Patent Application
20080027800
Features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of exemplary embodiments thereof taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
Referring now to
Each of the user systems 114a-114n, the advertisement publication system 116, and the query server system 112 included in the computer system 100 may be connected to the communication medium 118 by any one of a variety of connections as may be provided and supported in accordance with the type of communication medium 118. The processors included in the user computer systems 114a-114n, the advertisement publication system 116, and the query server system 112 may be one or more of proprietary or commercially-available, single or multi-processor systems, such as an Intel-based processor, IBM mainframe or other type of commercially available processor able to support incoming traffic in accordance with each particular embodiment and application.
It should be noted that the particulars of the hardware and software that may be included in an embodiment of the user systems 114a-114n, the advertisement publication system 116, and the query server system 112 are described herein in more detail. However, the particulars may vary in accordance with each embodiment. Each of the user computers 114a-114n, the advertisement publication system 116, as well as the query server system 112, may all be located at the same physical site, or, alternatively, may also be located in different physical locations. The communication medium that may be used to provide the different types of connections between the user computer systems and the query server system of the computer system 100 may use any one or more of a variety of different communication protocols such as SCSI, ESCON, Fibre Channel, or GIGE (Gigabit Ethernet), and the like. Some or all of the connections by which the user systems 114a-114n, the advertisement publication system 116, and the query server system 112 may be connected to the communication medium 118 may pass through other communication devices, such as switching equipment that may exist such as a phone line, a repeater, a multiplexer or even a satellite.
Referring now to
In one example, a graphical user interface (GUI) may be displayed on an output device of the user system 114a, such as a terminal with a display screen. A user may input data, such as in connection with a request to the advertisement publication system to purchase an advertisement or perform a data query on the query server system, using a keyboard and/or mouse. The user data may be communicated to the appropriate destination over the connection 118, such as, for example, a user's data query may be communicated to the query server system 112 over the connection 118 which may be the Internet. Results may be communicated from the query server system to the user system 114a and displayed on an output device of the user system 114a.
Referring now to
As with the user system 114a, the query server system 112 and the advertisement publication system 116, described in more detail in following paragraphs, may be any one of variety of different configurations of hardware and/or software components determined in accordance with the parameters of the particular server system. For example, a server system embodiment may not include a router and may include only a single system, such as computer system 154a connected to data storage 160.
Referring now to
It should be noted that the particular hardware and/or software components included in an embodiment of the advertisement publication system 116 may vary in accordance with each embodiment. For example, one embodiment of the advertisement publication system 116 may include a hardware configuration similar to that as described in connection with the query server system 112 of
Referring still to
The advertisement registration system 200 is used in connection with registering an advertiser who is interested in purchasing an advertisement for display. In one embodiment, the advertiser or vendor may issue a request, such as from a user system 114a, over communication medium 118 to the advertisement publication system 116. The communication medium 118 used may be the Internet. The user system 114a may be executing a browser which issues a request over the Internet to the advertising publication system 116. In this example, the advertisement registration system 200 may respond by sending one or more HTML pages for display at the user's system 114a. The HTML pages may include a data entry form interface including a request for one or more fields of information for registration as an advertiser on the advertisement publication system 116. One of the requested pieces of information or data that may be entered through the user system 114a with the web browser includes one or more advertisement terms to be associated with the advertisement. The one or more advertisement terms may be used by the vendor to describe the particular service or product for which an advertisement is being purchased. The advertisement may later be displayed to a user.
In the embodiments described herein, the advertisement may be displayed to a subsequent user as a pop-up electronic advertisement in which the user makes no purposeful actions to solicit the advertisement. In this example, an advertiser may have selected one or more terms that are associated with the advertisement and related to when the advertisement is displayed. The user may be visiting an Internet site and enter one or more data items that may include the one or more terms, or may be determined by the Internet site to be related to the one or more terms. In response, the Internet site may utilize targeted electronic advertising techniques and display the advertisement to the user. In another example, a user may be visiting an Internet site, for example, to look for a restaurant in a particular location. The user may enter information, such as a particular restaurant type ( e.g., Italian, Chinese, and the like), and a location (e.g., city and state). In response, the website may provide a list of restaurants and possibly an associated electronic advertisement. The advertiser may have previously selected, for example, to have their advertisement associated with the particular restaurant type which may be included in the user-specified information, or otherwise may be determined as related to the previously selected advertisement terms.
