above, any of a variety of techniques may be implemented by the content provider to select advertisements for listing in graphics-enabled emails transmitted to email recipients. In particular,
An embodiment of a networked environment in which such a system may operate is depicted in
Each of Advertising Listings Provider 16 and Advertisement Provider 12 may comprise computerized systems that include one or more of the following systems: a web server, a database server, proxy server, network balancing mechanisms and systems, and various software components that enable the system to operate on the Internet or other network type system. Additionally, networks 14 and 22, although depicted as http networks, may comprise other networks such as private lines, intranets, or any other network. Preferably, the connection between advertising provider 12 and advertisement listing provider 16 may comprise secure network connections to insure that data is not subject to attack or corruption by any hacker or other third party. In addition, whereas two advertisement providers are depicted, it should be appreciated that one or more advertisement providers 12 may be provided in the network. Similarly, although one database server 18 is depicted, it should be appreciated that multiple database servers may be provided and that such database servers may be connected to the advertisement listing provider via any type of network connection, including a distributed database server architecture. Similarly, content system 24 and content database 26 may comprise any number of such systems connected to the advertisement provider or advertisement listing provider 16 via any type of network, including an http or https network. Content provider 24 may comprise a system such as advertisement listing provider 16 that provides functionality for enabling connection over the Internet or other network protocols. End users 28 may comprise any user connected to the Internet and may comprise computerized systems that enable that connection through any of various types of networks, including through Internet service providers, cable companies, and any other method of accessing data on the Internet. Internet advertising distribution partners 20 may comprise any system that distributes Internet based advertising to end users. Whereas two Internet advertising distribution partners 20 are depicted, any number may actually be provided.
In general, in these embodiments, the Advertisement Listing Provider 16 generates revenue when end users click-through to advertisements provided by its bidding advertisement providers. The Advertisement Listing Provider 16 may also incur costs for every impression that it reaches in the form of overhead in running a web site or distribution agreements for distribution. Accordingly, the various embodiments of the present invention recognize that in such systems, it is revenue efficiency (click-throughs per impression) that generally produces the Advertisement Listing Provider's profits. By using revenue efficiency to rank advertisements then, the Advertisement Listing Provider's rankings track its own profitability. This is particularly true for distribution channels with limited numbers of slots for advertisements. For example, the assignee of the present invention operates an enterprise known as Sprinks that distributes advertisements through another enterprise known as About.com and many others.
Within each web page offered on About.com, About.com has allocated space for five advertisements from Sprinks that are provided by bid-based advertisers that use the Sprinks system. With only five spaces for advertisements, it is in Sprinks' interest to ensure that each of those five advertisements is effective.
As shown in
Additionally, because Advertising Listings Provider 16 may provide the functionality of distributing advertising itself and providing search engine results, web server system 40 may be provided as well as a search engine system 42. It should be appreciated that multiple such systems may be encompassed within the advertising listing provider system 16.
Additionally, database server system 18 may comprise one or more database systems that store various types of data including one or more of the following: advertisements, the click cache, bid amount information, and advertiser information including registration information about the advertisers, accounts for the advertisers, payment information and other information as described herein. Numerous modules may not be provided in various embodiments and/or the modules may be combined together to provide the functionality described. Further, the modules may be dispersed across multiple physical systems or may be duplicated across multiple systems.
After determining the RPM for each advertiser, the advertiser listing provider may then take an action, including re-ranking the advertisers for the keyword DVD based on RPM. In this example, several lower bidders may be moved up in the rankings because of their relatively high click-through-rate, indicating the relevancy of their bids. Thus, the system monitors and changes the rankings of advertisements for a given keyword based on RPM. This monitoring and reevaluation of rankings may be ongoing and using different periods of time. For example, click-through rates may be monitored hourly, weekly, monthly, etc.
Taking this example, rankings may also be determined by the system for placement in content portals. For example, instead of bidding on the keyword “DVD,” the advertisers may be bidding on a page within a content portal about DVDs. In such a system, a limited number of advertisers may be displayed within that page, as shown, for example, in
Also, as discussed above, the monitoring of RPM may also involve the selection of an active advertisement from a plurality of advertisements provided by an advertiser for a given bid.
