Patent Application
20090319187
1. Field of Art
The disclosure generally relates to the field of advertisements, and more particularly to location-specific web advertisements.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the rapid development of electronic commerce, the number of Internet companies offering web advertising has increased dramatically. Historically, Internet companies began placing web advertisements in web pages without reflecting the user's interest or current context. To personalize the web advertisements, Internet companies began selecting various advertisements in response to the user's geographic location. Typically, the geographic location is at a city level and is determined based on the internet protocol (IP) address of the website being browed by the user. Additionally, Internet companies typically select city level web advertisements based on the knowledge that particular websites cater only to a specific city, such as a website related to a local newspaper for the city of Mountain View, Calif. These advertisements reflect information that is pertinent to users within the city.
While conventional web advertising systems allow placement of advertisements that generalize the interests of users at a city level, the conventional web advertising systems do not take into consideration locations at a greater level of detail. Conventional web advertising systems do not take into account that business operations and activities can change from one street to the next, or between different neighborhoods as each neighborhood typically has its own characteristics such as culture, diversity or purchasing habits that are common to only that particular neighborhood. Conventional web advertising systems present users web advertisements that simply may not be relevant as they only focus on users at a city level and do not account for the characteristics of users within the neighborhood that may be represented by the promotions or sales that vary from one store location to the next. Thus, users may not be inclined to seek additional information regarding the displayed web advertisements.
Thus, there is lacking, inter alia, a method and system that presents users web advertisements that are targeted specifically to the geographic location of the user based on a geographic location associated with web pages being viewed by the user.
One embodiment of a disclosed system is for presenting users with web advertisements that are dynamically adjusted based upon a geographic location determined within the content of the web page that the web advertisement will appear. The method allows web advertisers the ability to create for a company a single advertisement campaign which can be automatically customized to reflect user context based on the geographic location associated with the content of the web page. Automatically customizing web advertisements beneficially creates a more effective advertisement campaign as the web advertisements may be adjusted to more accurately reflect the interests of users associated with a geographic location such as a specific neighborhood. Web advertisers simply create a general advertisement campaign that will automatically adjust to create a geographic specific advertisement for each location of that company. The geographic specific advertisement reflects information that is relevant to the specific location of the company, saving web advertisers both time and money as individual advertisements for each location do not need to be created. Additionally, users are presented web advertisements that are more likely to assist the users in their personal needs.
In one embodiment, a user is presented a web page responsive to a user search query performed by the user in a search engine or simply from entering a universal resource locator (URL) link into a browser. An advertisement hosting website, which is responsible for placing web advertisements within the requested web page, comprises an analysis module which determines a geographic location associated with the user from the content of the web page. The analysis module determines latitude and longitude coordinates of a centroid or centerpoint of the geographic location by retrieving geographic information stored in a geographic information database. An advertisement search module determines specific advertisements of a particular company location near the centroid. In one embodiment, the advertisement search module determines a general advertisement campaign associated with the company. An advertisement generation module generates a geocoded targeted web advertisement using the general web advertisement campaign and specific advertisements related to the geographic location determined by the advertisement hosting website for display to the user.
The features and advantages described in the specification are not all inclusive and, in particular, many additional features and advantages will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art in view of the drawings, specification, and claims. Moreover, it should be noted that the language used in the specification has been principally selected for readability and instructional purposes, and may not have been selected to delineate or circumscribe the disclosed subject matter.
The disclosed embodiments have other advantages and features which will be more readily apparent from the detailed description, the appended claims, and the accompanying figures (or drawings). A brief introduction of the figures is below.
FIG. (FIG.) 1 illustrates one embodiment of a block diagram of the system architecture of the present invention.
The Figures (FIGS.) and the following description relate to preferred embodiments by way of illustration only. It should be noted that from the following discussion, alternative embodiments of the structures and methods disclosed herein will be readily recognized as viable alternatives that may be employed without departing from the principles of what is claimed.
Reference will now be made in detail to several embodiments, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying figures. It is noted that wherever practicable similar or like reference numbers may be used in the figures and may indicate similar or like functionality. The figures depict embodiments of the disclosed system or method for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following description that alternative embodiments of the structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principles described herein.