Once the advertiser has entered all of the data, the data including the one or more advertisement terms is sent over the Internet 118 to the advertisement registration system 200. The advertisement registration system 200 interacts with the term selection tool 204 to provide a list of one or more alternative suggestions to the one or more advertisement terms. These alternative suggestions may include other terms providing a broader classification within which the advertiser entered terms are included. Thus, the advertisement may be displayed to a larger number of users. The alternative suggestions may also include synonyms or related terms.
In one embodiment, an advertiser may optionally elect to have the term selection tool 204 provide one or more alternative suggestions based on the one or more advertisement terms by selecting an option provided in the data entry form. For example, the advertiser may realize that they have a very specific product or service. The advertiser may know that a very small number of user queries or user data items may contain the actual or identical terms entered by the advertiser. The advertiser wishes to have the advertisement displayed a larger number of times and may seek alternative, broader terms that may be entered by more users. The advertiser may also be seeking different wording to describe their particular product or service and may also be looking to have their advertisement displayed in response to user queries that do not necessarily include broader terms, but rather may include synonyms for those one or more advertisement terms. For example, an advertiser may wish to purchase an advertisement for a sandwich business. The advertiser may also want to have the advertisement associated with the synonyms or related terms “hero”, “submarine” and “hoagie”. Alternatively, the advertiser may want the advertisement associated with broader terms, such as “catering”, rather than terms that may be characterized as synonyms.
It should be noted that the advertisement publication system 116 may be one component included at an Internet site, for example, such as an Internet site at which a user may look for a restaurant, a type of service, or a product similar to the way one may use a phone book. However, it should be noted that techniques described herein are not limited for use with this type of service or system and maybe used in connection with any type of electronic advertisement system.
In response to the advertiser requesting alternative suggestions to the particular terms entered, the term selection tool may interact with the search engine 202 to provide a list of alternative suggestions. In this embodiment, the term selection tool 204 invokes the search engine 202 with the advertiser supplied term or terms. The search engine 202 searches one or more documents for the advertiser's terms. In this example of
The search engine 202 returns a predetermined number of documents that include the advertiser's entered terms. The particular number of documents selected may vary in accordance with each embodiment and may also be entered as part of the advertiser information using a user interface. After the search engine 202 has determined the one or more documents that include the terms specified by the advertiser, the search engine 202 invokes a categorization tool 220 to determine the one or more categories associated with each of the documents selected by the search engine 202 as including the terms entered by the advertiser.
It should be noted that the categorization tool 220 included in one embodiment may be characterized as an automatic categorization tool which performs dynamic or on-the-fly categorization as part of processing the advertiser's request. In other words, the categorization may happen as a real time processing step, for example, while the advertiser is waiting at his or her terminal or other display device for a list of the alternative suggestions. As known in the art, there are any one of a variety of automatic categorization techniques that may be used.
It should be noted that the search engine 202 may utilize any one of the variety of different searching techniques. Additionally, it should be noted that the search engine 202 may be a third party search engine. The advertisement publication system 116 may subscribe and use the services of the search engine 202 of the third party. This search engine may be included at the same site as the advertisement publication system 116, or alternatively, may be included at an alternate Internet site such as the query server system 112. For example, in one embodiment, the advertisement publication system 116 may subscribe to the searching services of Google™, Alta Vista™, and the like.
In this embodiment, the search engine 202 may be located at the same site or on the same system as the advertisement publication system 116. In the example embodiment of
In another embodiment, the documents may be stored in a database, such as a commercial database, and the query interface provided by this database may be used in connection with performing the search for the advertiser's terms.
The term selection tool 204 may then use as an input the documents and a list of the associated categories to provide a list of alternative suggested terms to the advertiser. The particular techniques in one embodiment that may be used in connection with producing this list of alternative suggestions using the categories are described in more detail in following paragraphs.
