Patent Application
20140337128
1.1 Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns advertising. In particular, the present invention concerns improving content-targeted advertising.
1.2 Related Art
Advertising using traditional media, such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines, is well known. Unfortunately, even when armed with demographic studies and entirely reasonable assumptions about the typical audience of various media outlets, advertisers recognize that much of their ad budget is simply wasted. Moreover, it is very difficult to identify and eliminate such waste.
Recently, advertising over more interactive media has become popular. For example, as the number of people using the Internet has exploded, advertisers have come to appreciate media and services offered over the Internet as a potentially powerful way to advertise.
Advertisers have developed several strategies in an attempt to maximize the value of such advertising. In one strategy, advertisers use popular presences or means for providing interactive media or services (referred to as “Websites” in the specification without loss of generality) as conduits to reach a large audience. Using this first approach, an advertiser may place ads on the home page of the
New York Times Website, or the USA Today Website, for example. In another strategy, an advertiser may attempt to target its ads to more narrow niche audiences, thereby increasing the likelihood of a positive response by the audience. For example, an agency promoting tourism in the Costa Rican rainforest might place ads on the ecotourism-travel subdirectory of the Yahoo
Website. An advertiser will normally determine such targeting manually.
Regardless of the strategy, Website-based ads (also referred to as “Web ads”) are often presented to their advertising audience in the form of “banner ads”—i.e., a rectangular box that includes graphic components. When a member of the advertising audience (referred to as a “viewer” or “user” in the Specification without loss of generality) selects one of these banner ads by clicking on it, embedded hypertext links typically direct the viewer to the advertiser's Website. This process, wherein the viewer selects an ad, is commonly referred to as a “click-through” (“Click-through” is intended to cover any user selection.). The ratio of the number of click-throughs to the number of impressions of the ad (i.e., the number of times an ad is displayed) is commonly referred to as the “click-through rate” or “CTR” of the ad.
A “conversion” is said to occur when a user consummates a transaction related to a previously served ad. What constitutes a conversion may vary from case to case and can be determined in a variety of ways. For example, it may be the case that a conversion occurs when a user clicks on an ad, is referred to the advertiser's web page, and consummates a purchase there before leaving that web page. Alternatively, a conversion may be defined as a user being shown an ad, and making a purchase on the advertiser's web page within a predetermined time (e.g., seven days). In yet another alternative, a conversion may be defined by an advertiser to be any measurable/observable user action such as, for example, downloading a white paper, navigating to at least a given depth of a Website, viewing at least a certain number of Web pages, spending at least a predetermined amount of time on a Website or Web page, etc. Often, if user actions don't indicate a consummated purchase, they may indicate a sales lead, although user actions constituting a conversion are not limited to this. Indeed, many other definitions of what constitutes a conversion are possible. The ratio of the number of conversions to the number of impressions of the ad (i.e., the number of times an ad is displayed) is commonly referred to as the conversion rate. If a conversion is defined to be able to occur within a predetermined time since the serving of an ad, one possible definition of the conversion rate might only consider ads that have been served more than the predetermined time in the past.
Despite the initial promise of Website-based advertisement, there remain several problems with existing approaches. Although advertisers are able to reach a large audience, they are frequently dissatisfied with the return on their advertisement investment. Some have attempted to improve ad performance by tracking the online habits of users, but this approach has led to privacy concerns.
Similarly, the hosts of Websites on which the ads are presented (referred to as “Website hosts” or “ad consumers”) have the challenge of maximizing ad revenue without impairing their users' experience. Some Website hosts have chosen to place advertising revenues over the interests of users. One such Website is “Overture.com,” which hosts a so-called “search engine” service returning advertisements masquerading as “search results” in response to user queries. The Overture.com Website permits advertisers to pay to position an ad for their Website (or a target Website) higher up on the list of purported search results. If such schemes where the advertiser only pays if a user clicks on the ad (i.e., cost-per-click) are implemented, the advertiser lacks incentive to target their ads effectively, since a poorly targeted ad will not be clicked and therefore will not require payment. Consequently, high cost-per-click ads show up near or at the top, but do not necessarily translate into real revenue for the ad publisher because viewers don't click on them. Furthermore, ads that viewers would click on are further down the list, or not on the list at all, and so relevancy of ads is compromised.
Search engines, such as Google for example, have enabled advertisers to target their ads so that they will be rendered in conjunction with a search results page responsive to a query that is relevant, presumably, to the ad. The Google system tracks click-through statistics (which is a performance parameter) for ads and keywords. Given a search keyword, there are a limited number of keyword targeted ads that could be shown, leading to a relatively manageable problem space. Although search result pages afford advertisers a great opportunity to target their ads to a more receptive audience, search result pages are merely a fraction of page views of the World Wide Web.