Referring now to
Each of the various modules are implemented as part of a server program executing on server-class computer comprising a central processing unit (CPU), memory, network interface, peripheral interfaces, and other well known components. The computers themselves preferably run an open-source operating system such as LINUX, have generally high performance CPUs, 1 G or more of memory, and 100 G or more of disk storage. Of course, other types of computers can be used, and it is expected that as more powerful computers are developed in the future, they can be configured in accordance with the teachings herein. The functionality implemented by any of the elements can be provided from computer program products that are stored in tangible computer accessible storage mediums (e.g., RAM, hard disk, or optical/magnetic media).
A client 180 executes a browser 185 and can connect to the front end interface 110 via a network 170, which is typically the internet, but can also be any network, including but not limited to any combination of a local area network (LAN), a metropolitan area network (MAN), a wide area network (WAN), a mobile, wired or wireless network, a private network, or a virtual private network. While only a single client 180 and browser 185 are shown, it is understood that very large numbers (e.g., millions) of clients are supported and can be in communication with the advertisement hosting website 100 or websites 190 at any time. The client 180 may include a variety of different computing devices. Examples of client devices 180 are personal computers, digital assistants, personal digital assistants, cellular phones, mobile phones, smart phones or laptop computers. As will be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, the present invention is not limited to the devices listed above.
A browser 185 can include any application that allows users of client 180 to access web pages on the World Wide Web. Suitable applications are MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER, NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR, MOZILLA FIREFOX, APPLE SAFARI or any application adapted to allow access to web pages on the World Wide Web. A user can access web pages on the advertisement hosting website 100 or on website 190. Though only one website is shown, it is understood that very large numbers (e.g., millions) of websites are supported and can be in communication with the client 180 or advertisement hosting website 100. Website 190 may be affiliated with the advertisement hosting website 100 and is adapted to include geocoded targeted web advertisements generated by the advertisement hosting website 100 in web pages hosted by website 190. For purposes of convenience and description of one embodiment, the users of client 180 and browser 185 will be referred to as a “user” or “users.” In the context of the present discussion, users will be accessing web pages on website 190 and the advertisement hosting website 100 will include geocoded targeted advertisements in the web pages hosted by website 190. Note that users may access web pages that include geocoded targeted advertisements from the advertisement hosting website 100.
When a user accesses a web page on website 190 via the network 170, the front end interface 110 of the advertisement hosting website 100 provides geocoded targeted web advertisements to website 190 to include in the web page requested by the user. The front end interface 110 is responsible for communication between the various modules within the advertisement hosting website 100 and websites 190.
Once a web page requested by the user is loaded in the browser 185, the analysis module 120 is responsible for determining geographic information within the content of the web page. In one embodiment, the analysis module 120 determines a geographic location from the content displayed in the web page, for example, a neighborhood or city, referenced within the content. The geographic location can be determined from content displayed on the webpage such as text or images. In a further embodiment, the geographic location may be received via user input. The geographic location determined from the content of the webpage may be an indication of a geographic location of relevance to the user. Additionally, the analysis module 120 searches the geographic information database 160 to determine the latitude and longitude coordinates of the geographic centroid (i.e., centerpoint) associated with the geographic location.
The geographic information database 160 is responsible for storing geographic information of various geographic locations. In one embodiment, the geographic information database 160 stores latitude and longitude coordinates associated with the geographic centroid of various neighborhoods. For example, the geographic information database 160 may store the latitude and longitude coordinates corresponding to the centroid of the Evergreen neighborhood in San Jose, Calif. The latitude and longitude coordinates of a neighborhood's centroid is utilized to determine appropriate web advertisements that are geocoded to correspond to the coordinates of the neighborhood. In an embodiment, the geographic information database 160 also stores the boundaries of the geographic locations such as a neighborhood, for example. Generally, a neighborhood is a geographically localized community located within a larger community, such as a city. Neighborhoods typically comprise common characteristics such as a particular culture, diversity or economic characteristics that distinguish one neighborhood from another. In an embodiment, the neighborhoods stored in the geographic information database 160 are defined by a boundary-box system provided by a mapping company, such as Maponics, Inc., that defines neighborhoods within a geographic area.
Additionally, the geographic information database 160 may also store latitude and longitude coordinates associated with the geographic centroid of various cities. Alternatively, the latitude and longitude coordinates of a city may be utilized to localize web advertisements to a specific area within the city in the instance that a neighborhood cannot be determined from the content of a web page. In one embodiment, the latitude and longitude coordinates stored in the geographic information database 160 is based on established (i.e., pre-calculated) latitude and longitude coordinates that correspond to the centroids of neighborhoods and cities. The latitude and longitude coordinates may be maintained by a system administrator of the advertisement hosting website 100.
