Patent Application
20110161181
This application claims the benefit of the Spanish Patent Application No. ES P200930545, filed on Jul. 31, 2009, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
Embodiments of the present invention are directed to the field of advertisements included in web pages or applications. More specifically disclosed embodiments relate to systems and methods for the management of advertisements in an application or web page.
Computer processes that generate graphic objects (such as application windows and/or web pages in a browser application) may be configured to display advertisements. To facilitate this, the advertisements may be obtained for display from sources that are known as “ad-servers”. This is often due to the nature of the content to be advertised, which might change frequently and require updating each time that the web page or the application is used. The number of accesses to the ad-servers might also used for calculating payments between the involved parties.
The relationship between each user-side graphic object generating process (rendering an application window or a web page) with (at least one, but often more than one) ad-server is determined by its construction (i.e. its coding) and thus is only able to recover content solely from the selected ad-server. When access to a new ad-server is needed, a new construction of the graphic object is required (the application or web page) as well as re-distribution of that object.
The need for the re-construction is due to the proprietary protocol with each set of ad-servers (from different companies) to increase the fidelity of the application or web page with a single supplier of advertisements.
Known ad-server solutions include those described in:
International patent application WO0235024—a method, device and computer readable medium for controlling the presentation of primary content (such as an e-mail message, web page, computer game or other executable program) such that secondary content, including advertising, is always presented to a user in the manner that is intended. An audience management system, through the use of audience management software and audience management metadata, ensures that it is not possible for a user to be presented with primary content without also being presented with secondary content as it was intended to be presented. The primary content is delivered to a user in encrypted form to prevent unauthorized access; the user is also provided with the secondary content, audience management metadata specifying rules for the presentation of the primary content and the secondary content at the user's computer, and audience management software that authenticates all the aforesaid components. Digital rights management may also form part of the feature set of the audience management software. Targeting of secondary content is also possible. Countermeasures against attack by hackers to corrupt the primary content, secondary content and/or the audience management metadata are also described.
U.S. patent application US2007011244—a wireless communication system for transmission of digital messages to users of wireless communication devices on various wireless networks. Messages to users are encoded with formatting corresponding to the network and/or subscriber device to which a message is to be delivered. A digital content server can operate to create, encode and transmit messages to users of a plurality of different wireless networks.
Nevertheless, the application hereinafter described proposes a method to enable an ad-server without any changes in the application or web pages.
U.S. patent application US2006240808—a method of advertising and includes monitoring transmission data of one or more cellular towers located along a freeway and recording an identification and a time and date stamp for one or more cellular devices that establish communication via the one or more cellular towers as the at least one cellular device travels within a user vehicle along the freeway. Further, the method includes determining one or more types of media files that are supported by the cellular device and monitoring the movement of the one or more cellular devices along the freeway. The method also includes transmitting one or more advertisements to the at least one cellular device when the cellular device is within a predetermined range of a freeway exit. The one or more advertisement is transmitted in a format of the one or more types of media files supported by the cellular device. The method hereinafter described gives flexibility and standardization for the advertising source selection method and can be embebbed in any application which request advertisings.
U.S. patent application US2004260767—a new ad campaign management system, which enables a campaign manager to determine ad type, scenario and performance parameters. These preferences are translated into campaign instruction sets that influence the presentation of the web-pages advertisement. The activation of the advertisements is performed by a java script program that is activated once the user starts to download the relevant web-page. This system enable real time control of web-page advertisement presentation according to pre-determined instruction rules, technical browsing parameters, real time events, web-page structure and content. The ad controllable characteristics include size parameters, location parameters, animation behavior parameters, appearance period and timing conditional logic, style format parameters. The technical browsing parameters include: browser type and version, operating system type, communication bandwidth speed, width and height of browsing window, IP address etc. The triggering event includes scheduled events, browsing events, and browsing interaction with user.
U.S. patent application US2002077900—delivers interstitial media content, such as advertisements during a user's navigation of an Internet protocol-based product, for example, a graphical user interface. The present invention may display advertisement content positioned within a web page or may display a full screen advertisement before a new web page is presented. As an interstitial advertisement, the advertisement appears between web page requests such that when a user action requests a new page, the present invention can launch an ad before displaying the requested content. The ads are preferably non-interruptible, such that the user cannot fast-forward or skip the advertisement. A preferred method detects a web page address request and delivers advertising content in an Internet protocol format to the user independently of any code associated with the requested web address. The invention may also deliver ads only after a specified time delay has elapsed, thus regulating the frequency of advertisements independent of the user's movement through the Internet protocol-based product. In another preferred embodiment, the invention may also deliver ads only after a specified number of address changes have been detected. An additional preferred embodiment may also deliver an advertisement unrelated to whether a user makes a web page request.
