Patent Application
20160312234
This invention relates to advertisements.
Content delivery over the Internet continues to improve every day. Computer users can receive e-mail, news, games, entertainment, music, books, and web pages—all with a simple Internet connection (and with improved quality on a broadband connection). Internet users also have access to a plethora of services such as maps, shopping links, images, blogs, local search, satellite images, group discussions, hosted content, and e-mail. While many of these services are free to users, such services are often accompanied by an advertisement (“ad”) that helps service providers defray the cost of providing these services. In addition, the advertisement may also add value to the user experience.
The present disclosure includes a system and method for determining user charges using tracking information. In some implementations, a method for charging advertisers includes identifying tracking information associated with ads positioned in Web pages in accordance with a position auction. The ads positioned in the Web pages are based, at least in part, on associated bid amounts. The charges for agents associated with the ads are determined using the tracking information and the bid amounts. The charges are determined independent of position normalizers. Invoices for the agents are generated including the charges for presenting the ads.
The details of one or more embodiments of the invention are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the description below. Other features, objects, and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the description and drawings, and from the claims.
Like reference symbols in the various drawings indicate like elements.
In some implementations, the system 100 can charge, for each conversion, the cost imposed on the next highest bidder, i.e. and/or offset the charges with a social value added to bids of other bidders. For example, the system 100 can determine imposed cost based, at least in part, on the bid amount of the next highest bidder and/or the social value based, at least in part, on the difference between the bid amount and the next highest bidder's amount. In this example, the ad in that position associated with the conversion may not have received the response if the ads for higher bidders were not in their respective positions. In other words, removing one or more higher bidders can result in the ad moving to a different position, and as a result, can lead to losing the click or conversion. The system 100 assigns these higher bidders a payment, which, in some implementations, is subtracted from the imposed costs charged to the higher bidders.
At a high level, the system 100, in some implementations, includes a client 102 and a payment server 104 coupled through a network 106. In this implementation, the client 102 includes a Graphical User Interface (GUI) 110 for displaying Web pages provided by the payment server 104. The payment server 104 includes a memory 118 and a processor 120. In some implementations, the memory 118 locally stores tracking files 122 for identifying tracking information associated with ads, evaluation criteria 124 of identifying criteria for determining charges associated with ads, and billing files 126 for identifying the charges. The processor 120 includes a tracking engine 128 for tracking conversions associated with ads and an evaluation engine 130 for determining charges for presented ads using tracking files 122 and evaluation criteria 124. Turning to a high level description of the operation of the illustrated tracking system 100, the tracking engine 128 receives tracking information from the network 106 associated with ads and updates and/or generates one or more tracking files 122 based, at least in part, on the tracking information. In response to at least an event (e.g., request, period of time), the evaluation engine 130 identifies tracking files 122 and evaluation criteria 124 associated with a position auction and determines a charges associated with the ads using the tracking files 122 and the evaluation criteria 124. As mentioned above, the evaluation engine 130 may determine costs imposed on other bidders and social values associated with each bidder independent of position normalizers. Based, at least in part, on the determined charges, the evaluation engine 130 updates and/or generates one or more billing files 126.
In one specific implementation, the system 100 includes one or more clients 102 that includes or executes at least GUI 110 and comprises an electronic device (e.g., a computing device) operable to receive, transmit, process and store data associated with the system 100. While not illustrated, the system 100 may include any number of clients 102 communicably coupled to the payment server 104. Further, “client 102” and “user” may be used interchangeably as appropriate without departing from the scope of this disclosure. Moreover, for ease of illustration, the client 102 is described in terms of being used by one user, but many users may use one device (e.g., client 102) or that one user may use multiple devices without departing from the scope of this disclosure.
As used in this disclosure, the client 102 is any person, department, organization, small business, enterprise, or any other entity that may use or request others to use the system 100. The client 102 is intended to encompass a personal computer, touch screen terminal, workstation, network computer, kiosk, wireless data port, smart phone, personal data assistant (PDA), cellular device, one or more processors within these or other devices, or any other suitable electronic device used by a user viewing Web pages 112 from the payment server 104. For example, the client 102 may be a PDA operable to wirelessly connect with an external or unsecured network. In another example, the client 102 may comprise a laptop that includes an input device, such as a keypad, touch screen, mouse, or other device that can accept information, and an output device that conveys information from the payment server 104 (e.g., advertisements, search results), including digital data, visual information, or the GUI 110. Both the input device and output device may include fixed or removable storage media such as a magnetic computer disk, CD-ROM, or other suitable media to both receive input from and provide output to users of the client 102 through the display, namely the client portion of the GUI 110.