Similarly, the advertiser DEF, Inc. may have provided two advertisements for its bid on the content pages at pregnancy.about.com. After an evaluation period between the two advertisements, it may be determined that Ad #1 was still the most effective based on RPM and therefore, may continue to be used as the active advertisement.
In addition, the comparison between multiple advertisements may be evaluated over different time periods to determine the highest RPM over different time periods.
Other data may be factored into the evaluation to determine rankings based at least in part on revenue efficiency. Demographics of the audience, distribution channels, country, and other information that is available may be fed into the calculation to assist in maximizing the RPM for advertisements for bid-on keywords and content portal pages. For example, it may be determined that the ranking should generate different ranked listings for different distribution channels.
According to another embodiment, advertisements may be analyzed in groupings. The groupings may be based on the known result set expected by a particular distribution channel. Accordingly, the groupings may be analyzed separately for each distribution channel as well, with different distribution channels thus receiving a different order and listing of advertisements optimized to generate revenue through that channel. For example, one distribution channel may be a result set expected to be output for a content portal page. In such an embodiment, a set number of listings may be expected and the system of the present invention determines the most revenue-efficient combination of listings based on effective revenue per click for the grouping, varying the members of group over time to determine that most effective grouping. For explanation purposes, assume that there are only four Ads (A,B,C,D) for a given keyword (video games) of which only three listings are to be displayed on the feed (in this example the content portal page). In this example, advertiser B has provided two creatives, B1 and B2.
To decide the most efficient grouping, the system outputs each of the different combinations over a set period of time and determines the effective CPM Sum (cost to advertiser (and thus revenue to the advertisement distribution system) per thousand impressions) for each model. The various combinations are then: AB1C, AB1D, ACB1, ACD, ADB1, ADC, B1AC, B1AD, B1CA, B1CD, B1DA, B1DC, CB1A, CB1D, CAB1, CAD, CDB1, CDA, DB1C, DB1A, DCB1, DCA, DAB1, DAC, AB2C, AB2D, ACB2, ACD, ADB2, B2AC, B2AD, B2CA, B2CD, B2DA, B2DC, CB2A, CB2D, CAB2, CDB2, CDA, DB2C, DB2A, DCB2, DCA, and DAB2.
The Effective CPM Sum for each model may be calculated by summing the CPM (calculated by the equation 1000*Click-Through-Rate*CPC (cost per click)) of each listing.
If model CB yields this:
If model CB2A yields this:
This would indicate that CB2A is superior to CB1A.
Through this embodiment, ads are not compared to one another in isolation, but rather in the grouping that generates the most revenue. This embodiment recognizes that diversification of advertisements may generate more revenue due to the diverse interests of viewers. For example, a web page on a content portal related to video games may attract viewers that have many different game platforms. If all of the advertisements relate to sales of games only compatible with a single platform, the grouping may lack any advertisement of interest to the viewer.
To enable advertisers to interact with the system, a web-based Internet system may be provided as shown in
As discussed above, various embodiments of the present invention may be utilized in an advertising system based on content-based placement. An embodiment of a content-based placement system in which this efficiency-based ranking methodology may be utilized is described in a related patent application entitled “Method and System For Providing Advertising Through Content Specific Nodes Over the Internet,” Application No. 60/396,033 filed on Jul. 18, 2002. For completeness, a description of the operation of such a system is provided below, as modified to incorporate the provision of multiple advertisements by a single advertiser for the single-advertiser efficiency determination methodology as described above. This system is described in the context of
When an advertiser system 1410 offers an amount for an ad listing, that offer may be stored in the Content Object Table Database 1435. Periodically, the Network File Server 1440 accesses the ads stored in the Content Object Table Database 1435 via the Database Server 1425 and writes them to the Structured Content Database 1465.
Additionally, multiple end users 1445 may connect via the Internet to various distribution partners to the multi-node hierarchical content-based system's content. For example, the multi-node hierarchical content-based system may be presented as a web site, such as the assignee of the present invention, About.com at www.about.com. Also, various partners of the host system may engage the host for purposes of providing some or all of the content on their web sites. For example, a web site about Women's issues may desire to distribute the subject level node(s) related to women's issues. The advertisements associated with those nodes may then be delivered along with the content for those nodes through the distribution partner to the end user over the Internet.