Some online advertising systems may use ad relevance information and document content relevance information (e.g., concepts or topics, feature vectors, etc.) to “match” ads to (and/or to score ads with respect to) a document including content, such as a Web page for example. Examples of such online advertising systems are described in:
A given document, such as a Web page for example, may be relevant to a number of different concepts or topics. However, users requesting a document, in the aggregate, may generally be more interested in one relevant topic or concept than others. Therefore, when serving ads, it would be useful to give preference to ads relevant to the topic or concept of greater general interest, than ads relevant to less popular topics or concepts. This is less of a challenge in the context of keyword-targeted advertisements served with search results pages, since a user's interest can often be discerned from his or her search query. A user's interest in a requested document is much more difficult to discern, particularly when the document has two or more relevant topics or concepts.
The present invention provides a user behavior (e.g., selection (e.g., click), conversion, etc.) feedback mechanism for a content-targeting ad system. The present invention may track the performance of individual ads, or groups of ads, on a per document (e.g. per URL) and/or per host (e.g. per Website) basis. The present invention may process (e.g., aggregate) such user behavior feedback data into useful data structures. The present invention may also track the performance of ad targeting functions on a per document, and/or per host basis. The present invention may use such user behavior feedback data (raw or processed) in a content-targeting ad system to improve ad quality, improve user experience, and/or maximize revenue.
The present invention may involve novel methods, apparatus, message formats and/or data structures for improving content-targeted advertising. The following description is presented to enable one skilled in the art to make and use the invention, and is provided in the context of particular applications and their requirements. Various modifications to the disclosed embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art, and the general principles set forth below may be applied to other embodiments and applications. Thus, the present invention is not intended to be limited to the embodiments shown and the inventors regard their invention as any patentable subject matter described.
In the following, environments in which, or with which, the present invention may operate are described in §4.1. Then, exemplary embodiments of the present invention are described in §4.2. Finally, some conclusions regarding the present invention are set forth in §4.3.
The ad server 120 may be similar to the one described in
A search engine 220 may permit user devices 250 to search collections of documents (e.g., Web pages). A content server 210 may permit user devices 250 to access documents. An e-mail server (such as Hotmail from Microsoft Network, Yahoo Mail, etc.) 240 may be used to provide e-mail functionality to user devices 250. An ad server 210 may be used to serve ads to user devices 250. The ads may be served in association with search results provided by the search engine 220. Content-relevant (also referred to as “content-targeted”) ads may also be served in association with content provided by the content server 230, and/or e-mail supported by the e-mail server 240 and/or user device e-mail facilities.
As discussed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/375,900 (introduced above), ads may be targeted to documents served by content servers. Thus, one example of an ad consumer 130 is a general content server 230 that receives requests for documents (e.g., articles, discussion threads, music, video, graphics, search results, Web page listings, etc.), and retrieves the requested document in response to, or otherwise services, the request. The content server may submit a request for ads to the ad server 120/210. Such an ad request may include a number of ads desired. The ad request may also include document request information. This information may include the document itself (e.g., page), a category or topic corresponding to the content of the document or the document request (e.g., arts, business, computers, arts-movies, arts-music, etc.), part or all of the document request, content age, content type (e.g., text, graphics, video, audio, mixed media, etc.), geo-location information, document information, etc.
The content server 230 may combine the requested document with one or more of the advertisements provided by the ad server 120/210. This combined information including the document content and advertisement(s) is then forwarded towards the end user device 250 that requested the document, for presentation to the user. Finally, the content server 230 may transmit information about the ads and how, when, and/or where the ads are to be rendered (e.g., position, click-through or not, impression time, impression date, size, conversion or not, etc.) back to the ad server 120/210. Alternatively, or in addition, such information may be provided back to the ad server 120/210 by some other means.
Another example of an ad consumer 130 is the search engine 220. A search engine 220 may receive queries for search results. In response, the search engine may retrieve relevant search results (e.g., from an index of Web pages). An exemplary search engine is described in the article S. Brin and L. Page, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine,” Seventh International World Wide Web Conference, Brisbane, Australia and in U.S. Pat. No. 6,285,999 (both incorporated herein by reference). Such search results may include, for example, lists of Web page titles, snippets of text extracted from those Web pages, and hypertext links to those Web pages, and may be grouped into a predetermined number of (e.g., ten) search results.
