Patent Application
20070233503
1. Field of the Invention
Implementations described herein relate generally to surveys and, more particularly, to bidding for placement of on-line surveys.
2. Description of Related Art
The World Wide Web (“web”) contains a vast amount of information. Locating a desired portion of the information, however, can be challenging. This problem is compounded because the amount of information on the web and the number of new users inexperienced at web searching are growing rapidly.
Search engines attempt to return hyperlinks to web pages in which a user is interested. Generally, search engines base their determination of the user's interest on search terms (called a search query) entered by the user. The goal of the search engine is to provide links to high quality, relevant results (e.g., web pages) to the user based on the search query. Typically, the search engine accomplishes this by matching the terms in the search query to a corpus of pre-stored web pages. Web pages that contain the user's search terms are “hits” and are returned to the user as links. Each “hit” may be ranked by the search engine based on various factors, such as, for example, the relevance of the “hit” to the search query.
Existing search engines (e.g., Google Web search) may also include on-line advertising functionality that may advertise various services and/or products in conjunction with providing search results to users. Such advertisements may be presented to users accessing search results provided by the search engine. An advertisement may include a “creative,” which includes text, graphics and/or images associated with the advertised service and/or product. The advertisement may further include a link to an ad “landing document” which contains further details about the advertised service(s) and/or product(s). When a particular creative appears to be of interest to a user, the user may select (or click) the creative, and the associated link causes a user's web browser to visit the “landing document” associated with the creative and link. This selection of an advertising creative and associated link by a user is referred to hereinafter as a “click.”
According to one aspect, a computer-implemented method may include receiving bids associated with placement of respective surveys. The method may further include selecting one or more of the surveys based on their respective bids and associating the selected one or more surveys with documents hosted at one or more servers.
According to another aspect, a method may include receiving keywords or content associated with a document and receiving bids, and survey data, associated with placement of respective surveys. The method may further include selecting a set of the surveys by matching the survey data with the keywords or content associated with the document. The method may also include selecting one or more surveys from the set of surveys based on respective bids and associating the selected one or more surveys with the document.
According to a further aspect, a method may include receiving a search query and obtaining advertisements that match the search query. The method may further include receiving bids associated with placement of surveys and selecting one or more of the surveys based on their respective bids and the search query. The method may also include associating the selected one or more surveys with a document that includes the advertisements.
According to yet another aspect, a method may include hosting a plurality of surveys at a server from a plurality of different entities and providing one or more of the surveys to users via a network. The method may further include receiving survey result data from the users via the network and aggregating the survey result data.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate one or more embodiments of the invention and, together with the description, explain the invention. In the drawings,
The following detailed description of the invention refers to the accompanying drawings. The same reference numbers in different drawings may identify the same or similar elements. Also, the following detailed description does not limit the invention.
Advertisers and marketing groups are very interested in consumer feedback about their brands, products and/or services. For example, it is common for a marketing group to want to know about consumer sentiment for their brand. A direct way of assessing such sentiment (and any other question) is to ask the consumer or user. Commonly, off-line surveys and focus groups are used to answer such questions. A survey host may, consistent with aspects of the invention, host multiple on-line surveys, that may pose questions regarding particular brands, products and/or services, web sites, or user demographics, that can be accessed by users via a network. Multiple users or entities may, consistent with aspects of the invention, electronically bid to have their surveys placed by a survey host. The survey host may host surveys itself, or may place the surveys in documents hosted by other servers.
A “document,” as the term is used herein, is to be broadly interpreted to include any machine-readable and machine-storable work product. A document may include, for example, an e-mail, a website, a business listing, a file, a combination of files, one or more files with embedded links to other files, a news group posting, a blog, a web advertisement, a digital map, etc. In the context of the Internet, a common document is a web page. Documents often include textual information and may include embedded information (such as meta information, images, hyperlinks, etc.) and/or embedded instructions (such as Javascript, etc.). A “link,” as the term is used herein, is to be broadly interpreted to include any reference to/from a document from/to another document or another part of the same document.
A “survey,” as the term is used herein, may be broadly interpreted to include any series of questions, either related or unrelated, that may be posed by an entity, such as, for example, an individual, a business (e.g., an advertiser) or a governmental or non-profit organization. The entity may desire users to provide answers to the survey questions for purposes, such as, for example, marketing, product development, service enhancements, etc. A survey may include a series of related questions inquiring about a customer's satisfaction with respect to a product or service in question. A survey may further include a series of related questions inquiring about what a user liked or didn't like about an advertisement (i.e., an ad-effectiveness survey). A survey may also include a series of questions directed at a specific demographic, where the demographic is either self-identified or determined by other means. A survey may additionally include any combination of customer satisfaction, ad-effectiveness, demographic or other types of surveys.