U.S. patent application US2001047294—a system and method for adding an advertisement to a personal communication and providing additional communication data to a recipient that interacts with the advertisement regardless of the network device the recipient is utilizing. A sender network device communicates with an advertising application operating on a Web site to generate a personal communication containing a sender-selected advertisement. When the sender indicates that the personal communication is to be sent, the advertising application stores the message data, sender data, and advertisement data in a Web site memory device, and utilizes the message, sender, and advertisement data to format, and send, a personal communication containing a sender-selected advertisement to the designated recipient. If the sender-selected advertisement is provided by a third party advertiser, the message, sender, and advertisement data is utilized to compensate the sender of that advertisement for sending it to at least one recipient. If the advertisement is interactive, and the advertisement is interacted with, the advertising application will provide the recipient with additional communication data in a format that can be understood by the recipient network device. This is done by utilizing a platform independent architecture, which includes a device and data neutral software language, such as XML (Extensible Markup Language), along with an advertising application divided into separate output and data processing stages. When a recipient interacts with an interactive advertisement, the request data (contained in the advertisement's embedded URL) calls the data processing layer. The data processing layer uses the request data (which may contain message data that is linked to sender data and advertisement data) to retrieve data from the Web site memory device. A portion of the retrieved data is then passed on to the output stage, where it is placed in a template that has been optimized for the targeted recipient network device.
U.S. patent application US2001049701—a web page advertisement system for generating web page coding with a reference to a background advertisement. In some embodiments, the background reference causes an advertisement image to be tiled, or watermarked, across an end user browser screen behind the text and other foreground elements of a web page since the background reference includes, in some embodiments, a background attribute of a hypertext markup language (HTML) body tag. In one embodiment, static web page coding is created with a background reference to a specific background advertisement, optionally stored remotely from the static web page coding, while in another embodiment the background reference is a reference to a background advertisement serving software program, also optionally stored remotely, which is configured to serve through a plurality of background advertisements. In other embodiments, the web page coding is created dynamically, such as through one or more Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts, for example, with the background reference, being to a particular advertisement in some embodiments and to a background advertisement serving software program in other embodiments. In some embodiments, the background advertisement is assigned to the entire web page, while in other embodiments, only particular frames or portions of tables are assigned a background advertisement. In some embodiments, exposures of the background advertisements are tracked and used to generate bills since the exposures are provided in exchange for value, such as monetary consideration, for example. It is a specific method to distribute advertisements which is not the subject matter of the hereinafter described invention.
Embodiments of the proposed invention described below are directed to solving the problem of flexibility in the managing of ad-servers without the need of any change in the construction of the application or web page. One embodiment is directed to a method for selecting the advertising dispatch source from a plurality of sources thereby providing a high flexibility in choosing the advertising source instead of having one particular source. This capability of “adapting to future changes” is one advantage over the solutions provided by the several methods proposed in the prior art.
Additional advantages with respect to the prior art might include the following:
In one example embodiment, a system for the management of advertisements rendered in a graphic object comprises, for example, an ad-server manager configured to:
In an example embodiment, a user-side graphic object generating process is, for example, configured to:
The information related to the selected ad-server can comprise executable code for accessing said selected ad-server and retrieving the at least one advertisement.
The user-side graphic object generating process can be configured to obtain, starting from the information related to the selected ad-server sent by the ad-server manager, executable code to access the selected ad-server and retrieve the at least one advertisement.
The ad-server manager can be configured to, after selecting the ad-server to be used, increase (increment) a dispatch counter associated with the selected ad-server.
The ad-server manager can be configured to:
Another embodiment is directed to a method for the management of advertisements in a graphic object. The method comprises, for example:
The method can comprise obtaining, once the user-side graphic object generating process receives the information related to the selected ad-server, executable code to access the selected ad-server and retrieve the at least one advertisement.
The method can comprise, after selecting the ad-server manager the ad-server to be used, increasing (incrementing) a dispatch counter associated with the selected ad-server.
In other embodiments, the method comprises:
A series of drawings which aid in better understanding the invention and which are expressly related with an embodiment of said invention, presented as a non-limiting example thereof, are very briefly described below.
As shown in the
The present invention may be embodied in other specific forms without departing from its spirit or essential characteristics. The described embodiments are to be considered in all respects only as illustrative and not restrictive. The scope of the invention is, therefore, indicated by the appended claims rather than by the foregoing description. All changes which come within the meaning and range of equivalency of the claims are to be embraced within their scope.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| P200930545 | Jul 2009 | ES | national |