The search engine 220 may submit a request for ads to the ad server 120/210. The request may include a number of ads desired. This number may depend on the search results, the amount of screen or page space occupied by the search results, the size and shape of the ads, etc. In one embodiment, the number of desired ads will be from one to ten, and preferably from three to five. The request for ads may also include the query (as entered or parsed), information based on the query (such as geolocation information, whether the query came from an affiliate and an identifier of such an affiliate), and/or information associated with, or based on, the search results. Such information may include, for example, identifiers related to the search results (e.g., document identifiers or “dociDs”), scores related to the search results (e.g., information retrieval (“IR”) scores such as dot products of feature vectors corresponding to a query and a document, Page Rank scores, and/or combinations of IR scores and
Page Rank scores), snippets of text extracted from identified documents (e.g., Web pages), full text of identified documents, topics of identified documents, feature vectors of identified documents, etc.
The search engine 220 may combine the search results with one or more of the search-based advertisements provided by the ad server 120/210. This combined information including the search results and advertisement(s) is then forwarded towards the user that submitted the search, for presentation to the user. Preferably, the search results are maintained as distinct from the ads, so as not to confuse the user between paid advertisements and presumably neutral search results.
Finally, the search engine 220 may transmit information about the ad and when, where, and/or how the ad was to be rendered (e.g., position, click-through or not, impression time, impression date, size, conversion or not, etc.) back to the ad server 120/210. Alternatively, or in addition, such information may be provided back to the ad server 120/210 by some other means.
Finally, the e-mail server 240 may be thought of, generally, as a content server in which a document served is simply an e-mail. Further, e-mail applications (such as Microsoft Outlook for example) may be used to send and/or receive e-mail. Therefore, an e-mail server 240 or application may be thought of as an ad consumer 130. Thus, e-mails may be thought of as documents, and targeted ads may be served in association with such documents. For example, one or more ads may be served in, under over, or otherwise in association with an e-mail.
Although the foregoing examples described servers as (i) requesting ads, and (ii) combining them with content, one or both of these operations may be performed by a client device (such as an end user computer for example).
Note that the ad scoring operations 340 may also consider other information in their determination of ad scores, such as ad performance information 336, price information (not shown), advertiser quality information (not shown), etc.
The present invention may, of course, also be used in other environments, such as in a search engine environment disclosed above or that disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,078,916; 6,014,665 and 6,006,222; each titled “Method for Organizing Information” and issued to Culliss on Jun. 20, 2000, Jan. 11, 2000, and Dec. 21, 1999, respectively, and U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,182,068 and 6,539,377 each titled “Personalized Search Methods” and issued to Culliss on Jan. 30, 2001 and Mar. 25, 2003 respectively.
As shown in
The ad relevance information and document relevance information may be in the form of various different representations. For example, the relevance information may be a feature vector (e.g., a term vector), a number of concepts (or topics, or classes, etc.), a concept vector, a cluster (See, e.g., U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/416,144 (incorporated herein by reference), titled “Methods and Apparatus for Probabilistic Hierarchical Inferential Learner” and filed on Oct. 3, 2002, which describes exemplary ways to determine one or more concepts or topics (referred to as “PHIL clusters”) of information), etc. Exemplary techniques for determining content-relevant ads, that may be used by the present invention, are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/375,900 introduced above
Various way of extracting and/or generating relevance information are described in U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/413,536 and in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/314,427, both introduced above. Relevance information may be considered as a topic or cluster to which an ad or document belongs. Various similarity techniques, such as those described in the relevant ad server applications, may be used to determine a degree of similarity between an ad and a document. Such similarly techniques may use the extracted and/or generated relevance information. One or more content-relevant ads may then be associated with a document based on the similarity determinations. For example, an ad may be associated with a document if its degree of similarity exceeds some absolute and/or relative threshold.
In one exemplary embodiment of the present invention, a document may be associated with one or more ads by mapping a document identifier (e.g., a URL) to one or more ads. For example, the document information may have been processed to generate relevance information, such as a cluster (e.g., a PHIL cluster), a topic, etc. The matching clusters may then be used as query terms in a large OR query to an index that maps topics (e.g., a PHIL cluster identifiers) to a set of matching ad groups. The results of this query may then be used as first cut set of candidate targeting criteria. The candidate ad groups may then be sent to the relevance information extraction and/or generation operations (e.g., a PHIL server) again to determine an actual information retrieval (IR) score for each ad group summarizing how well the criteria information plus the ad text itself matches the document relevance information. Estimated or known performance parameters (e.g., click-through rates, conversion rates, etc.) for the ad group may be considered in helping to determine the best scoring ad group.
Once a set of best ad groups have been selected, a final set of one or more ads may be selected using a list of criteria from the best ad group(s). The content-relevant ad server can use this list to request that an ad be sent back if K of the M criteria sent match a single ad group. If so, the ad is provided to the requestor.