Survey host 120 may, based on bids 100-1 through 100-n, select one or more surveys 130 from surveys 110-1 through 110-N, and associate the selected one or more surveys 130 with a document 140. As an illustrative example,
Clients 205 may include devices, such as a personal computer, a wireless telephone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a lap top, or another type of computation or communication device, a thread or process running on one of these devices, and/or an object executable by one of these devices. Clients 205 may implement a browser for browsing documents stored at servers 210 or 220.
Server 210 may include a server entity that accesses, fetches, aggregates, processes, searches and/or maintains documents. In an implementation consistent with the principles of the invention, server 210 may include a search engine 215 usable by users at clients 205. Server 210 may implement a data aggregation service by crawling a corpus of documents hosted on server(s) 220, indexing the documents, and storing information associated with these documents in a repository of crawled documents. The aggregation service may be implemented in other ways, such as by agreement with the operator(s) of server(s) 220 to distribute their documents via the data aggregation service. Search engine 215 may execute a search using a query, received from a user at a client 205, on the corpus of documents stored in the repository of crawled documents. Server 210 may further receive survey placement bids, from clients 205, and may place hosted surveys in documents stored at server 210 or server(s) 220.
Server(s) 220 may store or maintain documents that may be browsed by clients 205. Such documents may include data related to published news stories, products, images, user groups, geographic areas, or any other type of data. For example, server(s) 220 may store or maintain news stories from any type of news source, such as, for example, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine, or Newsweek. As another example, server(s) 220 may store or maintain data related to specific products, such as product data provided by one or more product manufacturers. As yet another example, server(s) 220 may store or maintain data related to other types of web documents, such as pages of web sites. In some implementations, server(s) 220 may host surveys received from server 210 in documents that are accessible by users at clients 205.
While servers 210 and 220 are shown as separate entities, it may be possible for one of servers 210 or 220 to perform one or more of the functions of the other one of servers 210 or 220. For example, it may be possible that servers 210 and 220 can be implemented as a single server. It may also be possible for a single one of servers 210 and/or 220 to be implemented as two or more separate (and possibly distributed) devices.
Network 230 may include one or more networks of any type, including a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), a metropolitan area network (MAN), a telephone network, such as the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or a Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN), an intranet, the Internet, a memory device, or a combination of networks. The PLMN(s) may further include a packet-switched sub-network, such as, for example, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD), or Mobile IP sub-network.
Processor 320 may include a processor, microprocessor, or processing logic that may interpret and execute instructions. Main memory 330 may include a random access memory (RAM) or another type of dynamic storage device that may store information and instructions for execution by processor 320. ROM 340 may include a ROM device or another type of static storage device that may store static information and instructions for use by processor 320. Storage device 350 may include a magnetic and/or optical recording medium and its corresponding drive.
Input device 360 may include a mechanism that permits an operator to input information to the client/server entity, such as a keyboard, a mouse, a pen, voice recognition and/or biometric mechanisms, etc. Output device 370 may include a mechanism that outputs information to the operator, including a display, a printer, a speaker, etc. Communication interface 380 may include any transceiver-like mechanism that enables the client/server entity to communicate with other devices and/or systems. For example, communication interface 380 may include mechanisms for communicating with another device or system via a network, such as network 220.
The client/server entity, consistent with the principles of the invention, may perform certain operations or processes, as will be described in detail below. The client/server entity may perform these operations in response to processor 320 executing software instructions contained in a computer-readable medium, such as memory 330. A computer-readable medium may be defined as a physical or logical memory device and/or carrier wave.
The software instructions may be read into memory 330 from another computer-readable medium, such as data storage device 350, or from another device via communication interface 380. The software instructions contained in memory 330 may cause processor 320 to perform operations or processes that will be described later. Alternatively, hardwired circuitry may be used in place of or in combination with software instructions to implement processes consistent with the principles of the invention. Thus, implementations consistent with the principles of the invention are not limited to any specific combination of hardware circuitry and software.
The exemplary process may begin with the receipt of survey placement bids and corresponding survey data (block 410). The survey placement bids and corresponding survey data may be received by server 210 via network 230 from a client 205. As shown in
One or more surveys may be selected based on their corresponding bids (block 420). Server 210, as the survey host, may select one or more surveys from the received surveys based on a bid amount associated with each of the surveys. For example, bids bid_1=$0.25, bid_2=$0.15 and bid_3=$0.20 may be received by server 210. Server 210 may select bid_1 for survey placement since it has the highest bid.