The advertisement search module 140 is responsible for determining web advertisements that are relevant to latitude and longitude coordinates corresponding to a geographic location, such as a neighborhood. In one embodiment, the advertisement search module 140 searches the advertisement database 150 for geographic specific advertisements that correspond to latitude and longitude coordinates of a neighborhood's centroid. Additionally, the advertisement search module 140 searches the advertisement database 150 for geographic specific advertisements that correspond to latitude and longitude coordinates of a city's centroid. Furthermore, the advertisement search module 140 determines a general advertisement campaign associated with a company's geographic specific advertisements. The general advertisement campaign comprises an advertisement template that is relevant to every location of a particular company.
The advertisement database 150 stores both general advertisement campaigns (e.g., general advertisement templates) and geographic specific advertisements that are associated with the general advertisement campaigns. The general advertisement campaigns generally consist of generic advertisement information of a company that would be relevant to any advertisement pertaining to that company. For example, the general advertisement campaign may include the logo of the company, name of the company or a generic phrase such us “at your (insert neighborhood) Store, Inc. store!” In contrast, geographic specific advertisements may be specific store locations, names of neighborhoods or specific promotions that only pertain to a specific store location such as the phrase “Buy 1 get one FREE!”
In one embodiment, the advertisement database 150 stores geographic specific advertisement tables. Each geographic specific advertisement table is associated with latitude and longitude coordinates that corresponds to a geographic location's centroid. The geographic location associated with each table indicates defined boundaries of the geographic location. The geographic specific advertisement tables contain data records of the various companies that are located within the boundaries of the geographic location associated with the table. In each company's data record, the advertisement database 150 stores geographic specific advertisements that pertain to only one location of a company that resides within the boundaries of the geographic location associated with the geographic specific advertisement table. Additionally, each company's data record comprises an address of that company's particular location. Note that each company's data record may contain information regarding the company's multiple locations that are located within the geographic location. Geographic specific advertisements are, for example, promotions, sales or offers that are only offered at a specific location of a company or at multiple instances of a company near the geographic location's centroid. Additionally, metadata such as keywords that describe a company or the products or services associated with the company may be stored. For example, metadata for a Best Buy electronics store may include the keywords “electronics,” “mp3 players,” “dvds,” “Blu-ray,” “lcd tv,” etc.
Referring to
Additionally, in one embodiment, the advertisement database 150 also stores a general advertisement table with a record of all the companies that are affiliated with the advertisement hosting website 100. Each data record in the general advertisement table that is associated with an individual company includes a company's general advertisement campaign. A general advertisement campaign is an advertisement template that is relevant to every location of a particular company.
Once the geographic specific advertisements and their corresponding general advertisement campaign are determined by the advertisement search module 130, the advertisement generation module 130 is responsible for compiling the geographic specific advertisements and the general advertisement campaign to generate a geocoded targeted web advertisement. Geocoded targeted web advertisements are advertisements that correspond to a specific geographic area. Specifically, geocoded targeted web advertisements are advertisements that correspond to specific latitude and longitude coordinates of a neighborhood or city's centroid. The geocoded targeted web advertisements illustrate advertisement information such as promotions, sales, or inventory that pertains to a specific store near the centroid. For example, a geocoded targeted web advertisement may illustrate a promotion that a Circuit City store in the Evergreen neighborhood of the city of San Jose, Calif. may be having a sale on all flat screen televisions. Once the geocoded targeted web advertisement is created, the advertisement generation module 130 sends the advertisement to the front end interface 110, which proceeds to include the geocoded targeted web advertisement in the web page being viewed by the user on website 190.
The geocoded targeted web advertisement generation process of the advertisement hosting website 100 determines web advertisements based on geographic information located within the content of web pages viewed by users. The process performed by the advertisement hosting website 100 to generate geocoded targeted web advertisements is further described below.
Referring now to
At the first stage 201, the analysis module 120 determines a geographic location associated with the user from the content of the web page that was loaded by the user. In one embodiment, the geographic location may be a neighborhood. A user may access a web page on website 190 by entering a URL link of a website into the browser 185. Alternatively, the user may access a web page on website 190 by querying a search engine which displays a list of article identifiers that are associated with web pages on website 190 and selecting one of the article identifiers.
