Patent Application
20080270521
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to handling client requests in a client server system, and in particular to coordinating processing of service request content and auxiliary response data.
2. Description of the Related Art
As use of the World Wide Web (WWW) and other large-scale online computer services becomes more pervasive, Internet-based advertising has become lucrative. Many of the advertisements now use attention-getting techniques such as animation, sounds, bright colors, etc. Typically, the advertisements are displayed in conjunction with content, such as web pages, requested by end-users. For example, if a user requests a certain web page, the web server will often dynamically generate a markup-language page to serve in response to the request by combining references to one or more advertisements with the content that the user requested. Advertising and other types of inserted supplemental or auxiliary content are generally delivered in the form of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) references within markup language. As is well known, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a specific type of URI. An example of a typical HTML image tag, containing a URI reference to supplemental content, is the reference <img src=“www.advertising-server.com/auxiliary-content.gif”>.
Typically, the web server serves the markup language document containing such references to the client, and it is the responsibility of the client to request any referenced supplemental content. This is commonly done during the client browser's rendering operation by making a separate request to each web server hosting the supplemental content. Unfortunately, such content can be extremely distracting and annoying to the end-user. This is especially the case since the supplemental content is usually unsolicited. Moreover, supplemental content with advanced features such as animation and sound can consume resources and slow the loading of the pertinent parts of the web page on the client.
Unsolicited advertisements inserted into desired content may often be found on web portal pages. As known, a portal page is generated at a web “portal” server by portal server software (e.g., WebSphere Portal Server, which is commercially available from International Business Machines Corp. of Armonk, N.Y.). A portal page typically includes sections or visual portlets that each contains certain content formatted according to a user's preferences. For example, a user could establish his/her own portal page that has sections for news, weather and sports. When the portal page is requested, the portal server would obtain the desired content from the appropriate content providers. Once obtained, the content would be aggregated and URI references to advertisements and other supplemental content inserted into the markup language for display in the appropriate sections as a portal web page. This portal technology has lead to the explosion of personalized “home” pages for individual web users.
In general, unsolicited auxiliary data such as contained in advertisements annoys users and many filtering and other techniques have been developed for obscuring or otherwise managing display of such content. For example, many products have been developed for simply blocking unwanted supplemental content. These products, sometimes called “ad blockers,” are usually conditioned upon regular expression matching against a list of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) patterns representing known sources of content to be blocked. The list may also be referred to as a “block list.” Once such content is detected, the current ad blockers either do not retrieve the content referenced by the URI, or retrieve but do not render the content. In either case, the web page displayed to the user may be distorted from what the web designer intended, since the missing content could leave gaps or affect the layout and spacing of the remaining content. Further, if entries in the block list are incorrect, the ad blocker may incorrectly block valid, desired content. This could prevent pertinent content from reaching the users. Even worse, it could prevent a user from ever realizing that pertinent content has been blocked, making it impossible for the user to know that the block list needs to be corrected, and potentially seriously reducing the quality of the web browsing experience.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need for a method, system and program product for improving handling of supplemental server-provided content such as advertisements. The present invention addresses this and other needs unresolved by the prior art.
A system and method for handling client service requests are disclosed herein. In one embodiment, a client service request containing a content request directive and request context data is received at a server-side client interface. A request callback object containing the content request directive and the request context is generated. The callback object is issued to a connection agent that interfaces an auxiliary content channel and a transaction service. Responsive to the connection agent receiving the callback object, an asynchronous service request comprising the content request directive is issued to the transaction service and the callback object is registered with the auxiliary content channel. The auxiliary content channel retrieves auxiliary content that has been selected and prioritized in accordance with the request content. The retrieved auxiliary content is sent during servicing of the asynchronous service request by the transaction service. Responsive to retrieval of data satisfying the content request directive, the sending of retrieved auxiliary content is suspending and the data satisfying the content request directive is sent to the server-side client interface.
The above as well as additional objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent in the following detailed written description.
