The present invention relates generally to providing advertising content over a network, and more particularly, but not exclusively, to selecting an advertisement based on relative scarcity of inventory for an advertisement campaign.
Online advertising is often an important source of revenue for enterprises engaged in electronic commerce. A number of different kinds of page-based online advertisements are currently in use, along with various associated distribution requirements, advertising metrics, and pricing mechanisms. Processes associated with technologies such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) enable a page to be configured to contain a location for inclusion of an advertisement. The advertisement can be selected dynamically each time the page is requested for display, for example, by a browser application.
One common variety of online advertisement is the banner advertisement, which generally features an image (animated or static) and/or text displayed at a predetermined location or position in a page. A banner advertisement usually takes the form of a horizontal rectangle at the top of the page, but it can also be arranged in a variety of other shapes at another location in the page. Typically, if a user, interacting by way of a browser application, clicks on the location, image, and/or text of the banner advertisement, the user is taken to a new page that may provide detailed information regarding the products or services associated with the banner advertisement.
Banner advertisements, as well as other kinds of advertisements, are often provided to network users on a guaranteed number of impressions basis. An “impression” may be defined as a single advertisement presented to a user. Typically, an advertiser engages a provider of advertisement services to deliver a specified total number of impressions to a targeted audience, or on a particular page associated with a certain audience, over a predetermined period of time associated with an advertisement campaign. Targeting of an audience may be based on demographic criteria, inferred user interests, or other criteria. The set of advertisement impressions to be delivered in a campaign to a targeted audience profile may be referred to as an “advertisement line.”
When a provider of advertisement services receives a request for an advertisement to be included in a web page, the provider may select from among several qualifying advertisement lines to fulfill the request. Advertisement lines that compete for a location in a page may differ with respect to the scope of their associated targeted audiences are (for example, “women aged 55+ in Rhode Island who like sports cars” as opposed to “users interested in cars”). Generally, more narrowly targeted advertisement lines are associated with smaller impression inventory and higher pricing.
Non-limiting and non-exhaustive embodiments are described with reference to the following drawings. In the drawings, like reference numerals refer to like parts throughout the various figures unless otherwise specified.
For a better understanding of the principles disclosed herein, reference will be made to the following detailed description, which is to be read in association with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
Reference will now be made to the accompanying drawings, which form a part hereof, and which show, by way of illustration, specific exemplary embodiments. The principles described herein may, however, be embodied in many different forms, and this specification should not be construed to limit the claims. Rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete to those skilled in the art.
A technique for establishing a priority for an advertisement line based on a determination of the relative scarcity of inventory for the advertisement line is disclosed. In one example, depending on the nature of the advertisement line or advertisement campaign, “inventory” for a given advertisement line may include a predicted number of impressions available for display to users at a specific location in a specific page, and for a specified period of time. Inventory may be determined based on historical advertisement delivery information. The relative scarcity determination may be referred to as the “incidence level” of the advertisement line. A lower incidence level (i.e., greater relative scarcity of available inventory) may be associated with a more narrowly or specifically targeted advertisement line. For example, an advertisement campaign targeting “men 25-34 in San Diego interested in computers” would generally have a lower incidence level than a campaign targeting “men 25-34 in California,” which in turn would generally have a lower incidence level than a campaign that broadly targeted “men 25-34.”
In one embodiment, incidence is determined based on the predicted available inventory for an advertisement line in relation to total available inventory for a plurality of advertisement lines, such as all active advertisement lines that qualify for inclusion in locations in a set of pages for which advertisement services are provided, such as a portal site or a set of related sites. Additionally, or alternatively, incidence may be determined by dividing the predicted inventory for the advertisement line by a constant number. The number could represent the total ad inventory on the portal, the total ad inventory on the web network, or other values. For an advertisement line that qualifies for a given location in a page but has no associated inventory information, an average of the incidence levels of other advertisement lines qualifying for the page location may be employed as its incidence value. A default incidence value, such as a lowest incidence value, may be used, for example, with a page location that is newly-configured for placement of advertisements. Other values and method may also be used.
The assigned priority may be employed in selecting from among competing advertisement lines for a given location in a page (such as a web page) that is requested over a network. A priority determined in such a manner may be used along with other forms of advertisement line prioritization and other kinds of advertisement selection criteria, such as inferred user profile information, in providing an advertisement for display over the network. Priorities may be assigned to guaranteed impression-based advertisement lines, including banner advertisement lines enabling more narrowly targeted advertisement lines to be given relatively higher priority in selection, which can improve the delivery performance for the advertisement campaigns associated with those lines. Because a lower incidence is generally associated with more narrowly targeted advertisement lines, incidence-based prioritization may enable such advertisement lines to be given higher priority in selection and delivery, thereby enabling more advertisement lines to more consistently meet contractual impression goals, and also deliver higher priced advertisements to scarce user bases
Illustrative Operating Environment
As illustrated in
Some or all of universal advertisement services server 110, portal server 104, and third-party server 102 are in communication by way of network 108. It will be understood that universal advertisement services server 110 and portal server 104 may each represent multiple linked computing devices, and that multiple third-party servers, such as third-party server 102, may be included in environment 100. Network 108 may be regarded as a private network connection and may include, for example, a virtual private network or an encryption or other security mechanism employed over the public Internet, or the like.
User 106 and mobile device 112 represent user-interactive devices that typically run browser applications, and the like, to display requested pages received over a network. Such devices are in communication with portal server 104 and/or third-party server 102 by way of network 109. Network 109 may be the public Internet and may include all or part of network 108; network 108 may include all or part of network 109.