Referring to
Typically, many users display web pages that are relevant to them in some manner. The content of the web pages can be utilized to determine a geographic location of interest to the user. In
Referring back to
Referring to
Referring back to
In step 301, the advertisement search module 140 determines geographic specific advertisements near an identified centroid of a neighborhood. As previously mentioned the advertisement database 150 contains geographic specific advertisement tables that contain data records of the various companies that that are located near specific latitude and longitude coordinates that represent a geographic centroid of a neighborhood. Generally, the advertisement search module 140 locates companies within the geographic specific advertisement tables that are associated with the latitude and longitude coordinates of the determined neighborhood's centroid. In one embodiment, the geographic specific advertisements associated with the company located nearest to the centroid of the neighborhood are selected. The advertisement search module 140 simply searches the advertisement database 150 for any company within a boundary or predefined region near the centroid based on their specific location and identifies which company is the shortest distance away from the centroid of the neighborhood.
In one embodiment each company that is associated with the advertisement hosting website 110 has their associated cost per number of advertisement impressions stored in the appropriate data record in the advertisement database 150. The cost per number of advertisement impressions indicates the amount of money paid to the website 100 per number of advertisements displayed on the advertisement hosting website 100. In one embodiment, the advertisement search module 140 searches the advertisement database 150 for any company within a boundary or predefined region near the centroid based on their specific location and identifies which company offers the highest cost per number of advertisement impressions.
In another embodiment, the advertisement search module 140 locates geographic specific advertisements of store locations of a predetermined company. The geographic specific advertisements associated with the store location of the predetermined company closest to the centroid may be chosen as agreements between a website 190 in which a geocoded targeted web advertisement will be displayed and the advertisement hosting website 100 may require that only a particular company is allowed to advertise on the website 190.
In one embodiment, companies associated with the advertisement hosting website 100 may send an estimate of each location's current sales and the sales information is stored in the appropriate data record in the advertisement database 150. The advertisement search module 140 may select the specific advertisements of a company that is within the neighborhood based on some predetermined criteria corresponding to the company's sales information. For example, geographic specific advertisements of a company within the neighborhood with the lowest sales may be selected in an effort to increase sales at that particular location. Alternatively, companies within a neighborhood may bid against one another to determine which companies' advertisements will be associated with the centroid of a neighborhood. The company that won the bid may have various locations within the neighborhood and the location with the lowest sales will have their geographic specific advertisements selected.
In an alternative embodiment, agreements between a website 190 in which a geocoded targeted web advertisement will be displayed and the advertisement hosting website 100 may require that only approved companies that are pre-authorized by the owner's or system administrator of the website are allowed to display their advertisements on the website. The advertisement search module 140 may search the data records associated with the centroid of the determined neighborhood for neighborhood specific advertisements of the approved companies. In the case where multiple approved companies are located within the neighborhood or multiple instances of the same approved company are located, the neighborhood specific advertisements associated with the location closest to the centroid are selected.
In another alternative embodiment, neighborhood specific advertisements are selected based on pre-set search queries. An administrator of the advertisement hosting website 100 or of website 190 may require that only advertisements associated with specific keywords are to be displayed. For example, an agreement may be made that only advertisements related to “electronics” will be displayed on a website. The advertisement search module 140 analyzes the metadata in the data records of the specific advertisement table associated with the determined centroid for the required keyword. Once the companies that include the required keyword are determined, the neighborhood specific advertisements associated with the location closest to the centroid are selected.
In step 303, the advertisement search module 140 searches the advertisement database 150 to determine a general advertisement campaign that corresponds to the geographic specific advertisements that were determined in step 301. Specifically, the advertisement search module 140 searches the general advertisement table in the advertisement database 150 for the general advertisement campaign that corresponds to the company that is associated with the geographic specific advertisements determined in step 301. Once the appropriate general advertisement campaign is acquired, a geocoded targeted web advertisement is generated as will be further described below.
Referring back to
Referring now to
In this example, during the third stage 205 of the geocoded targeted web advertisement generation process, the advertisement search module 140 determined the geographic specific advertisements shown in
In the “Store, Inc.” example, the specific neighborhood advertisements comprise a promotion 601 specific to the Park Slope location of Store, Inc. that indicates the promotion “Buy one, get one FREE!,” a neighborhood location 603 of “Park Slope” and/or a company location 605 of “57, 5th Street by the Firehouse.” In one embodiment, each of the specific neighborhood advertisements described above are assigned an advertisement identification (ID) number that corresponds to a type of specific neighborhood advertisement. The advertisement ID will be used to map the specific neighborhood advertisements to the correct location within the general advertisement campaign, as will be further described below.