Performance information (e.g., a history of selections or conversions per URL or per domain) may be fed back in the system, so that clusters or Web pages that tend to get better performance for particular kinds of ads (e.g., ads belonging to a particular cluster or topic) may be determined. This can be used to re-rank content-relevant ads such that the ads served are determined using some function of both content-relevance and performance. A number of performance optimizations may be used. For example, the mapping from URL to the set of ad groups that are relevant may be cached to avoid re-computation for frequently viewed pages. Naturally, the present invention may be used with other content-relevant ad serving techniques.
Online ads, such as those used in the exemplary systems described above with reference to
When an online ad is served, one or more parameters may be used to describe how, when, and/or where the ad was served. These parameters are referred to as “serving parameters” below. Serving parameters may include, for example, one or more of the following: features of (including information on) a page on which the ad was served, a search query or search results associated with the serving of the ad, a user characteristic (e.g., their geographic location, the language used by the user, the type of browser used, previous page views, previous behavior), a host or affiliate site (e.g., America Online, Google, Yahoo) that initiated the request, an absolute position of the ad on the page on which it was served, a position (spatial or temporal) of the ad relative to other ads served, an absolute size of the ad, a size of the ad relative to other ads, a color of the ad, a number of other ads served, types of other ads served, time of day served, time of week served, time of year served, etc. Naturally, there are other serving parameters that may be used in the context of the invention.
Although serving parameters may be extrinsic to ad features, they may be associated with an ad as serving conditions or constraints. When used as serving conditions or constraints, such serving parameters are referred to simply as “serving constraints” (or “targeting criteria”). For example, in some systems, an advertiser may be able to target the serving of its ad by specifying that it is only to be served on weekdays, no lower than a certain position, only to users in a certain location, etc. As another example, in some systems, an advertiser may specify that its ad is to be served only if a page or search query includes certain keywords or phrases. As yet another example, in some systems, an advertiser may specify that its ad is to be served only if a document being served includes certain topics or concepts, or falls under a particular cluster or clusters, or some other classification or classifications.
“Ad information” may include any combination of ad features, ad serving constraints, information derivable from ad features or ad serving constraints (referred to as “ad derived information”), and/or information related to the ad (referred to as “ad related information”), as well as an extension of such information (e.g., information derived from ad related information).
A “document” is to be broadly interpreted to include any machine-readable and machine-storable work product. A document may be a file, a combination of files, one or more files with embedded links to other files, etc. The files may be of any type, such as text, audio, image, video, etc. Parts of a document to be rendered to an end user can be thought of as “content” of the document. A document may include “structured data” containing both content (words, pictures, etc.) and some indication of the meaning of that content (for example, e-mail fields and associated data, HTML tags and associated data, etc.) Ad spots in the document may be defined by embedded information or instructions. In the context of the Internet, a common document is a Web page. Web pages often include content and may include embedded information (such as meta information, hyperlinks, etc.) and/or embedded instructions (such as Javascript, etc.). In many cases, a document has a unique, addressable, storage location and can therefore be uniquely identified by this addressable location. A universal resource locator (URL) is a unique address used to access information on the Internet.
“Document information” may include any information included in the document, information derivable from information included in the document (referred to as “document derived information”), and/or information related to the document (referred to as “document related information”), as well as an extensions of such information (e.g., information derived from related information). An example of document derived information is a classification based on textual content of a document. Examples of document related information include document information from other documents with links to the instant document, as well as document information from other documents to which the instant document links.
Content from a document may be rendered on a “content rendering application or device”. Examples of content rendering applications include an Internet browser (e.g., Explorer or Netscape), a media player (e.g., an MP3 player, a Realnetworks streaming audio file player, etc.), a viewer (e.g., an Abobe Acrobat pdf reader), etc.
A “content owner” is a person or entity that has some property right in the content of a document. A content owner may be an author of the content. In addition, or alternatively, a content owner may have rights to reproduce the content, rights to prepare derivative works of the content, rights to display or perform the content publicly, and/or other proscribed rights in the content. Although a content server might be a content owner in the content of the documents it serves, this is not necessary.
“User information” may include user behavior information and/or user profile information.
“E-mail information” may include any information included in an e-mail (also referred to as “internal e-mail information”), information derivable from information included in the e-mail and/or information related to the e-mail, as well as extensions of such information (e.g., information derived from related information). An example of information derived from e-mail information is information extracted or otherwise derived from search results returned in response to a search query composed of terms extracted from an e-mail subject line. Examples of information related to e-mail information include e-mail information about one or more other e-mails sent by the same sender of a given e-mail, or user information about an e-mail recipient. Information derived from or related to e-mail information may be referred to as “external e-mail information.”
Various exemplary embodiments of the present invention are now described in §4.2.