The selected one or more surveys may then be associated with one or more documents (block 430). The one or more documents may be hosted by server 210, or may be hosted by server(s) 220. In one implementation, association of the one or more selected surveys with one or more documents may include inserting content of each selected survey in a respective document. In another implementation, association of the one or more selected surveys with the one or more documents may include inserting a link into a document that includes a reference to another document that further includes the content of the respective survey. For example, as shown in
The exemplary process may begin with the receipt of keywords and/or content associated with a given document or a term(s) of a search query received at the given document (block 710). The content of the given document may include any text, images, or other type of data contained in the given document. The keywords and/or content may be provided by the entity that hosts the given document, or server 210 may “crawl” the given document to identify the keywords and/or content. The keywords may include one or more different words that label the given document, or which are representative of the content contained in the given document.
Survey placement bids and corresponding survey data associated with respective surveys may be received (block 720). The survey placement bids and corresponding survey data may be received by server 210 via network 230 from clients 205. As shown in
A set of surveys may be selected by matching respective survey data with the keywords and/or content associated with the given document (block 730). The survey data of respective surveys may be compared to the keywords and/or content associated with the given document to identify surveys having content that is the same or similar to the keywords and/or content of the given document. As shown in
One or more surveys from the set of surveys may be selected based on their corresponding bids (block 740). The bids of the selected set of surveys may be compared with one another to select one or more of the highest bids, possibly in conjunction with other criteria. As shown in
The selected one or more surveys may be associated with the given document (block 750). The given document may be hosted by server 210, or by server(s) 220. In one implementation, association of the selected one or more surveys with the given document may include inserting a content of each selected survey in the given document. In another implementation, association of the selected one or more with the given document may include inserting a link into the document that includes a reference to another document that further includes a content of a respective survey. As shown in
The exemplary process may begin with the receipt of a search query (block 910). The search query may be received at server 210 from a client 205. A corpus of documents may be searched to obtain search results that match the search query (block 920). Search engine 215 at server 210 may search a repository of crawled documents to obtain documents that have content that is the same or similar to the search query. As shown in
Advertisements may then be obtained that match the search query (block 930). Search engine 215 may search the repository of crawled documents, or a repository of advertisements, to obtain advertisements that have content that is the same or similar to the search query. As further shown in
Survey placement bids and corresponding survey data associated with respective surveys may be received (block 940). The survey placement bids and corresponding survey data may be received by server 210 via network 230 from clients 205. As shown in
One or more surveys may be selected based on their corresponding bids and the search query (block 950). The bids of the surveys may be compared with one another to select one or more of the highest bids, possibly in conjunction with other criteria. The one or more surveys may additionally be selected, in conjunction with bid comparison, by comparing the search query with survey data 1025-1 through 1025-N. The survey data associated with each selected survey may include survey questions that are related to the terms of the search query. As shown in the illustrative example of
The selected one or more surveys may be associated with a document that contains the search results and the matching advertisements (block 960). Server 210 may construct a document that includes the search results and the matching advertisements and may provide the constructed document to a client 205 that issued the search query. In one implementation, association of the selected one or more surveys with the document may include inserting a content of each selected survey in the document. In another implementation, association of the selected one or more surveys with the document may include inserting a link into the document that includes a reference to another document that further includes a content of a respective survey. As shown in the illustrative example of
The exemplary process may begin with the receipt of a selection of a survey from a document having one or more associated surveys (block 1210). Server 210, or server 220, may provide a document to a user at a client 205 that includes, for example, a link to one or more surveys. The user at client 205 may, for example, select the link by “clicking” on it using a mouse. As shown in the illustrative example of
Survey result data, received in response to the provision of the selected survey, may be received from the user (block 1230). After receiving the selected survey, the user at client 205 may provide answers to the questions of the survey, and the answers may returned to server 210 as survey result data via network 230. As illustrated in
The received survey result data may be aggregated with previously received survey result data (block 1240). Server 210 may aggregate the received survey result data with previously received survey result data by storing it in a memory, such as, for example, in a database stored in a memory. Survey result data 1340 may, as illustrated in the illustrative example of
The aggregated survey result data may then be selectively disseminated (optional bock 1250). Aggregated survey result data associated with a given survey may, for example, be disseminated to the user or entity that bid for placement of the survey.
The foregoing description of implementations consistent with principles of the invention provides illustration and description, but is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed. Modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings, or may be acquired from practice of the invention. For example, while series of acts have been described with regard to
It will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art that aspects of the invention, as described above, may be implemented in many different forms of software, firmware, and hardware in the implementations illustrated in the figures. The actual software code or specialized control hardware used to implement aspects consistent with the principles of the invention is not limiting of the invention. Thus, the operation and behavior of the aspects have been described without reference to the specific software code, it being understood that one of ordinary skill in the art would be able to design software and control hardware to implement the aspects based on the description herein.
No element, act, or instruction used in the present application should be construed as critical or essential to the invention unless explicitly described as such. Also, as used herein, the article “a” is intended to include one or more items. Where only one item is intended, the term “one” or similar language is used. Further, the phrase “based on” is intended to mean “based, at least in part, on” unless explicitly stated otherwise.