The GUI 110 comprises a graphical user interface operable to allow the user of the client 102 to interface with at least a portion of the system 100 for any suitable purpose, such as viewing Web pages 112 that may include advertisements, search results, hyperlinks to third-party Web sites, and other links. Generally, the GUI 110 provides the particular user with an efficient and user-friendly presentation of data provided by or communicated within the system 100. The GUI 110 may comprise a plurality of customizable frames or views having interactive fields, pull-down lists, and/or buttons operated by the user. For example, the GUI 110 is operable to display certain invoice information in a user-friendly form based on the user context and the displayed data. The term graphical user interface may be used in the singular or in the plural to describe one or more graphical user interfaces and each of the displays of a particular graphical user interface. The GUI 110 contemplates any graphical user interface, such as a generic web browser or touch screen, that processes information in the system 100 and presents the results to the user. The payment server 104 can accept data from the client 102 using, for example, the web browser (e.g., Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox) and return the appropriate responses (e.g., HTML or XML) to the browser using the network 106.
The payment server 104 comprises an electronic device operable to receive, transmit, process and store data associated with the system 100. The system 100 can be implemented using devices or computers other than servers, as well as a server pool. Indeed, the payment server 104 may be any computer or processing device such as, for example, a blade server, general-purpose personal computer (PC), Macintosh, workstation, Unix-based computer, or any other suitable device. In other words, the system 100 may include computers other than general purpose computers as well as computers without conventional operating systems. In computing device implementations, the payment server 104 may be adapted to execute any operating system including Linux, UNIX, Windows Server, or any other suitable operating system.
As mentioned above, the payment server 104, in this implementation, includes the memory 118 and the processor 120. The memory 118 may be a local memory and include any memory or database module and may take the form of volatile or non-volatile memory including, without limitation, magnetic media, optical media, random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), removable media, or any other suitable local or remote memory component. In the illustrated implementation, the memory 118 includes the tracking files 122, the evaluation criteria 124, and the billing files 126. Local memory 118 may also include any other appropriate data such as VPN applications or services, firewall policies, a security or access log, print or other reporting files, HTML files or templates, data classes or object interfaces, child software applications or sub-systems, and others. Some portions of the memory 118 can be remote.
The tracking files 122 include one or more data structures or entries that identify or include information that identifies information associated with the presentation of ads. For example, one or more tracking files 122 may include or identify conversions associated with ads from a position auction. In some implementations, the tracking files 122 may identify or include information that identifies one or more of the following parameters: clicks, conversions, bid amounts, instances of impressions, bid rankings, ad positions, a time, date, user, client, a publisher, an advertiser, the creator of the ad, and/or a search engine The tracking file 122 may be associated with a specific position auction, multiple position auctions, a single advertiser, or multiple advertisers, or multiple tracking files 122 may be associated with a single position auction and/or a single advertiser. In some implementations, the association may be based on a parameter such as type of advertised product and/or service, demographic, region, or other parameters. For example, a first log file 418 may be associated with cleaning products and a second log file 418 may be associated with baseball paraphernalia. In some implementations, the tracking files 122 may be formatted, stored, or defined as various data structures in text files, XML documents, VSAM files, flat files, Btrieve files, CSV files, internal variables, or one or more libraries. In short, the tracking files 122 may comprise one table or file or a plurality of tables or files stored on one computer or across a plurality of computers in any appropriate format. Moreover, the tracking files 122 may be local or remote without departing from the scope of this disclosure and store any type of appropriate data.