Referring now to
Alternatively, the advertisement publication system 116 may have a particular partnering or other type of relationship with the query server system 112 in which the advertisement publication system 116 also subscribes to the query services of the query server system 112. In the event that the advertisement publication system 116 has partnering or another special relationship with the query server system 112, the advertisement publication system 116 may also be able to obtain a list of associated categories such that the process of determining the categories associated with each of the documents is also performed by the query server system 112. The query server system 112 may provide to the advertisement publication systems the actual documents, as well as the associated categories for each of the documents. Alternatively, if the advertisement publication system, for example, does not have a partnering or other special relationship with the query server system 112, the query server system 112 may return to the advertisement publication system the documents including the advertiser's terms. Then, the categorization of those documents may be performed by the categorization tool 220 included in the advertisement publication system 116. The associated categories determined for each of the documents 206 and used as input to the term selection tool 204 are produced as an output of the categorization tool 220 of
It should be noted that the foregoing categorization of documents may be performed dynamically in response to the advertiser's request. Alternatively, an embodiment, such as the embodiment of the advertisement publication system 116 described in connection with
In the embodiments described herein, the categorization of each of the documents may be determined using the categorization tool 220. Alternatively, the categorization of each of the documents may also be performed manually or some combination of manual and/or automatic. Additionally, an embodiment may choose to perform some or all of the categorization as a pre-processing or offline processing step rather than at the time the advertiser makes a request for alternative term suggestions. This may vary in accordance with each embodiment.
Referring now to
Referring now to
It should be noted that any one of the variety of different data structures and representations, as well as any one of the variety of different automatic and/or manual categorization techniques, may be used. The representations of
What has been described are a variety of different techniques that may be used in obtaining a list of documents and their associated categories. Once this has been determined, term selection tool 204 may begin processing to determine a list of relevant categories which may be supplied to the advertiser as alternative term suggestions. It should be noted that the advertiser may select a particular quantity of alternative terms to be supplied. Alternatively, a default number of suggested alternative terms may be displayed to the advertiser. Similarly, other parameters, such as the number of documents used in the query, may rely on an advertiser supplied value for the parameter, or a default value.
It should be noted that the term selection tool may use any one of a variety of different techniques in ranking the categories. What will now be described is one particular technique that may be used in connection with ranking the categories to determine a weighted relevancy metric based on the number of documents retrieved which include a specific category. The relevancy metric for each category may be represented as:
COUNT*SPECIFICITY
where the COUNT may be determined by counting the number of documents retrieved which include a specific category. How SPECIFICITY may be determined is described in more detail in following paragraphs.
It should be noted that an embodiment may also rank categories using other metrics, such as only using the COUNT described above.
Referring now to
1/log(count)
where “log” is the mathematical logarithm of the count as indicated in the representation 300. Alternatively, an embodiment may use a SPECIFICITY which is a weighted value of a ratio in which the numerator of this ratio is the count associated with each category. The denominator may be, for example, the frequency count associated with highest ranked parent node in that particular classification or the node closest to the root nodes. For example, the weighting factor for SWIMMING POOL may have a SPECIFICITY of 500/100,000. Similarly, the SPECIFICITY for HEALTH CLUB is 10,000/100,000 and for POOL 1,000/100,000. The category of HEALTH is the first level beneath the root node in the classification or categorization tree 240 of
It should be noted that any one of a variety of different techniques may be used in connection with determining a set of categories which are organized, for example, in a hierarchical or other configuration for use in performing categorization. It should also be noted that any one of a variety of different techniques may be used in determining a list of categories to use in the embodiments described herein. For example, one embodiment may determine a category list in accordance with a predetermined standard, such as the Standard Industry Classification (SIC) list of categories. Categories may also be manually and/or empirically determined.
Other embodiments may use other techniques in connection with determining weighting factors for each of the different categories that may vary in accordance with each embodiment as well as the representation and organization of the categories themselves. For example, an embodiment may use a first technique in connection with determining the weighting factor when using a hierarchical category arrangement and may utilize a second different technique in an embodiment in which a flat or non-hierarchical category structure is used.
It should also be noted that the documents which are searched and used may come from one or more sites or sources. For example, an embodiment may use or subscribe to the services of the query services from 112 which may use one set of documents to produce a list of categories. Additionally, the advertisement publication system 116 may perform another query in addition to using the services of the query server system 112 using a different set of documents. This different set of documents may be stored, for example, locally on the advertisement publication system 116, or alternatively, the advertisement publication system may subscribe to the services of more than one query server system to have multiple lists of documents.
