Patent Application
20090187463
The present invention relates generally to providing location-based advertisement content, and more particularly to providing location-based advertisement content to mobile device users based on user profile information.
Mobile devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular telephones, smartphones, etc., have enjoyed dramatic increases in popularity in recent times with wireless carriers continually offering new services and content to their mobile subscribers, such as online gaming, Internet browsing, online shopping and social networking.
In the advertising industry there is an ever-present desire to reach potential consumers in new and more effective ways. To that end, advertisers have begun to appreciate the need to reach mobile device users, particularly given that such users are reachable wherever they may be and at virtually any time. However, while such users may be easily reachable, there is a concern that unwanted or irrelevant advertisements may result in a negative reaction from consumers who have grown accustomed to using their mobile devices without the intrusions of advertisements. Thus, while there have been some efforts to push advertising content to mobile device users, such efforts have failed in large part to their inability to provide sufficiently personalized advertising content. The data suggests that the more relevant and directed the advertisement, the less likely it is to be viewed as an annoyance to the consumer. Accordingly, there is a need for a way to provide more directed and personalized advertising content to mobile device users.
Disclosed and claimed herein is a method and server for providing advertising content to a mobile device. In one embodiment, a method includes receiving current location information for the mobile device over a wireless network connection, accessing user profile information corresponding to a user of the mobile device, performing an advertising database lookup based on the current location information and the user profile information, and selecting advertising content based on the advertising database lookup. The method further includes transmitting the advertising content to the mobile device over the wireless network connection.
Other aspects, features, and techniques of the invention will be apparent to one skilled in the relevant art in view of the following description of the exemplary embodiments of the invention.
The present disclosure relates generally to selecting and presenting advertising content to a mobile device user based on user location information in combination with user profile information. In certain embodiments, user profile information may be received during a signup process, or alternatively based on the user's online activities.
One aspect of the invention is to provide user location information for a given mobile device to an advertisement server over a network connection. Additionally, user profile information, corresponding to the historical online activities of the mobile device's user, is also provided to the advertisement server. In one embodiment, the user profile information may also include historical location information for the given mobile device.
Another aspect of the invention is to use current location information, in combination with profile information, to perform a database lookup for the most relevant advertising content available. In one embodiment, this database lookup operation may comprise a two-step filtration operation of an advertising database based first on the user profile information, and then on the user's current location information. In this fashion, advertisements that are most likely to be of interest to the user at the current time may be selected and provided to the user's mobile device.
As used herein, the terms “a” or “an” shall mean one or more than one. The term “plurality” shall mean two or more than two. The term “another” is defined as a second or more. The terms “including” and/or “having” are open ended (e.g., comprising). The term “or” as used herein is to be interpreted as inclusive or meaning any one or any combination. Therefore, “A, B or C” means “any of the following: A; B; C; A and B; A and C; B and C; A, B and C”. An exception to this definition will occur only when a combination of elements, functions, steps or acts are in some way inherently mutually exclusive. Reference throughout this document to “one embodiment”, “certain embodiments”, “an embodiment” or similar term means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment of the present invention. Thus, the appearances of such phrases in various places throughout this specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment. Furthermore, the particular features, structures, or characteristics may be combined in any suitable manner on one or more embodiments without limitation.
In accordance with the practices of persons skilled in the art of computer programming, the invention is described below with reference to operations that are performed by a computer system or a like electronic system. Such operations are sometimes referred to as being computer-executed. It will be appreciated that operations that are symbolically represented include the manipulation by a processor, such as a central processing unit, of electrical signals representing data bits and the maintenance of data bits at memory locations, such as in system memory, as well as other processing of signals. The memory locations where data bits are maintained are physical locations that have particular electrical, magnetic, optical, or organic properties corresponding to the data bits.
When implemented in software, the elements of the invention are essentially the code segments to perform the necessary tasks. The code segments can be stored in a processor readable medium, which may include any medium that can store or transfer information. Examples of the processor readable mediums include an electronic circuit, a semiconductor memory device, a read-only memory (ROM), a flash memory or other non-volatile memory, a floppy diskette, a CD-ROM, an optical disk, a hard disk, a fiber optic medium, a radio frequency (RF) link, etc.
The mobile device 110 includes a display 115, a user input 120 and a location client 125, which in one embodiment comprises one or more software modules configured to determine and process location information, such as global positioning system (GPS) information. While in one embodiment, the display 115 may be a liquid crystal display (LCD), it should equally be appreciated that any other type of display consistent with the principles of the invention may be used. The user input 120 may include one or more buttons or keys in the form of a keypad, number pad, keyboard or any other collection of individual keys, buttons or the like. In another embodiment, the user input 120 may be integrated with the display 115 in the form of a touch screen. In a typical embodiment, the mobile device 110 will be a resource-limited device, with limited processing and/or data storage capabilities.
Continuing to refer to
Communication system 100 further includes an Internet Protocol (IP) network 140 providing communication paths between the mobile device 110, content servers 1451-145n and advertisement server 155. While
System 100 further includes an optional speech recognition server 150, which may be used instead of, or in addition to, the aforementioned optional speech-to-text application 130 in order parse users' spoken input into the text-based equivalent.