Recall from
As can be appreciated from the following example, document specific (and/or host specific) click feedback (or some other tracked user behavior) may be used to improve a content-targeting ad serving system, such as those described in the provisional and utility patent applications listed and incorporated by reference above. Consider a typical Website like www.wunderground.com that hosts weather pages about different cities. Consider three (3) Web pages about weather in Lake Tahoe, Las Vegas and Hurley, Wisconsin.
First, click feedback may be useful to improve the quality of ads. For example, a content-targeted ad system may serve ads by generating a query based on concatenating, using a Boolean “OR” operation, several concepts from a Web page. Thus, the query=“Lake Tahoe OR barometer OR Squaw Valley” may be generated using these determined concepts from a Web page about the weather in Lake Tahoe. These are different concepts, and may lead to ads about barometers, Lake Tahoe hotels, and Squaw Valley ski rentals. In such cases, it may be difficult to choose the “right” ads (or set of ads) to serve. Again, the “right” ads (or set of ads) are likely different on a per Web page basis. For a Las Vegas related Web page, the most reasonable ad(s) may be for hotels there. For a Hurley, WI related Web page, it is likely those checking weather there are not necessarily visiting there and need hotels, but may be more interested in weather-related instruments. For a Lake Tahoe related Web page, users are more likely to select ads for lift tickets and ski rentals. As this example shows, three similarly structured Web pages may have different “click responses” for unrelated topics or concepts. Ad performance parameters (e.g., click through rates (CTRs) are useful and may be maintained on a per-URL basis. The present invention may use such information to choose “better” and more interesting ads depending on the Web page and using information about what others have clicked on.
Click feedback may also be useful for purposes of “correct” auctioning of ad spots/enhanced ad features. For example, ad systems may use search query information (e.g., keyword) CTR (referred to simply as “search CTR”) for auctioning ad spots on a search results Web page. But this is not particularly relevant to content CTR. For example, search CTR for the keyword “barometer” may be high if that's what users are searching for. However, for in the context of a content-targeting ad system, ads with a barometer concept targeting are unlikely to generate any clicks if served with a weather page on Las Vegas. Ads with a hotel concept targeting and/or real estate concept targeting are more likely to generate clicks if served with such a Las Vegas weather page. Thus, search CTR information which may be useful when auctioning ad spots on a search results page may not be useful (e.g., for determining an estimated cost per thousand impressions (ECPMs) and the cost per click (CPCs)) in the context of auctioning ad spots on a content Web page. The present invention may be used to determine a better CTR for each ad (or ad group), using per-URL CTR statistics.
Click feedback may also be useful for purposes of extrapolating performance information from transient ads (or ad groups). Advertisers, ads, and/or ad groups may be considered to be transient in that they may reduce their budgets, may opt-out or end their campaigns, etc. However, click feedback information for ads served with a Web page for Bally's Hotel in Las Vegas or MGM Grand, may be applied to (perhaps with a lower weight) other ads that share similar characteristics (e.g., that have similar concepts or concept targeting) when considering whether or not to serve such ads with the Web page. The present invention may be used to extrapolate click feedback information from prior clicked ads, to new ads and show “related” ads (that trigger the same concepts) to compensate for reduced ads inventory.
The present invention may perform one or more of the operations depicted in phantom. These operations may use the document-specific ad (or ad group) performance information 480. Candidate ad set expansion operations 490 may be used to increase the number of “relevant” or “eligible” ads using, at least, the document-specific ad (or ad group) performance information 480. Ad score adjustment operations 491 may be used to adjust already determined scores of ads 455 using, at least, the document-specific ad (or ad group) performance information 480. Ad performance information adjustment operations 493 may be used to adjust (temporarily) ad performance information 436 (or may be used instead of, or in combination with, ad performance infuriation 436) using, at least, the document-specific ad or (ad group) performance information 480. Finally, performance parameter estimation (extrapolation) operations 496 may be used to populate, and/or adjust and supplement ad (or ad group) performance information 484. Exemplary methods for performing these operations are described later.