Once the categories have been ranked, in one embodiment the list of categories and associated rankings may be sent from the term selection tool 204 to the advertisement registration system 200 for formation and arrangement into the form of an HTML page. The advertisement registration system 200 may then return this HTML page including the alternative suggested terms to the browser executing on the user system. The HTML page may then be displayed and the advertiser may select from the ranked categories one or more alternative terms to be associated with the advertisement.
As described elsewhere herein, depending on what the advertiser wishes to accomplish, the advertiser may select more general terms to be associated with their advertisement. For example, referring back to
The advertiser may pay a particular price, for example, the more general the term, or the greater the number of terms that the advertiser selects to be associated with their particular advertisement to increase the chances of it being displayed to a user performing a query. The advertiser may use the information provided via the alternative suggested terms or categories to also select synonyms. A synonym of a term, for example, may not be hierarchically above the term. For example, if the advertiser initially enters the terms “swimming pool,” the advertiser may not wish to select “pool” or a broader category, but may alternatively select other phrases such as “hot tub” or “lap pool” to also be associated with their particular advertisement. Using the techniques described herein, an advertiser may select more general terms providing broader exposure of their advertisement, or, alternatively, may select more specific phrasing or synonyms, for example, that may occur at the same or lower level than the categorical tree arrangement.
Using the techniques described herein, the advertiser may cause the execution of the same processing steps as an end user searching for a restaurant or other particular service or product which displays the advertisement such as those entered by the advertiser through the system 116 using the techniques described herein.
Referring now to
If a determination is made at step 404 that the advertisement publication system 116 will perform its own query using its own document set, control proceeds to step 405 where the query is performed. As a result of executing step 405 or 406, the documents including the advertiser's specified terms have been determined.
At step 408, a determination is made as to whether the advertisement publication system 116 has the associated document categories. If so, control proceeds to step 412. Otherwise, control proceeds to step 410 where the categories associated with each of the documents are determined. Recall that, as described herein, any one of a variety of different techniques may be used in connection with determining the categories associated with each of the documents included the advertiser's supplied terms. At step 412, the local variable n is assigned the first category of all of those categories associated with the documents. At step 414, a determination is made as to whether all of the categories have been processed. If not, control proceeds to step 416 where the relevancy or ranking of the nth category is determined. As described elsewhere herein, the relevancy or ranking of the nth category may be determined using any one of a variety of different techniques, including those described herein as well as others known to those of ordinary skill in the art. Subsequently, control proceeds to step 418 where n is assigned to the next category of the documents determined to include the advertiser's terms, and control proceeds to step 414. This processing continues through each of the categories until, at step 414, it has been determined that all categories have been processed. When a yes determination is made at step 414 such that all categories have been processed, a relevancy factor or ranking has been determined for each of the categories associated with the documents that include the advertiser's terms entered at step 402. Subsequently, at step 420, the relevancy ranking of the categories may be displayed to the advertiser and at step 422 the advertiser may select one or more categories for association with their advertisement.
It should be noted that prior to executing step 420, an embodiment may perform selection of a subset of the categories that have just been ranked in accordance with the relevancy. For example, an advertiser may have selected an option to have the top 20 relevant categories displayed as alternative suggestions to the one or more terms entered at step 402. In this instance, the advertisement publication system 116 may include additional processing step prior to step 420 in which the categories are sorted by decreasing relevancy or ranking metric. Then the advertisement publication system selects a subset of the top m elements or categories where m may be determined, for example, in accordance with the advertiser specified parameter value as well as, for example, a default parameter value.
It should be noted that the format and contents of the suggested term alternatives may vary in accordance with each embodiment. Described elsewhere herein is a ranked list of categories that may be used as alternative terms associated with an advertisement. An embodiment may also display categories in accordance with one of the particular category structures, for example, of
While the invention has been described and illustrated in connection with certain preferred embodiments, many variations and modifications as will be evident to those skilled in the art may be made therein without departing from the spirit of the invention, and the invention is thus not to be limited to the precise details of construction set forth above.