Content servers 1451-145n may include any server capable of providing online content over IP network 120, including audio content, video content, streaming media, music, gaming-based content, transaction-based content (e.g., online purchasing), text-based content, graphics-based content and any combination thereof. In addition, advertisement server 155 may be configured to provide advertising content to the mobile device 110, as will be described in more detail below with reference to
In one embodiment, advertising server 155 may include a profile database 155 or collection of databases configured to maintain user profile information for a plurality of users (e.g., user of mobile device 110). For example, the profile database may maintain profile information associated with a given mobile user's online activities. Such profile database 155 may include a collection of individual demographic characteristics, such as age, social class, gender, race, income, educational attainment, home ownership, employment status, etc. In addition, such user profile information may include historical location information provided by the mobile device 110 using, for example, the location client 125. In addition, the user profile information may include any online habits a user, such as browsing habits, emailing or texting habits, etc. It should further be appreciated that such profile information may be based on communications made by the user, including the content of emails and text messages, as well as the content of spoken communications that have been converted to text using the speech-to-text application 130 and/or the speech recognition server 155. While the profile database is shown as being integrated with the advertisement server, it may alternatively be integrated with a separate server that is also coupled to the IP network 120.
In addition to the profile database 165, advertising server 155 may further include ad database 160 which, in one embodiment, may include advertising content to be served to user devices, such as mobile device 110. Such advertising content may include audio advertisements, video advertisements, text-based advertisements, graphics-based advertisements and any combination thereof.
Referring now to
Process 200 may then continue to block 230 where user profile data may be determined. Such user profile data may include music or video downloading history/habits and/or online purchase history/habits. The spectrum of possible online actions usable to infer profile data may further include a subject user's history or habits for browsing, emailing, texting, social interacting, fantasy sports activities, auctions, personals, navigation and news selection. Essentially, the forms of user activities that can be used to infer profile data are as varied as the types of activities which can be catalogued in a user profile.
Another example of user profile information may be based on user communications, including the actual content of emails and text messages. Such communications may be parsed by an application executing on the mobile device (e.g., one of applications 135), or alternatively on the advertisement server (e.g., ad server 150). In either case, one or more keywords may be transmitted, as profile data, to the advertising server for updating the given user's profile information. Similarly, spoken communications may be converted to text (e.g., using the speech-to-text application 130 and/or the speech recognition server 155 of
Continuing to refer to
Referring now to
Process 300 may then continue to block 330 where a user profile that is associated with a given mobile device, may be updated based on the received user location information of block 310 and/or the user profile data of block 320. In this fashion, a historical record of the user's online habits and physical locations may be maintained.
Referring now to
Upon receiving the location information of block 410, process 400 may continue to block 320 where the user profile corresponding to the given mobile device may be accessed (e.g., from profile database 165). While in one embodiment, this lookup operation may be performed using an identification code transmitted with the location information, it should equally be appreciated that numerous other methods may be similarly employed. For example, a location client (e.g., location client 125) executing on the mobile device may forward the location information to the advertisement server over a persistent connection and/or according to a particular data format.
Once the appropriate user profile information has been accessed at block 420, process 400 may continue to block 430 where a lookup operation of an advertisement database (e.g., ad database 160) may be performed based on a combination of the current location information received at block 410, and the user profile information accessed at block 420. As previously described, the profile information may comprise a historical record of the user's locations, such as areas frequently visited, as well as the user's online habits. Such habits may include such things as music or video downloading, online purchases, browsing, emailing, texting, social interacting, fantasy sports activities, auctions, personals and/or news selection history/habits.
In one embodiment, the database lookup operation of 430 may comprise a two-step filtration operation of the ad database. Namely, the first operation may comprise filtering a pool of all available advertisements based on the user profile information, thereby identifying advertisements that are most likely to be of interest generally for the user in question. Thereafter, a second operation may be performed in which this subset of advertisements may be further filtered based on the user's current location information, and hence identify advertisements that are most likely to be of interest to the user at the current time based on the user's current position.
Based on the results of the lookup operation of block 430, process 400 may continue to block 440 where advertising content may be selected from an advertising database (e.g., ad database 160). As previously mentioned, such advertising content may comprise audio advertisements, video advertisements, text-based advertisements, graphics-based advertisements and any combination thereof.
Process 400 may then continue to block 450 where the selected advertising content may be transmitted over the network connection to the user's mobile device. In one embodiment, the selected advertising content is transmitted over a wireless network connection to a mobile device, such as over carrier network 105 and/or IP network 140 to mobile device 110). In this fashion, the most relevant advertising content may be made available to mobile device users. That is, advertisements that are most likely to be of interest to the user at their current location may be identified and provided to the user.
Although the wireless communications described above with respect to
While the invention has been described in connection with various embodiments, it should be understood that the invention is capable of further modifications. This application is intended to cover any variations, uses or adaptation of the invention following, in general, the principles of the invention, and including such departures from the present disclosure as come within the known and customary practice within the art to which the invention pertains.