Operations for collecting and/or aggregating ad performance data on a per-document, per-host, and/or per-concept basis are not shown. In any event, as indicated by table 580, ad (or ad group) performance information 584 (e.g., click through rate, conversion rate, etc.) as well as underlying parts of such performance information (e.g., impression counts, selection counts, etc.) (not shown), may be tracked for each of a number of ads (or ad groups) 582 on a per host basis. Similarly, as indicated by table 586, ad (or ad group) performance information 588, as well as underlying parts of such performance information. (not shown) may be tracked for each of a number of targeting functions 587 on a per-host basis. For example, as illustrated in
The present invention may perform one or more of the operations depicted in phantom. These operations may use the host-specific ad performance information 580 and/or host specific targeting function ad performance information 586. (To simplify the drawing, the use of this information 580 and 586 by some of the operations is not indicated.) Candidate ad set expansion operations 590 may be used to increase the number of “relevant” or “eligible” ads using, at least, the host-specific ad (or ad group) performance information 480. Ad score adjustment operations 591 may be used to adjust already determined scores of ads 555 using, at least, the host-specific ad (or ad group) performance information 580. Ad performance information adjustment operations 593 may be used to adjust (temporarily) ad performance information 536 (or may be used instead of, or in combination with, ad performance information 436) using, at least, the host-specific ad (or ad group) performance information 580. Document/host specific ad scoring operations 594 may be used to choose an appropriate scoring function and/or adjust scoring function components and/or parameters 595 used by the ad scoring operations 540. For example, different scoring functions could use different ad targeting techniques (e.g. keyword-based, concept-based, document concept-based, host concept-based, etc.) or a combination of different ad targeting techniques with various weightings. Finally, performance parameter estimation (extrapolation) operations 596 may be used to populate, and/or adjust and supplement ad (or ad group) performance information 584. Exemplary methods for performing these operations are described later.
As can be appreciated from the foregoing, various operations, consistent with the present invention, may be used to consider document specific performance information (e.g., ad, ad group, targeting function, etc.) applied before, during, or after ad scoring.
For example,
Ad scoring operations 740 can the use such mixed ad performance information 798, as well as other ad information 732 and document information 720, to generate an ad score 750. Thus,
Although the foregoing operations were described with reference to document specific performance information, the performance information can be specific to some grouping of documents (e.g., host specific, document cluster specific, etc.). In addition, although the foregoing operations were described with reference to ad performance information, performance information of some grouping of ads (e.g., ad groups, etc.) may be used.
Referring back to block 910, the present invention may use an offline process to aggregate logs of user behavior (e.g., using a front end Web server, such as Google Web Server), and record statistics on a per-URL, per-domain information basis. For example, all clicks, and a sample of ad impressions can be collected (e.g., twice a day). This data may be referred to below as “Daily-Decoded Log Data.”
Referring back to blocks 920 and 930, from the above data, and an AdGroupCreativeld-to-AdGroup mapping, summary data structures may be generated. The following data structures are useful for a content ads system that works off an AdGroup granularity, which is why that is being used as the unit of aggregation. Other units of aggregation (e.g., AdGroupCreativeld, or similar units) are possible, and the following data structures can be modified accordingly. In the following, “numimprs” means number of impressions, “numclicks” means number of user selections (e.g., clicks), “avgcpc” means average cost per selection (e.g., click), and “avgctr” means average selection (e.g., click-through) rate.
Referring back to block 940, this aggregation is an example of a “counting+thresholding” problem, where there is a long tail of entries. That is, typically the counters for all URLs/AdGroups may be maintained, and counters that don't reach the threshold at a time of aggregation may be discarded. Since this may be considered to be a classic “iceberg” query, and the present invention may use known techniques (See, e.g., the paper M. Fang, N. Shivakumar, H. Garcia-Molina, R. Motwani, J. Ullman, “Computing Iceberg Queries Efficiently,” 24th International Conference on Very Large Databases, (Aug. 24-27, 1998) (incorporated herein by reference).) to perform thresholding early.
Referring back to block 950, a refined embodiment of the present invention may employ data smoothing. The “confidence” of click statistics may vary a lot for different ads and URLs. For example, ad X may have gotten 200 clicks out of 1000 impressions, while ad Y may have gotten 1 click out of 5 impressions. Although both ads have the same CTR, the confidence level of the statistics for ad X is higher than those for ad Y. To reflect such a confidence parameter, the present invention may “smooth” the CTR values towards the mean content-ads CTR as follows:
SmoothedCTR=(Clicks+1)/(Impressions+1/BaseCTR)
There can also be different ways to smooth the CTR values. One alternative is to use the following:
SmoothedCTR=CTR*confidence+BaseCTR*(1−confidence)
where confidence is set based on the number of impressions. Confidence may also be a function of other characteristics of the data, such as age of the data sample.
There are many different ways to collect and store the click statistics in a manner consistent with the present invention, in addition to the options for maintaining the click statistics data structures mentioned above. Statistics may be collected for the entire time period. Alternatively, statistics may be collected and loaded in an incremental manner. The statistics may be stored in files and loaded into memory at runtime. Alternatively, or in addition, they can be stored in a database and retrieved at run time. Although an offline mechanism for compute feedback periodically was described, such feedback computation could be made online, in realtime too.
Having described exemplary techniques for logging and aggregating user behavior data to generate data structures such as those 480, 580, 586 of
As can be appreciated from the foregoing, this aspect of the present invention permits ads that don't necessarily perform particular well globally (e.g., over all documents) but do perform well for a given document (or for a given host) to be eligible to be served in association with the given document.