Evaluation criteria 124 include any parameters, variables, algorithms, instructions, rules, objects or other directives for determining charges for displaying ads in certain positions of Web pages. For example, evaluation criteria 124 may be used to map or otherwise associate certain ads with positions in Web pages and determine charges for the displaying the ads based, at least in part, on clicks, conversions, and/or other user actions. As mentioned above, such conversions may include one or more of the following: click throughs, revenue associated with adds, viewing time, and other interactions of a viewer associated with ads displayed in Web pages. In some implementations, conversions are the events of interest to an advertiser, e.g., purchasing a product, requesting further information, calling up a sales representative, etc.] In some implementations, the evaluation criteria 124 may include and/or identify criteria for determining one or more of the following: ranking agents in a position auction, assigning ads to positions in Web pages, determining conversions for the ads using the tracking files 122, determining cost imposed on other bidders, determining social values associated with bidders, determining charges to the agents, and/or generating or updating billing files 126 based on determinations. At a high level, the evaluation criteria 124 may include mathematical expressions for computing results (e.g., imposed costs, social values) of ads displayed in certain positions of Web pages based, at least in part, on associated conversions, bid amounts, and others. In terms of computing imposed costs, the evaluation criteria 124 may determine the cost imposed on other bidders (such as bidders whose ads may be displaced) when a click occurs for a displayed ad. In some implementations, the evaluation criteria 124 may include directives charging agent a an imposed cost va+1, i.e., the value that the agent in position a+1 places on a click, for each received or expected click. If agent a was not present in the position auction, the agent a+1 may have received the click since agent a+1 would have been assigned the position on the Web page currently assigned to agent a. In regards to social values, the evaluation criteria 124 may include directives to subtract a social cost from a charge associated with an agent (e.g., va−va+1 from the bill of each agent a with bids greater than agent a). If agents bids higher than agent a's bid were not present in the position auction, the agent a may not have received the click since agent a would have been assigned a different position if one or more of the agents a were not present. Examples of adjusting charges using imposed costs and social values are discussed with respect to
In addition, the evaluation criteria 124 may include directives for incorporating effective click through rates (CTRs) associated with the agents. For example, the evaluation criteria 124 can include directives for estimating agent-specific effects and/or position effects in determining charges for presenting ads. In some implementations, the actual number of click received by an advertiser a in position p may be estimated as eaxp where ea is an estimate of an agent-specific effect and xp is a position effect. Other formulations may also be used to relate the average position effect and the advertiser-specific effect to the final estimated clickthrough rates. In this example, the evaluation criteria 124 may include directives for ranking agents in accordance with eava. In this case, the cost imposed on other bidders may be determined by the next highest bidders amount times the probability that the next highest bidder would have received the conversion. In other words, the evaluation criteria 124 may include directives for determining the cost imposed by agent a for receiving a conversion as vb+1(eb+1/eb). In regards to social value, the evaluation criteria 124 may include directives for determining by vbeb−vb+1(eb+1/eb). These techniques for determining imposed costs and social values using agent-specific effects are for illustration purposes only and system 100 may include some, all, or none of the process describe above without departing from the scope of this disclosure. In some implementations, the evaluation criteria 124 may include directives that dynamically adjust an estimate of position normalizers over time. For example, the evaluation criteria 124 may define a Bayesian model where xp is the prior expectation of the number of clicks per n impressions and zp is the actual number of clicks in n impressions. In the case that the total number of clicks at time T for position p is ZpT, the evaluation criteria 124 may define a posterior estimate of the position normalizers as aTZpT+(1−aT) xpT, where aT represents a sample precision over prior precision plus sample precision. The evaluation criteria 124 can also include directives for estimating the position normalizer for position p by averaging 1/ea over the ads that appear in position p. The evaluation criteria 124 may also include a threshold such that if the difference between the estimates of the position normalizers exceed the threshold, this violation indicates an error.
The billing files 126 include one or more entries or data structures that identify or include information that identifies billing information associated with agents. For example, the billing file 126 may identify a summary of charges associated with a display ad. In addition, the billing file 126 includes other metrics associated with an advertisement such as a total number of click throughs, CTR, and others. In summary, the billing file 126 may include one or more of the following: a total charge, advertiser ID, imposed costs, social values, number of actions, type of action, and/or other information associated with the ads. The billing file 126 may be associated with a specific agent, multiple agents, a specific position auction, or multiple position auctions or multiple billing files 126 may be associated with a single agent and/or a single position auction. In some implementations, the billing files 126 may be formatted, stored, or defined as various data structures in text files, XML documents, VSAM files, flat files, Btrieve files, CSV files, internal variables, or one or more libraries. In short, billing files 126 may comprise one table or file or a plurality of tables or files stored on one computer or across a plurality of computers in any appropriate format. Moreover, the billing files 126 may be local or remote without departing from the scope of this disclosure and store any type of appropriate data.
Processor 120 executes instructions and manipulates data to perform operations of ad server 104. Although
Evaluation engine 130 may determine charges associated with a position auction based on any suitable process. In some implementations, evaluation engine 130 may identify tracking information associated with ads in a position auction, determine imposed costs and/or social values associated with ads, and/or generate billing files 126 based on evaluations. In terms of identifying tracking information, the evaluation engine 130 may retrieve tracking information (e.g., number of clicks, bid amounts) from tracking files 122 associated with a position auction. In some implementations, the evaluation engine 130 identifies evaluation criteria 124 associated with the position auction and, using the evaluation criteria 124 and tracking information, determine charges (e.g., imposed costs, social values) for each agent assigned to a position in the position auction. For example, the evaluation engine 130 may identify the total number of clicks for each ad assigned a position in the ad auction, and using the number of clicks and bid amounts, determine imposed costs and social values for each agent. Based, at least in part, on these determinations, the evaluation engine 130 generates and/or updates billing files 126 associated with the agents.