As previously mentioned, in one embodiment each of the specific advertisements is assigned an advertisement identification (ID) number that corresponds to a type of specific neighborhood advertisement. The advertisement IDs are used to correctly map each type of specific neighborhood advertisement to its corresponding location in the general advertisement campaign. The corresponding location in the general advertisement campaign is also assigned the same advertisement ID as its corresponding specific neighborhood advertisement. The advertisement generation module 130 essentially maps each specific neighborhood advertisement to the corresponding location in the general advertisement campaign that includes the same advertisement ID. In the Store, Inc. example, the promotion 601 may be assigned an advertisement ID value of 1, for example. Accordingly, the promotion region 619 in the general advertisement campaign 607 may also be assigned an advertisement ID value of 1. The advertisement generation module 130 would then overlay the promotion 601 onto the promotion region 619 during the creation of the geocoded targeted web advertisement. In the same manner, the advertisement generation module 130 would map the neighborhood location 603 to the neighborhood location region 611 and would also map the company location 605 to the company location region 615.
Once the advertisement generation module 130 has mapped the neighborhood specific advertisements to their respective locations, the geocoded targeted web advertisement is complete. Referring to
Note that the embodiments discussed above in reference to generating a geocoded targeted web advertisement associated with a centroid of a neighborhood may be extended to embodiments where a neighborhood cannot be determined. For example, the analysis module 120 may determine a city from the content of a webpage rather than a neighborhood. The latitude and longitude coordinates of the city's centroid would be determined and the embodiments discussed above in regard to generating a neighborhood specific web advertisement would be performed to generate web advertisements corresponding to the centroid of a city.
As previously discussed, during the geocoded targeted web advertisement generation process, the analysis module 120 determines geographic location information, such as a neighborhood, that is associated with a user from a web page being browsed by the user. In one embodiment, geographic location information can be explicitly entered by the user and will be received by the analysis module 120. Referring now to
The features described herein beneficially provide a system and method to generate geocoded targeted web advertisements. Generating advertisements that are neighborhood specific provides users viewing the advertisements the most relevant promotions or offers. A user no longer is displayed web advertisements that may be interesting, but the promotions or sales within the advertisements are not accessible as the advertisements correspond to stores or locations that are not within the vicinity of the user. Additionally, the system and methods described above allow web advertisers to generate a single advertisement campaign for companies that can be automatically adjusted to reflect promotions, sales, etc. that are relevant only to a specific location of a company. Therefore, valuable time and money is not wasted in creating advertisement campaigns for each specific store location.
Some portions of above description describe the embodiments in terms of algorithms and symbolic representations of operations on information, for example, the processes described and illustrated through
As used herein any reference to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” means that a particular element, feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment. The appearances of the phrase “in one embodiment” in various places in the specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment.
Some embodiments may be described using the expression “coupled” and “connected” along with their derivatives. It should be understood that these terms are not intended as synonyms for each other. For example, some embodiments may be described using the term “connected” to indicate that two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact with each other. In another example, some embodiments may be described using the term “coupled” to indicate that two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact. The term “coupled,” however, may also mean that two or more elements are not in direct contact with each other, but yet still co-operate or interact with each other. The embodiments are not limited in this context.
As used herein, the terms “comprises,” “comprising,” “includes,” “including,” “has,” “having” or any other variation thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion. For example, a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of elements is not necessarily limited to only those elements but may include other elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus. Further, unless expressly stated to the contrary, “or” refers to an inclusive or and not to an exclusive or. For example, a condition A or B is satisfied by any one of the following: A is true (or present) and B is false (or not present), A is false (or not present) and B is true (or present), and both A and B are true (or present).
In addition, use of the “a” or “an” are employed to describe elements and components of the embodiments herein. This is done merely for convenience and to give a general sense of the invention. This description should be read to include one or at least one and the singular also includes the plural unless it is obvious that it is meant otherwise.
Upon reading this disclosure, those of skill in the art will appreciate still additional alternative structural and functional designs for a system and a method for generating neighborhood specific advertisements based on the context of web pages being viewed by a user through the disclosed principles herein. Thus, while particular embodiments and applications have been illustrated and described, it is to be understood that the disclosed embodiments are not limited to the precise construction and components disclosed herein. Various modifications, changes and variations, which will be apparent to those skilled in the art, may be made in the arrangement, operation and details of the method and apparatus disclosed herein without departing from the spirit and scope defined in the appended claims.