In one exemplary embodiment of the present invention, for each URL, those AdGroups with the top K highest CTRs are appended to the AdGroup candidates obtained from normal scoring mechanisms. This may be done using the data structure: URL:->{AdGroup, numimprs, numclicks, avgcpc}+avgctr.
As can be appreciated from the foregoing, a score of an ad, which may be a function of at least the ad's performance without regard to the document with which it was served, may be adjusted using document specific and/or host specific performance information for the ad.
In one exemplary embodiment of the present invention, AdGroup candidates and concepts (e.g., PHIL clusters) are re-scored using their CTR on the given Web page or host. This may be done using the data structure URL:->{AdGroup, numimprs, numclicks, avgcpc}+avgctr.
The method 1100 of
As can be appreciated from the foregoing, for purposes of determining a score of an ad with respect to a given document, the ad's performance, which normally does not consider the document with which it was served, may be adjusted using document specific and/or host specific performance information for the ad. The method 1200 of
In one exemplary embodiment of the present invention, Web page, Website, or content-ads specific selection statistics are sent to an ad server so it can use these in determining an ad score (e.g., for use in assigning ad positions/ad features). This may be done using one or more of the following data structures:
Consistent with the present invention, the selection statistics may be attached to each AdGroup in an AdGroup list sent to an ad server. The present invention may use URL-level statistics if they exist. Otherwise, the present invention may use the host-level (e.g., Website home page URL level) statistics, the AdGroup statistics across all content-ads properties, or, in a less preferred case, the content-ads mean AdCTR.
A document identifier (e.g., URL) and/or host identifier are accepted 1355. As indicated by loop 1360-1375, a number of acts are performed for each component/parameter of an ad scoring function. More specifically, document specific and/or host specific performance information for the given component/parameter is accepted. (Block 1365) The average performance information for the document and/or host over all parameters/components may also be accepted. The importance of the component/parameter in the scoring is then adjusted using such accepted document specific and/or host specific performance information (as well as the accepted average performance information). (Block 1370) After all of the components/parameters have been processed, the method 1350 is left. (Node 1380)
An exemplary application of this feature of the present invention is now provided. Assume that ads can be targeted using, among other things, both location and time-of-day. Assume further that ads targeted using location have performed better than ads targeted using time-of-day when served with a particular Web page. In this case, when determining ads to serve with the particular Web page, a location component of a targeting function can be weighted more than a time-of-day component of a targeting function.
Note that various aspects of the methods 1300 and 1350 of
As can be appreciated from the foregoing, this aspect of the present invention permits document (and/or host) specific performance related to a scoring function and/or a component thereof, (which may be more general than document and/or host specific performance related to a given ad) to be used. Thus, for example, for a Web page concerning the categories “automobiles” and “Rolls Royce,” ads concerning the category “luxury real estate” may have had better performance than ads concerning the “automobiles”. Thus, when that document is to be served, weights corresponding to the categories “automobiles” and “luxury real estate” may be adjusted accordingly. As another example, ads served using host relevance (e.g., concept) targeting may have performed better than those served using document relevance (e.g., concept) targeting, which may have performed better than those targeted solely on performance and price information. This may affect which scoring function is used, or how scores from different scoring functions are weighted in determining a final score.
In an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, out of a possible space of and targeting functions, particular targeting functions may be chosen to use for a URL (e.g., default-content, parent-url, url-keywords) given click statistics for that host and targeting function. This may be done using the data structure: Host:->{targeting-function, numimprs, numclicks, avgcpc}+avgct.
The methods of
The performance parameter estimation (extrapolation) operations 496, 596 may be concept-based. These operations are useful because ads (or ad groups) and/or advertisers may be transient, in which case it may be difficult, if not impossible, to gather a statistically significant amount of user behavior data with respect to a given ad (or ad group) for a given document. Since there may be a relatively small number of tracked user behavior (e.g., clicks) compared to the number of documents (as identified by their URLs) and ads, a user behavior (click) statistics matrix may be rather sparse. Some ads have very few clicks and impressions, and most ads have no statistics at all. To effectively use the limited data points, the present invention may use the performance parameter estimation (extrapolation) operations 496, 596 to populate user behavior (e.g., click) statistics of ads for which there is no (or very little) user behavior data for the document (or host). These operations 496,596 may use concepts as a bridge for propagating statistics from ads to ads.