The novel features believed characteristic of the invention are set forth in the appended claims. The invention itself however, as well as a preferred mode of use, further objects and advantages thereof, will best be understood by reference to the following detailed description of an illustrative embodiment when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
The present invention is directed to addressing problems associated with auxiliary content, such as advertisements included in web page responses, and particularly addresses the parallel delivery of auxiliary content with requested content. Simultaneous delivery and receipt of such auxiliary content results is largely responsible for delays and interruptions in receipt and displayed of requested content. In one aspect, the present invention is directed to a service request handling system that includes a synchronous-asynchronous-synchronous (SAS) bridge engine that includes a server-side interface which receives client services requests specifying content request directives as well as request context data. The SAS bridge engine includes program modules and instructions that generate a callback object that holds client service request data and may be handled asynchronously by a transaction service and an auxiliary content provider. As explained in further detail below, the callback object is utilized by a connection agent to send auxiliary content to the server-side interface and on to the client during pendency of processing of the content request directive for a given client request and halting the auxiliary content upon retrieval of data satisfying the content request directive.
The present invention is preferably implemented in a client-server network architecture that separates requester or master side (i.e. client side) functionality from a service or slave side (i.e. server side functionality).
The hardware architectures underlying servers 105, 107, and 109 may include, but are not limited to, products such as are sold by IBM under the trademarks S/390 SYSPLEX, SP2, or RS6000 systems. Client applications running on clients 102a-102n often includes a graphical user interface, such as provided by a web browser, which enables a user to enter service requests to be sent to and processed by a server application. Typical of requests from clients 102a-102n to be handled by any of service applications with servers 105, 107, and 109 may be service requests including web page accesses, remote file transfers, electronic mail, and transaction support. Among the service applications provided by servers 105, 107, and 109 may be web-page servers, file servers, terminal servers, and mail servers.
Also logically coupled to servers 105, 107, and 109 as well as clients 102a-102n via network 110 is a set of auxiliary content providers 106. In the depicted embodiment, auxiliary content providers 106 collectively represents a variety of possible configurations internal or external to servers 105, 107, and 109 for supplementing service content responses with auxiliary or supplemental content, such as advertising content. Auxiliary content providers 106 may comprise server systems that place advertisements on web sites/pages. Such advertisement serving may include providing program and data software to web sites, including advertising sites, for serving advertisements and tracking statistical and other data relating to serving of the advertisements to determine profitability, for example.
Auxiliary content providers 106 may include a central advertisement server that stores and delivers advertisement content to website requesters (i.e., clients). In one embodiment, the central advertisement server within auxiliary content providers 106 may include a local and/or remote advertisement server. If local, the advertisement server is typically operated by a single publisher and serves advertisement content to that publisher's domains, enabling highly customized formatting and content management by the publisher. If remote, the advertisement server serves advertisement content across domains owned by multiple publishers. The advertisements are preferably delivered from a central source so that advertisers and publishers can track distribution of online advertisements and centrally manage the distribution of the advertisements across the web.
Auxiliary content providers 106 preferably include data and program modules and instructions for providing automated and semi-automated management of the content and distribution of advertisements such as for optimizing advertising placement, targeting, bid prices, etc. Generally, such advertisement management functionality comprises behavioral targeting, context targeting, and other content and distribution optimizations. As part of behavioral targeting, auxiliary content providers 106 may include logic and program modules and instructions for using prior behavior pattern data to select which advertisement to deliver during a given website visit. Auxiliary content provider 106 may also include logic and program modules for performing contextual targeting in which optimal advertisement placement is inferred from data generated in satisfaction of a client request (i.e., requested content). As depicted and explained in further detail below with reference to
Referring to
A peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus bridge 214 connected to I/O bus 212 provides an interface to PCI local bus 216. A number of modems may be connected to PCI local bus 216. Typical PCI bus implementations will support four PCI expansion slots or add-in connectors. Communications links to client nodes 102a-102n in
Additional PCI bus bridges 222 and 224 provide interfaces for additional PCI local buses 226 and 228, from which additional modems or network adapters may be supported. In this manner, data processing system 200 allows connections to multiple network computers. A memory-mapped graphics adapter 230 and hard disk 232 may also be connected to I/O bus 212 as depicted, either directly or indirectly.
Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardware depicted in
The data processing system depicted in
With reference now to
In the depicted example, LAN adapter 312, audio adapter 316, keyboard and mouse adapter 320, modem 322, read only memory (ROM) 324, hard disk drive (HDD) 326, CD-ROM driver 330, universal serial bus (USB) ports and other communications ports 332, and PCI/PCIe devices 334 may be connected to ICH 310. PCI/PCIe devices may include, for example, Ethernet adapters, add-in cards, PC cards for notebook computers, etc. PCI uses a cardbus controller, while PCIe does not. ROM 324 may be, for example, a flash basic input/output system (BIOS). Hard disk drive 326 and CD-ROM drive 330 may use, for example, an integrated drive electronics (IDE) or serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) interface. A super I/O (SIO) device 336 may be connected to ICH 310.
An operating system runs on processor 302 and is used to coordinate and provide control of various components within data processing system 300. The operating system may be a commercially available operating system such as AIX®. An object oriented programming system, such as the Java® programming system, may run in conjunction with the operating system and provides calls to the operating system from Java® programs or applications executing on data processing system 300.
Instructions for the operating system, the object-oriented programming system, and applications or programs are located on storage devices, such as hard disk drive 326, and may be loaded into main memory 304 for execution by processor 302. The processes of the present invention may be performed by processor 302 using computer implemented instructions, which may be stored and loaded from a memory such as, for example, main memory 304, memory 324, or in one or more peripheral devices 326 and 330.
Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardware in
Data processing system 300 may be a personal digital assistant (PDA), which is configured with flash memory to provide non-volatile memory for storing operating system files and/or user-generated data. The depicted example in
With reference to
In the depicted embodiment, SAS bridge engine 425 includes a synchronous network interface 404 such as may be implemented by a network interface card that receives client service requests from customer node 402 over a network (not depicted) and which is the interface point across which corresponding service responses are delivered to customer node 402. Encapsulated in a typical client service request, such as a webpage request, is a content request directive that specifies the object of the client request/call. The content request directive for a webpage request includes the address of the requested page, for example. Server 405 further includes a transaction service module 415, such as a webpage server service, that directly addresses the content request directive such as by retrieving the content of the requested webpage to be delivered to customer node 402.
In addition to the content request directive, client service requests from customer node 402 typically include request context data. Such request context data is generally characterized as describing, identifying or in some manner characterizing the context framing the content request directive such as it may relate to the human requestor, the requesting node, or the content request itself. Such context data may therefore include behavioral pattern data such as may be collected and tracked with respect to a specified user or node relating to website visited, data accessed, etc. Such context data is often utilized to make more informed targeted advertising decisions.
The request context data is processed within SAS bridge engine 425 using an auxiliary content channel 410 which is communicatively coupled to an advertisement serving system 412. Auxiliary content channel 410 uses various request context data such as website history data and data secondarily derived from such history such as used to build a user profile, to selectively pass auxiliary data into responses from server 405 to clients such as customer node 402. In
As depicted and explained with reference to
Callback object 406 contains the content request directive and request context data included in the client service request and is passed to a connection agent module 408 which initiates a service request reply daemon in association with callback object 406 as illustrated at step 508. The replay daemon places an effective hold on sending content requested in the content request directive portion of the service request and continuously monitors the status of content request processing performed by transaction service 415. Upon receiving callback object 406 and initiating the request replay daemon, connection agent 408 registers callback object 406 with auxiliary content channel 410 and issues the content request directive to transaction service 415. The daemon-tracked hold placed on sending content requested in the content request directive portion of the service request results in transaction service 415 retrieving the requested webpage content in an asynchronous manner with respect to other parts of the request session, and in particular with respect to sending auxiliary (i.e., non-requested) content (step 510).
Auxiliary content channel 410 is communicatively coupled to an auxiliary content miner module 420 within advertisement serving system 412. Auxiliary content miner 420 comprises content search/filter modules in the form of a sponsor match module 416 and a content match module 414. In association with registering callback object 406, auxiliary content channel 410 receives and utilizes the request context data included in callback object 406 to retrieve advertisement content from content miner module 420 and insert the retrieved content into callback object 406 to be sent back to customer 402 (step 514). Specifically, auxiliary content channel 410 reads and, if necessary, translates the context data which is then used by sponsor match module 416 and content match module 420 to identify and select advertising content that in a prioritized manner in accordance with user/client/request specific context data. In this manner, the selected, prioritized advertising content is delivered synchronously with respect to request session processing pending processing of the content request by transaction service 415.