A load balancer 1450 may monitor the multiple Internet connections, including requests to the server from one or more distribution partners. Via web server(s) 1552, these multiple users may look for the content from the multi-node hierarchical content-based system. These multiple users 1445 may look for documents using the hierarchical node structure or by inputting search key words. In either case, the Network file server 1440 may read these requests 1455 and provide pages with related content along with the listings associated with that document. Thus the advertisement system illustrated in
Once the advertisement system has accepted offers for placement of ads on a particular node, the advertisement system may publish those ads to the content specific node. For example, those ad listings may be published to a website, as mentioned above. For example, a document-level node may contain a single web page with informational content, links, graphics, chat, and other features related to the subject level, channel level and top level. Within that web page, some or all of the advertisers who placed ads for that level of specificity may be displayed.
While the foregoing description includes details and specificities, it should be understood that such details and specificities have been included for the purposes of explanation only, and are not to be interpreted as limitations of the present invention. Many modifications to the embodiments described above can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention, as it is intended to be encompassed by the following claims and their legal equivalents.
Claims
1-30. (canceled)
31. A computer-implemented method comprising:
- generating an electronic document comprising program interpreted code to: instruct a recipient program to present content related to a specific distribution topic in a page when the electronic document is opened by the recipient program, instruct the recipient program to retrieve an image from a source network-based location and present that image in the page with the content related to the specific distribution topic when the electronic document is opened by the recipient program, instruct the recipient program to request a first web page from a first target network-based locator when a first portion of the image is selected, and instruct the recipient program to request a second web page from a second target network-based locator when a second portion of the image is selected; and
- providing the electronic document in response to a request, wherein the first and second target network-based locators direct the recipient program to a location on the network where a first and second advertiser web page location respectively are stored.
32. The method of claim 31, wherein the source network-based locator comprises a URL with an identifier related to the specific distribution subject.
33. The method of claim 31, wherein the first and second target network-based locators comprises an address portion and a variable portion and wherein the address portion of the first and second target network-based locators is the same.
34. A method for facilitating serving content-relevant ads in a document, the method comprising:
- associating a unique identifier with the document; and
- providing code to be inserted into the document, the code including image map information and the unique identifier.
35. The method of claim 34 further comprising inserting the code into the document.
36. The method of claim 35, wherein the image map information includes image source information, and wherein the image source information includes the unique identifier.
37. The method of claim 35, wherein the image map information includes image source information, and wherein the image source information is a path including the unique identifier.
38. The method of claim 37, wherein the path further includes a URL of a content-relevant ad server.
39. The method of claim 38, wherein the content-relevant ad server includes information about the content of the document.
40. The method of claim 39, wherein the information about the content of the document includes at least one of (a) one or more concepts, and (b) one or more topics.
41. The method of claim 34, wherein the image map information includes image source information, and wherein the image source information includes the unique identifier.
42. The method of claim 34, wherein the image map information includes image source information, and wherein the image source information is a path including the unique identifier.
43. The method of claim 42, wherein the path further includes a URL of a content-relevant ad server.
44. The method of claim 43, wherein the content-relevant ad server includes information about the content of the document.
45. The method of claim 44, wherein the information about the content of the document includes at least one of (a) one or more concepts, and (b) one or more topics.
46. A method for determining content-relevant ads once an e-mail document is rendered on a client device, the method comprising:
- accepting, from the client device, an ad request including a document identifier;
- using content-relevance information associated with the document identifier and ad information to determine a set of one or more ads;
- generating an image including the one or more ads of the determined set; and
- forwarding the generated image and a session identifier to the client device.
47. The method of claim 46 wherein the document includes image map information including image source information, and wherein the image source information includes the document identifier.
48. The method of claim 46 wherein the document includes image map information including image source information, and wherein the image source information is a path including the unique identifier.
49. The method of claim 48 wherein the path further includes a URL of the content-relevant ad server.
Type: Application
Filed: Sep 10, 2012
Publication Date: Feb 14, 2013
Applicant: GOOGLE INC. (Mountain View, CA)
Inventors: Kevin RJB Donovan (White Plains, NY), David Bard Hills (New York, NY), William C. Day (Haworth, NJ), Ron McCoy (Doraville, GA), Christopher Joseph Murphy (Lagrangeville, NY), Eimear Kathleen O'Connell (New York, NY)
Application Number: 13/609,030
International Classification: G06Q 30/02 (20120101);