Regardless of the particular implementation, “software” may include software, firmware, wired or programmed hardware, or any combination thereof as appropriate. Indeed, tracking engine 128 and evaluation engine 130 may be written or described in any appropriate computer language including C, C++, Java, J#, Visual Basic, assembler, Perl, any suitable version of 4GL, as well as others. It will be understood that while tracking engine 128 and evaluation engine 130 are illustrated in
The payment server 104 may also include an interface 132 for communicating with other systems, such as the client 102, over the network 106 in a client-server or other distributed environment. In certain implementations, the payment server 104 receives data from internal or external senders through the interface 132 for storage in local memory 118 and/or processing by processor 120. Generally, the interface 132 comprises logic encoded in software and/or hardware in a suitable combination and operable to communicate with the network 106. More specifically, the interface 132 may comprise software supporting one or more communications protocols associated with communications over the network 106 or hardware operable to communicate physical signals.
The network 106 facilitates wireless or wireline communication between the payment server 104 and any other local or remote computer, such as the client 102. The network 106 may be all or a portion of an enterprise or secured network. While illustrated as single network, the network 106 may be a continuous network logically divided into various sub-nets or virtual networks without departing from the scope of this disclosure, so long as at least portion of the network 106 may facilitate communications between the payment server 104 and the client 102. In some implementations, the network 106 encompasses any internal or external network, networks, sub-network, or combination thereof operable to facilitate communications between various components in the system 100. The network 106 may communicate, for example, Internet Protocol (IP) packets, Frame Relay frames, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) cells, voice, video, data, and other suitable information between network addresses. The network 106 may include one or more local area networks (LANs), radio access networks (RANs), metropolitan area networks (MANs), wide area networks (WANs), all or a portion of the global computer network known as the Internet, and/or any other communication system or systems at one or more locations.
In one aspect of operation, the tracking engine 128 receives tracking information associated with a position auction and generates and/or updates tracking files 122 using the tracking information. In response to an event, the evaluation engine 130 can identify one or more tracking files 122 associated with the position auction and evaluation criteria 124. Using the tracking information, the evaluation engine 130 determines cost imposed on other agents and social values for each agent and aggregates the imposed costs and the social values to determine charges for each agent. The evaluation engine 130 can generate and/or update billing files 126 associated with the agents based, at least in part, on the determined charges.
Referring to
Referring to
payment 1: −v2z1+(v2−v3)z2+(v3−v4)z3=−v2(z1−z2)−v3(z2−z3)−v4z3
payment 2: −v3z2+(v3−v4)z3=−v3(z2−z3)−v4z3
payment 3: −v4z3=−v4z3
In this example, the payments for each agent is determined by the actual number of clicks that the advertiser in position p received during the billing period independent of position normalizers (e.g., expected number of clicks).
The example method for determining payments in the case of 3 ad slots and 4 bidders illustrated in
Referring to
payment 1: −v2(e2/e1)z1+(v2e2−v3e3/e2)z2+(v3e3−v4e4/e3)z3
payment 2: −v3(e3/e2)z2+(v3e3−v4e4/e3)z3
payment 3: −v4(e4/e3)z3
In this case, the position normalizers can be estimated by summing the clicks in each position and weighting by the predicted clickthrough rate of the ad that appeared in that position.
Referring to
Turning to the process for determining charges associated with the ads, if an event does not occur at decisional step 410, then execution returns to step 408. Otherwise, the total number of clicks for each ad is identified at step 412. Continuing with the example, the total number of clicks associated with each of the three ads is determined. At step 414, the cost impost on other agents per click is determined. In the example, the bid amount for the next highest bidder is charged to an agent for each click received. In connection with the cost, the social values are determined for each ad at step 416. Turning to the example, the social value can be determined by the difference in a bid amount and the next highest bid, and this difference is associated with each higher bidder. At step 418, the imposed costs and the social values for each agent are aggregated to determine the total charge for that agent. As for the example, the total imposed cost for each agent is offset by the total social values associated with the ad. Next, at step 420, a billing file is generated. In the example, an invoice can be generated for each agent detailing the imposed costs and the social values.
Referring to
A number of embodiments of the invention have been described. Nevertheless, it will be understood that various modifications may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, other embodiments are within the scope of the following claims.