From the table of click-statistics, it was determined that ad Al 0 has a high CTR, even though it was not returned in the first round of content->concepts->ads matching. The set of ad (or ad group) candidates may be expanded to include ad A10. (Recall, e.g., Blocks 1435 and 1440 of
Click statistics of each concept Ci may then be estimated using, at least, the click statistics for the ads relevant to the concept and the ad-concept connectivity. (Recall, e.g., Block 1445 of
clicks(Ci)=sum—Aj{clicks(Aj)*P(CiIAj)}
imprs(Ci)=sum—Aj{imprs(Aj)*P(CiIAj)}
ctr(Ci)=clicks(Ci)/imprs(Ci)
where P(CiIAj) is the probability of concept Ci given ad Aj. For example, A8 and A10 both have high CTR, and they are well-related to the concept C3 (e.g., according to a PHIL cluster analysis). Accordingly, concept C3 gets a high estimated CTR.
As indicated by the long dashed lines of
The present invention may perform such click-statistics propagation between ads and their concepts, based on the assumption that if some ads on a given concept achieved high (or low) performance for a given document (or host), then other ads on that concept are also likely to have relatively high (or low) performance and are therefore more likely to be clicked when served with the given document (or host). Various weightings and decaying factors may be applied while doing concept based reinforcement.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the concept and ad scores may be adjusted using their real or estimated CTR. For example, an adjusted score may be determined using the following:
new score˜old_score*(CTR/BaseCTR)
Thus, ads/concepts with CTR>BaseCTR may be promoted, while the low CTR ads/concepts may be demoted. This formula used in an ad system may be tuned based on experiment results.
The present invention may use one or more of the above-described operations to improve content-targeted ad serving using document/host specific user behavior feedback (e.g., click statistics). For example, one embodiment of the present invention may:
The one or more processors 1610 may execute machine-executable instructions (e.g., C or C++ running on the Solaris operating system available from Sun Microsystems Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. or the Linux operating system widely available from a number of vendors such as Red Hat, Inc. of Durham, N.C.) to effect one or more aspects of the present invention. At least a portion of the machine executable instructions may be stored (temporarily or more permanently) on the one or more storage devices 1620 and/or may be received from an external source via one or more input interface units 1630.
In one embodiment, the machine 1600 may be one or more conventional personal computers. In this case, the processing units 1610 may be one or more microprocessors. The bus 1640 may include a system bus. The storage devices 1620 may include system memory, such as read only memory (ROM) and/or random access memory (RAM). The storage devices 1620 may also include a hard disk drive for reading from and writing to a hard disk, a magnetic disk drive for reading from or writing to a (e.g., removable) magnetic disk, and an optical disk drive for reading from or writing to a removable (magneto-) optical disk such as a compact disk or other (magneto-) optical media.
A user may enter commands and information into the personal computer through input devices 1632, such as a keyboard and pointing device (e.g., a mouse) for example. Other input devices such as a microphone, a joystick, a game pad, a satellite dish, a scanner, or the like, may also (or alternatively) be included. These and other input devices are often connected to the processing unit(s) 1610 through an appropriate interface 1630 coupled to the system bus 1640. The output devices 1634 may include a monitor or other type of display device, which may also be connected to the system bus 1640 via an appropriate interface. In addition to (or instead of) the monitor, the personal computer may include other (peripheral) output devices (not shown), such as speakers and printers for example.
Although the invention was described with reference to click statistics, such as CTR, other user behavior (e.g., a user rating, a conversion, etc.) can be logged, stored, preprocessed, and/or used in a similar manner.
Although some data collection and processing was performed on the level of an ad group, such data collection and/or processing may be performed on individual ads, or on other collections of ads. For example, such data collection and/or processing may be performed per ad, per targeted concept, per ad presentation format (e.g., ad color scheme, ad text font, ad border), etc. Similarly, data may be collected and/or aggregated on a per document basis, a per host basis, and/or on the basis of some other document grouping (e.g., clustering, classification, etc.) function. A grouping of documents (i.e., a document set) will be a subset of all documents in a collection, such as a subset of all Web pages on the Web.
The invention is not limited to the embodiments described above and the inventors regard their invention as any described subject matter.
As can be appreciated from the foregoing disclosure, the invention can be used to improve a content-targeted ad system.
This application is a continuation application of, and claims priority to, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/649,585, entitled “CONTENT-TARGETED ADVERTISING USING COLLECTED USER BEHAVIOR DATA,” filed on Aug. 27, 2003, which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/489,322, entitled “COLLECTING USER BEHAVIOR DATA SUCH AS CLICK DATA, GENERATING USER BEHAVIOR DATA REPRESENTATIONS, AND USING USER BEHAVIOR DATA FOR CONCEPT REINFORCEMENT FOR CONTENT-BASED AD TARGETING,” filed on Jul. 22, 2003. The disclosures of the foregoing applications are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety for all purposes. The present invention is not limited to any specific embodiments described in that provisional.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60489322 | Jul 2003 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 10649585 | Aug 2003 | US |
| Child | 14340931 | US |