Portal server 104, third-party server 102, universal advertisement services server 110, user device 106, and mobile device 112 each represent computing devices of various kinds. Such computing devices may generally include any device that is configured to perform computation and that is capable of sending and receiving data communications by way of one or more wired and/or wireless communication interfaces. Such devices may be configured to communicate in accordance with any of a variety of network protocols, including but not limited to protocols within the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) protocol suite. For example, user device 106 may be configured to execute a browser application that employs HTTP to request information, such as a web page, from a web server, which may be a process executing on portal server 104 or third-party server 102.
Networks 108-109 are configured to couple one computing device to another computing device to enable communication of data between the devices. Networks 108-109 may generally be enabled to employ any form of machine-readable media for communicating information from one device to another. Each of networks 108-109 may include one or more of a wireless network, a wired network, a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), a direct connection such as through a Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, and the like, and may include the set of interconnected networks that make up the Internet. On an interconnected set of LANs, including networks employing differing protocols, a router acts as a link between LANs, enabling messages to be sent from one to another. Communication links within LANs typically include twisted wire pair or coaxial cable. Communication links between networks may generally use analog telephone lines, full or fractional dedicated digital lines including T1, T2, T3, and T4, Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDNs), Digital Subscriber Lines (DSLs), wireless links including satellite links, or other communication links known to those skilled in the art. Remote computers and other network-enabled electronic devices may be remotely connected to LANs or WANs by way of a modem and temporary telephone link. In essence, networks 108-109 may include any communication method by means of which information may travel between computing devices.
The media used to transmit information across communication links as described above illustrate one type of machine-readable media, namely communication media. Generally, machine-readable media include any media that can be accessed by a computing device or other electronic device. Machine-readable media may include processor-readable media, data storage media, network communication media, and the like. Communication media typically embody information that includes processor-readable instructions, data structures, program components, or other data in a modulated data signal such as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism. Such media may include any information delivery media. The terms “modulated data signal” and “carrier wave signal” include a signal that has one or more of its characteristics set or changed in such a manner as to encode information, instructions, data, and the like in the signal. By way of example, communication media include wired media such as twisted pair, coaxial cable, fiber optic cable, and other wired media, and wireless media such as acoustic, RF, infrared, and other wireless media.
Optimization/arbitration subsystem 204 communicates with performance advertisements component 208, guaranteed impression advertisements component 210, and external advertisements component 212. Performance advertisements component 208 interacts with sponsored advertisement server 214. Similarly, guaranteed impression advertisements component 210 interacts with banner advertisement server 216.
Selection of an advertisement from among competing advertisement lines that qualify for a location in a requested page may be based in part on priority values assigned to particular advertisement lines. Priority values may be determined by, among other components, quota server 308, which enables time-based prioritizations, and profile-based prioritization component 310. Information regarding determined prioritization of advertisement lines may be provided to advertisement server 304. For example, profile-based prioritization component 310 may be employed to determine an advertisement line from among qualifying advertisement lines that has the lowest incidence value. Advertisement server 304 uses priorities determined by quota server 308, profile-based prioritization component 310, and other components not necessarily shown in
Quota server 308 manages workload for advertisement server 304 by periodically calculating and allocating delivery quotas for particular advertisement lines to advertisement server 204. A quota may be based on a rate calculation algorithm, which may be applied to traffic projections provided by advertising contract data server 302.
Profile-based prioritization component 310 may provide priority values that are based on incidence calculation 320 for advertisement lines as well as on user targeting profiles 318. Incidence, which may be a relative value that measures the scarcity of available inventory for an advertisement line, may be calculated by advertisement campaign booking system 316 based on data provided by inventory management system 314. Advertisement campaign booking system 316 also determines average incidence values for particular page locations based on the incidences of all active advertisement lines qualifying for that location. Incidence calculation 320 for advertisement lines, and calculation of average incidence values, may be performed periodically, such as daily or weekly. The period may depend on how frequently data changes in inventory management system 314.
Inventory management system 314 is employed for predictions of network traffic, including page views, and inventory management system 314 determines advertisement inventories based on such predictions. The predictions of network traffic may be based on information derived from historical logs component 312, which receives data regarding historical traffic from web servers 306.
Other formulas may also be used to determine incidence. Actions associated with decision block 702 and block 704 may be performed for each active advertisement line managed by an advertisement services provider. In another embodiment, a constant number may be employed for the denominator in the formula.
Process 700 then flows to block 706 where, for one or more advertisement locations, such as all appropriate advertisement locations for the set of all pages in the network of pages or sites managed by the advertisement services provider, an average of incidence levels is determined for advertisement lines that potentially qualify for the location. This average incidence value may be used for advertisement lines having no inventory information for calculation of an incidence level according to the formula given above. Process 700 then may return to a calling process to perform other actions.
If, however, the determination at decision block 802 is negative, because, for example, predicted inventory information is not available for the advertisement line, process 800 flows to decision block 806, at which it is determined whether the given page location is a “new” location, in the sense that inventory information is not yet available for advertisement lines scheduled or booked for that page location. If the page location is new, processing flows to block 808, where a default incidence value is used for the advertisement line. For example, a lowest incidence value may be employed to assign high priority to advertisement lines associated with the new page location. Process 800 then returns to a calling process to perform other actions. If, however, the determination at decision block 806 is negative, the page location is not new. In this case, process 800 flows to block 810, where the predetermined average incidence value for the page location, which may be determined in accordance with block 706 of
It is therefore intended that the foregoing detailed description be regarded as illustrative rather than limiting, and that it be understood that it is the following claims, including all equivalents, that are intended to define the spirit and scope of this invention.