As illustrated at steps 516 and 514, the sending of selected auxiliary content continues until the request reply daemon is signaled by transaction service 415 that the requested content has been retrieved in accordance with the content request directive and is ready to be sent to the requesting customer 402. In an alternate embodiment, retrieval of the requested content by transaction service 415 may be estimated such as by using a gap prediction mechanism implemented by connection agent 408 in which for a previous number of one or more similar client request transactions, the time period for processing a content request directive is recorded. An average response time may be computed from the recorded transaction time periods and utilized as the estimate of the time required for transaction service 415 to process a next content request directive. The gap prediction estimate of when transaction service processing terminates may preferably be utilized to adaptively adjust the period over which auxiliary content is sent such as for client requests having longer than expected response times.
Upon receiving an indication from transaction service 415 such as via the request reply daemon or by a timer set by connection agent 406 using gap prediction that data requested in the content request directive has been located and is ready to send, connection manager 408 sends the retrieved webpage content to customer 402 via synchronous interface 404 as depicted at steps 518 and 520. The client request session concludes with the daemon being released process ends as shown at steps 522 and 524.
Referring now to
Also, and in cooperation with auxiliary data miner 420, auxiliary content channel 410 determines auxiliary content that is eligible to be sent to customer 402 as part of the server response as shown at step 606. The identification/determination of auxiliary content shown at step 606 preferably includes extracting user request context contained in the request context data contained in the original client service request. Auxiliary data miner 420 utilizes matching engines 416 and 414 to make target decisions as to the appropriate auxiliary content to extract from advertisement content 418 to provide a more user-targeted and request-targeted response.
Next, auxiliary content channel 410 selectively prioritizes the eligible advertisement content (step 610) to be passed via callback object 406 to customer 402 (step 612). In one embodiment, such prioritization includes first identifying and categorizing advertising content that is “required” from optional advertising content. Second, the prioritization entails sequentially prioritizing the optional advertising content so that the most important among the optional content is sent earlier. The required/optional categorization is utilized to sequentially issue, in accordance with available bandwidth, the advertising content beginning as shown at step 612.
As illustrated at steps 614 and 612, auxiliary content channel 410 and connection agent 408 continue to pass the selected, categorically prioritized advertising to customer 402 via synchronous interface 404 during retrieval of webpage content by transaction service 415. Responsive to receiving a signal from transaction service 415 indicating that the webpage content has been retrieved and is ready to send, connection agent 408 halts sending the advertising content (step 616) and begins sending the requested webpage content (step 618). The halting or suspension of auxiliary content at step 616 may be imposed responsive to a transaction service signal or by a close connection timer such as implemented by the gap prediction mechanism previously described for a continuous request stream. The webpage content transfer continues until the content request has been satisfied (step 620). Following transfer of the webpage content in satisfaction of the content request directive, connection agent completes sending advertising content categorized at step 610 as required (step 626).
If due to input/output (I/O) management or otherwise, the webpage content transfer shown at step 618 is temporarily suspended before completion (step 622), connection agent 408 restarts the request reply daemon and again commences sending the prioritized advertising content during the suspended state of transaction service 415 (step 624). The request reply daemon again detects when transaction service 415 is ready to continue sending the requested data at which point the process passes back to step 620 and ends as shown at step 628.
The previously described systems and methods enable more convenient and efficient administration of auxiliary content due to the logical and temporal separation of the content and auxiliary content data streams. In this manner, the present invention provides a more user friendly and targeted service request response mechanism that integrates auxiliary content and requested content using the SAS bridge that coordinates two distinct processing streams in the service request processing loop.
The disclosed methods may be readily implemented in software using object or object-oriented software development environments that provide portable source code that can be used on a variety of computer or workstation hardware platforms. In this instance, the methods and systems of the invention can be implemented as a routine embedded on a personal computer such as a Java or CGI script, as a resource residing on a server or graphics workstation, as a routine embedded in a dedicated source code editor management system, or the like.
While the invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to a preferred embodiment, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and detail may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. These alternate implementations all fall within the scope of the invention.
